From the Publisher: ” North Carolina, 2018: Morgan Christopher’s life has been derailed. Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, she finds herself serving a three-year stint in the North Carolina Women’s Correctional Center. Her dream of a career in art is put on hold—until a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will see her released immediately. Her assignment: restore an old post office mural in a sleepy southern town. Morgan knows nothing about art restoration, but desperate to leave prison, she accepts. What she finds under the layers of grime is a painting that tells the story of madness, violence, and a conspiracy of small town secrets.
North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. Alone in the world and desperate for work, she accepts. But what she doesn’t expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep, where people are hiding secrets behind closed doors, and where the price of being different might just end in murder.
What happened to Anna Dale? Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural? Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies”?
Diane Chamberlain is one of my favourite authors – I am a big fan of her writing style. When I learned of the release of her latest book, Big Lies in a Small Town, I couldn’t wait to read it. The book certainly did not disappoint.
The story is told from a dual-narrative, one of the most interesting ways in my opinion to develop a plot. In this book, Morgan Christopher is the first protagonist and her story is told from 2018. She is restoring a mural originally painted by the second protagonist, Anna Dale, who is paints the original in 1940.
The book moved me the way a good book always does. The author deals with several sensitive issues including racism, sexual abuse and mental health and manages to make an impression of these issues without horrifying the reader. The book is engaging and kept me interested throughout.
I simply loved this book and look forward to reading more of the author’s work. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves fiction.
Thank you to Netgalley and St Martin’s press for the ARC of this book in exchange for the honest review provided here.
My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5.