Never Lie | Freida McFadden (book spoilers and ending explained)
Another day, another Freida McFadden book full of unlikable dummies and an illogical-but-shocking twist. Never Lie is the most recommended Freida book to psychological thriller lovers that I’ve seen. Even more than The Housemaid, and that is saying something! Did I like it? Eh… I liked it better than some (looking at you, The Teacher) but not as well as others (see The Boyfriend and The Housemaid’s Secret). This was fine. Perhaps overhyped? I liked the premise of it though so let’s lay it all out there.
What is Never Lie about?
A young couple named Tricia and Ethan are out viewing real estate when they get stranded at an open house due to a storm. They are the only people there, though this isn’t made into a big point. Even the real estate agent isn’t there! Of course the house is huge and amazing.
(I mean, have you ever heard Freida describe her own “house”? I put that in quotes because it sounds like the most AI-generated description of a writer’s house I’ve read. Pics and property records and I’ll believe it!)
Back to the book. The house belongs to popular psychotherapist, Dr. Adrienne Hale. She disappeared three years earlier just after her pop psych book, The Anatomy of Fear, released. The book centers around one of her patients who she refers to by the initials ‘PL’. While at a cabin, PL’s fiancé and friends were all stabbed to death. She was the only survivor.
(Seems a little exploitative to use her story in the book, but I guess maybe she got paid?)
While stuck in the house, it’s clear that there is something odd about Tricia and Ethan’s relationship. Ethan is a bit condescending towards Tricia. But then again, Tricia sometimes deserves it because she is so stupid and whiny all the time. Of course Tricia is wearing Manolo Blahniks in a snow storm for goodness sake and we have to hear about it so many times.
(What is with Frieda and Manolos? These shoes feature in at least half the books I’ve read by her and almost always in the color red. Is this the only luxury shoe brand she has heard of? I honestly don’t even think they are close to the best heels out there, but then again Freida isn’t the height of fashion in the two photos we have seen of her…)
Tricia hears noises and thinks someone else is in the house with them, but Ethan is of course not worried because he is frankly an a-hole and it’s unclear to any of us why Tricia is so into him other than that he is hot (they are always hot in Freida’s books) and rich (they are also always rich). While he is busy mansplaining to Tricia and pushing her aside, she finds a secret room (of course she does) that is full of cassette tapes from Adrienne’s sessions with her patients. She realizes the police never found them. She doesn’t tell Ethan because he would disapprove.
(Let’s just mention here that of course one of Freida’s leading men seems perfect but is actually a controlling asshole. Also there is of course another giant leather sofa in this giant house that must cost at least five-figures, which is an items that I swear is described the same way in every book.)
Of course she listens to the tapes.
What’s on the tapes?
Through a mix of the tapes and flashbacks, we learn a lot more about Adrienne, her life, and her practice. Adrienne had another patient she referred to by the initials ‘EJ’ who has narcissistic personality disorder and is also a man-baby. Adrienne wants to terminate their sessions because he (his parents, actually) hasn’t paid. They cut him off because he is of course a selfish man-baby. EJ doesn’t mind though. He doesn’t need a job because they’ll die soon and leave him all of their cash.
(I’d like to cut him off too because he is so obnoxious. Though I think that is the point.)
She hasn’t cut EJ off though because apparently he saw her slash someone’s tires and now he has the tapes of it to blackmail her. Something pretty big must have happened to get a prestigious, classy woman like Adrienne to slash someone’s tires, right? Of course! It turns out the person cut her off. So, this is the first sign we get that Adrienne is clearly elitist and unhinged…
(Even Freida’s “smart” female characters are somehow deeply unlikable and lacking all judgment).
We also learn that Adrienne man named Luke and she is falling for him in the most insufferable way. We’ll get to that. Also, I don’t know where else to put this but I need to drop in the detail that is mentioned an ungodly number of times, and that is that Adrienne has a giant oil painting of herself over the fireplace. Giant!
(Of course she has a painting of herself in her own living room. Adrienne is absolutely Freida’s projection of herself onto a fancier and more stunningly beautiful canvas. And I’m not saying the two photos we have of “Freida” indicate she’s not pretty, but my thoughts on those photos will need to be a different post…)
Meanwhile in between listening to tapes, Tricia finds time to reveal a secret to Ethan… she’s pregnant! She’s worried how he will take the news (not worried enough to wait until they aren’t trapped with no cell service), but he is elated. He’s rich so he assures her she won’t need a job because that is what hot, rich husbands are there for. To keep you in the kitchen barefoot. Meanwhile Tricia listens to more tapes and continues to think someone is in the house because she found a clean sleeping bag and pillow in the attic. Also she asks Ethan about his parents and he won’t talk about them. She realizes she hasn’t met anyone from his family.
