I came to Sometimes I Lie as part of a small run of psychological thrillers whilst specifically exploring the genre, the kind you read when you’re trying to understand the shape of things rather than just escape into it and this one stood out quite quickly for meddling far more with the concepts around unreliable narrators than the norm.

At the centre of the story is Amber Reynolds, who wakes up in a hospital bed unable to move or speak, but very much able to think and that thinking becomes the spine of the novel. What’s interesting straight away is how little the book asks you to trust her, it isn’t building a reliable narrator, in fact it’s exactly the opposite. We cannot fathom what is truth and what is deceit. You’re warned early on that she lies, sometimes deliberately, sometimes to herself, sometimes because memory is slippery and feelings get in the way and that sets the tone for everything that follows.

The story moves between present day, diary entries and past events and it does that without ever feeling gimmicky. It feels more like how the mind actually works under pressure, looping, revisiting, reframing or sometimes missing things and then suddenly catching them later. I found myself constantly recalibrating what I thought I knew, which is half the pleasure of this kind of book.

It’s not therapy-led in the same way as The Silent Patient, but it is very psychologically attuned. There’s a lot here about marriage and resentment, the stories we tell ourselves to stay intact and the way women’s anger gets misread or minimised. Nothing is overstated, but it’s all there if you’re paying attention.

Like a lot of books in this genre, it’s designed to keep you reading and it succeeds. Chapters slide into each other, revelations come at just the wrong moment to stop and even when I had suspicions, I didn’t feel ahead of it. I felt inside it, which is different.

I won’t say anything about the ending, except that it made me want to go back and check a few things, which I always take as a good sign. This was also the book that led me to read more of Alice Feeney’s work, particularly Rock Paper Scissors, because there’s a confidence here in structure and voice that makes you trust the author.

If you like psychological thrillers where the tension comes as much from the mind as from the plot and you enjoy being made slightly uneasy about your own assumptions, this is another easy recommendation. It’s sharp, readable and unsettling in a way that lingers.

You can buy it here or an audiobook or Kindle