Epeolatry Book Review: The Lies We Conjure by Sarah Henning

I’ll just say it upfront; I loved this book. Witches. Supernatural thriller. Locked-room murder. Yes, yes, yes, please. I couldn’t put this one down until it was finished.

The Lies we Conjure is a fun, fast-paced thriller that will keep you hopping and guessing at every turn. I love a mystery which I cannot easily guess and one that doesn’t feel like cheating, and this book is exactly that. I did guess parts of the solution, but not everything. Henning is skilled with her red herrings, misdirection, and sprinkling of clues throughout the action.

Ruby and her twin sister Wren are working a dead end summer job when a mysterious woman offers them a chunk of change to pretend to be her granddaughters at a family reunion. Ruby wants to say no, but her more outgoing sister seizes the opportunity for cash and to see inside the mysterious Hegemony Manor. Armed with expensive black clothing and fake British accents, the two girls are not ready for the night they will face.

In the middle of dinner, the Hegemony matriarch is murdered and a magical spell traps everyone inside with a built-in deadline to determine succession and find her killer. This is the perfect set up for a thriller. Finding a reason to isolate characters and heighten tension like this can be difficult, but the magic makes it easy without feeling like a shortcut. These are witch families vying for magical supremacy.

The magic systems in the book are well thought out. Each clan has a different type of power: Elemental, Celestial, Blood, and Death. At first, tracking the different families is a bit tricky as our twins are pretending to be members of the Blackgate (death magic) clan and are expected to already know everything. But, in a wise move, Henning has her twins visit the library about a third of the way into the story to read a short history of the clans and make sure the sisters (and the readers) understand everything before the action really gets going in the remaining 60%. This is, admittedly, a big exposition dump, but it’s warranted in the narrative, interesting in and of itself, and not overly long. It’s a risk, but it worked.

Each character is complex and full of surprises. Due to the battle for supremacy among the clans, who to trust is a moving target that kept me – and the sisters – on my toes the whole time. I would start to think one character is safe, only to find out they are an enemy, and vice versa.

Other than the obvious sources of conflict and tension – will the ruse be discovered? Will the girls be blamed? – is the relationship between the two sisters. They are a classic pair – the wilder, outgoing type (Wren) and the more reserved, serious one (Ruby). We have seen this dynamic before: (Jessica/Elizabeth Wakefield, Veronica/Betty, Kristy/Mary Anne to name a few); it is a classic trope for a reason. Henning’s sisters, while fitting this mould, do not feel like stale repetitions of the past. Both girls are fully fleshed out and grow through the narrative. We only get Ruby’s point of view, which adds mystery to Wren’s motives, but by the end, I understood and sympathized with Wren as much as I did with Ruby.

The Lies we Conjure was a blast to read, and I am definitely adding Sarah Henning to my list of authors to keep an eye out for.

/5

Available from Amazon and Bookshop.