Love the Way They Lie by Linda Smolkin

Blog tour: 26 January to 9 February 2022

Synopsis

In a matter of minutes, a speeding ticket turns her life upside down.

Thirty-eight-year-old Maggie Simmons has another reason to hate the Department of Motor Vehicles – other than the long lines. A visit to the DMV reveals a photo from a speeding ticket with her husband in the arms of a mystery woman. Maggie’s happy marriage to Nate shatters, but he refuses to leave her alone. In her attempts to move forward, remnants of her old life tear apart.

After separating, she fills the void with her dog, Chili, and a string of unexpected relationships. She finds herself with multiple people vying for her attention – and she enjoys the distraction. However, Maggie soon realizes they may have ulterior motives.

One by one, more betrayal weaves its way into Maggie’s life, leaving her devastated by the idea of being heartbroken and alone. In order to escape her reality, she flirts with the unthinkable – the one thing that triggered her suffering in the first place. A lie.

My review

When Maggie Simmons (38) has to renew her driving licence at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Miami, she’s annoyed to discover there’s an outstanding speeding ticket on her car, which she knew nothing about. She’s even angrier when she’s shown the photographic evidence and sees her husband of three years with a blonde woman nuzzling his neck!

She has to keep it together while she goes to collect her stepchildren, Max (10) and Emily (13), from school and then she confronts Nate while the kids are watching TV. He denies everything and says the woman is just a friend from work. Nate first cheated on Maggie before they were married so this is the final straw and she tells him to leave and asks for a divorce. He’s reluctant for them to part and keeps asking her to try again but she refuses.

As Maggie begins to find herself and enjoy life as a single woman with her dog, Chili, a Golden Lab, by her side, she leans on her best friend, Rachel, for support and begins to date again, meeting someone at a work conference in San Diego and another man at a bar while out with Rachel. Things don’t go smoothly though and Maggie must make some difficult decisions.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel – it’s well written and a nice easy read. It kept me entertained and I was keen to find out what happened and read it over the course of a couple of days. We get to know Maggie and follow her journey as she extricates herself from her husband and their life together and she learns more about herself and grows in confidence and enjoys life a bit more.

Maggie is quite frustrating at times and should probably have remained single for a while so that she could grieve her husband’s actions and the loss of their relationship rather than moving on too quickly and jumping straight into new romances. She has her difficulties along the way and things are not plain sailing in her love life but it’s all character building and makes her realise what she actually wants.

I liked the way the story developed and I enjoyed Maggie and Chili’s friendship with the couple from the retirement home, Betty and Al, who were both great characters! Maggie learnt a lot from their experiences and she was a great comfort and friend to them too.

This was an engaging read and I’d definitely check out another book by this author.

Buy the book

Love the Way They Lie by Linda Smolkin can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle and in paperback.

About the author

Linda Smolkin always wanted to be a writer – ever since she saw her first TV commercial and wondered how to pen those clever ads. She got her degree in journalism and became a copywriter. Linda landed a job at an ad agency, where she worked for several years before joining the non-profit world.

Love the Way They Lie is the third novel by the author whose debut, Among the Branded, was called ‘a beautiful and fascinating novel that will keep readers hooked’ by San Francisco Book Review.

When not in front of the computer, she’s behind the drums (slightly) annoying her husband, son, and their 70-pound dog.

Twitter: @lindasmolkin
Facebook: @AuthorLindaSmolkin
Instagram: @lindasmolkin
Website: https://lindasmolkin.com

Blog tour

Thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for my digital copy of Love the Way They Lie and for my place on the blog tour.

See the banner below for more stops on the #blogtour.