Would I Lie to You?
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this “total page-turner,” wife and mother Faiza is about to find what happens when you have your dream life and are about to lose it... but only if you're caught (Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author of The Sanatorium).
At the school gates, Faiza fits in. It took a few years, but now the snobbish white mothers who mistook her for the nanny treat her as one of their own. She's learned to crack their subtle codes, speak their language of fashion and vacations and haircuts. You'd never guess, seeing her at the trendy kids' parties and the leisurely coffee mornings, that her childhood was spent being bullied and being embarrassed of her poor Pakistani immigrant parents.
When her husband Tom loses his job in finance, he stays calm. Something will come along, and in the meantime, they can live off their savings. But Faiza starts to unravel. Creating the perfect life and raising the perfect family comes at a cost – and the money Tom put aside has gone. Faiza will have to tell him she spent it all.
Unless she doesn't...
It only takes a second to lie to Tom. Now Faiza has mere weeks to find $100,000. If anyone can do it, Faiza can. She's had to fight for what she has, and she'll fight to keep it. But as the clock ticks down and Faiza desperately tries to put things right, she has to ask herself: how much more should she sacrifice to live someone else's idea of the dream life?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ali-Afzal's solid debut follows an English Pakistani woman who is desperate to fit into her affluent Wimbledon neighborhood. Over the past few years, Faiza Saunders has secretly blown through her family's £75,000 emergency fund with a series of "shorthand" purchases meant to show she's a "yummy mummy," that her three kids belong with their peers, and that her marriage is enviable. When her husband, Tom, loses his job, Faiza is convinced he will leave if she tells him about the depleted fund, and she has a matter of weeks to replenish it through whatever means necessary. As the lies snowball, so does the anxiety. At the heart of the story are the complicated issues Faiza deals with: a desire to provide her children with a life free of the racism she endured, her struggle to code switch to please others, and the real discord between her and her husband ("For Tom, money was utility and security. For me, it was a solution to all kinds of problems"). While Ali-Afzal makes this overlong by a few too many redundant scenes involving the central dilemma, she ably conveys how money has become a taboo subject for the couple. Chock-full of understandable bad decisions, this page-turner is sure to get readers talking.