Saturday, May 23, 2020

About the Book

Book: I’ll Take the Lie

Author: Nancy E. Wood

Genre: Christian YA

Release Date: June 28, 2019

Does the truth really set you free?

Paige Hall doubts it, after her boyfriend Justin tells her he’s over it, leaving her with a broken heart and crushed dreams. When Justin disappears, she can’t help but try to find out what happened to him. But when the more she searches, the more problems arise, she can’t help but wonder if it would be better to just accept the lie…

Click here to get your copy!

MY REVIEW

The story is a look at what happens if you can’t accept a lie and must know the truth. Paige is on a quest to find out what happened to her ex-boyfriend. It was odd that he broke up with Paige so unexpectedly and then suddenly disappears. I thought is was a bit weird that more wasn’t being done to find him. What were his friends hiding? Shouldn’t they be more concerned that their friend is missing?

Although I found the mystery very intriguing , it was Paige’s family that really piqued my interest. Her family is so disconnected from each other, I wondered if they lived in the same house. A sister who is just plain mean, to a brother who decides that living on the edge is better than facing reality. Paige’s father is not trustworthy at all . Paige will come face to face with some truths that can either set her free or cause her to walk away from everything.

The story is like an onion that is slowly peeled away as it stings your eyes. Living with lies has caused Paige to become numb to things around her. Even though she is determined to know the truth, she has no idea that the truth will shatter many lives. I loved how the author writes a story that shows the ugly side of being deceitful where pain awaits. I didn’t see the ending coming and I must say it was a shock at first. Even though I had a front seat to what was happening I still didn’t connect the dots. It is a perfect example of how the enemy can cause us to ignore the truth and believe lies.

The more Paige investigates the closer the truth will touch her life in a way she never expected. There are some topics that may be uncomfortable for some such as drugs, physical abuse and intimacy. These subjects are prevalent today because young people are faced with doing what is right vs falling to peer pressure. I walked away from this story knowing that the “truth will set you free.” You may not like the truth, but truth helps you move on, forgive and hopefully become a better person.

I received a copy of this book from Celebrate Lit. The review is my own opinion.

About the Author

Nancy E Wood was born into a missionary family and lived in Hungary until she turned twenty. Her whole childhood, she loved reading and stories, writing some of her own, but never believing she actually had the talent to be an author. Speaking multiple languages, she never thought she would be good enough in any to become a wordsmith.

Her senior year of high school, she was encouraged to write short stories, one of which turned into Perfect, a novel that couldn’t stay short. After sharing it with a few people, she decided to get it published a couple years later. She went to college in Florida, where she studied English and Music. After graduating, she married and moved to California. She published her second standalone book, I’ll Take the Lie, in the summer of 2019 and is currently working on a sequel to Perfect. She also runs a blog for young women, where she writes relatable and motivational posts that point to God. She has also done some speaking in different Christian schools and youth groups, encouraging teens to pursue Christ through some of the most difficult years of their lives.

More from Nancy

What’s truth? Why is it important? Does everyone have their own kind of truth or is there only one?

Those were questions I was dealing with in my college Apologetics class while I wrote I’ll Take the Lie, and I thought that theme would fit so well into the story.

The idea came to me a long time ago. I was really into The Great Gatsby at the time and wanted to write a story from a bystander’s point of view. Originally titled What’s Wrong with Alex?, Paige, the worried sister of Alex, who drastically changed over his first semester of college, wants to find out what happened to him. But the deeper I went into the story, the more Paige’s character shone through, and she soon became the protagonist with her ex boyfriend’s mysterious disappearance. The whole theme tied into what I was studying about apologetics and truth, so the messy pieces all came together into a solid plot.

Paige isn’t a believer, and she doesn’t really care about the idea of truth and spirituality until she gets dragged into it. It’s my hope that this book story helps young adults like me think deeper and question their beliefs. We get so caught up with our own happiness, we don’t always want to accept the hard truth. But, like Paige, we need to think about whether we can keep living pretend lives or if the truth really does set us free.