Review: Season of Lies
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 2, 2013
(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. I do not believe my review is in any way impacted by having received the book for free.)I started this book last night right before bedtime. Rather than reading for ten minutes before crashing, I ended up unable to fall asleep until I had finished the book. Season of Lies is a very well written story that is filled with captivating and realistic characters. I was initially expecting a psychological thriller due to the mental hospital setting and the font used for the chapter titles. This story had some of that, but was so much more. It was less thriller and more coming of age with a lot of action as the main character tries to discover who murdered her brother and come to cope with her abilities.I've read many stories where the protagonist can speak with animals. I can not recall any author expanding that to the point where the character speaks with insects, such as spiders and gnats. This was original, and I loved the scene where spiders are enlisted to scare one of the crueler nurses at the mental hospital.I really enjoyed the method the author used to show Robin's flashbacks. They started with a couple of sentences and each one began by including the entirety of the flashback before it. With every new flashback, a new piece of information was added. It was really cool to see how the flashbacks radically changed the story. Many of them contained revelations that went against what I had expected. I thought they would reveal someone completely different as the killer, and yet everything made perfect sense. I loved all of the scenes of her living with the herd of whitetail deer. Again, it's something unique, and very well written. I enjoyed the deer using her to their advantage to get persimmons down from the top of a tree. Very ingenious of them!The ending was bittersweet. Like most other aspects of this book, it was a complete twist and one I wasn't anticipating  at all (and kudos to the author for writing a book where you can not guess the ending from the first chapter!). This book is one that I will definitely reread and one that I will encourage all of my friends to try.