(Once again, I must remind us all that she is married to this man and she has never asked about his family. Tricia is so dumb. A hot dummy in expensive boots who somehow is enamored by Adrienne’s cashmere even though she clearly has money for expensive clothes.)
What’s going on with Adrienne?
We learn that PL is the one who gifted Adrienne the portrait (weird gift to give your therapist…). Adrienne and Luke play therapy sessions and record themselves. In a flashback, we see that Luke and Adrienne do the deed, so they are officially in the thick of things. Months go by and we learn that the two are in love. Adrienne never thought she would be able to have intimacy like this because her parents died when she was a child.
(Freida LOVES to write characters with tragically dead parents, so this is once again on brand. Luke also has a dead wife so again, these two lost souls only have eachother.)
EJ has blackmail over her because he has the video of her slashing the tires of a car who cut her off (I had to say that again because it underscores the ridiculousness of this). He forces Adrienne to prescribe him pills and increases how often she needs to see him. Luckily Adrienne has hot-dummy Luke around and he is intoher. She drugs EJ at his next session by giving him wine (is this common in therapy?) and makes Luke break into EJ’s house to wipe the video from his phone and computer. Luke is not happy Adrienne made him do this. Unfortunately for Luke, this ill-designed scheme backfires because now EJ not only has a copy of the video (has Adrienne heard of the cloud?), but also a new video of Luke breaking and entering into his home.
(I’m no detective here but I think a video of breaking and entering must rank higher than the penalty for slashing someone’s tires…)
Meanwhile Tricia has spent all afternoon listening to the tapes (we still have no idea how Ethan didn’t pick up on this. It’s a big house but where was he?). As she ponders the inscription on her wedding band and what she will do about Ethan wanting this house, she drops it behind the sofa (the expensive, giant, leather sofa that cost five figures). Ethan comes to help her move the sofa and they realize there is a hollow compartment beneath the floorboards.
What is under the floorboards?
A corpse! What did you think it was going to be? A bunker? Another painting of Adrienne? Millie from The Housemaid? (that’s not actually so farfetched the more I think on it) Of course it’s a dead body. The question is, who’s body is it? It’s too rotten to tell. Tricia wants to GTFO but Ethan reminds her their car is still stuck in the snow. Then they hear a crash. Tricia and Ethan go to investigate the noise and find a man in Adrienne’s office who claims to be homeless. But Tricia recognizes that voice from the tape… It sounds like Luke!
(If you are wondering how the police missed this and how this house is still left exactly as it was three years ago with no one around to pay the bills, then we are on the same page.)
Did they finally find out what happened to Adrienne?
In the past, Luke and Adrienne are at the grocery store when they run into a former patient of Adrienne’s named Gail who thought her son was trying to kill her. She tells Adrienne she’s doing much better. Meanwhile Adrienne gets a text from EJ with the video and a request to meet. When he arrives, he demands Adrienne sleep with him or he will release the video. She essentially tells him to bug off and release her video if he wants. Remember that video of Luke breaking and entering? Well, he has that leverage as well. Adrienne tells Luke that they need to murder EJ and explains about the second video. Luke, understandably, refuses that crazy suggestion.
(I really can’t believe this woman was so afraid of that tire slashing video that she let it get this far. She’s a best-selling author. It’s going to be fine. She could probably work this into her next book!)
In the present, Luke tells Ethan and Tricia that he was accused of Adrienne’s murder, lost all of his business, and is homeless with no friends. (Damn…) Ethan still thinks Luke murdered Adrienne so he ties him up to go get help. That’s when he notices the secret room that Tricia had been hiding in. He asks if Tricia had been listening to the tapes and tells her not to listen to any more of them. After he goes to get help, Tricia goes back into the office to get more tapes (come on, Ethan. You didn’t think she’d listen, did you?) and Luke is of course tied up in there. He tells her he doesn’t think it’s Adrienne under the floorboards because the body is wearing jeans and Adrienne never wore jeans.
(Of course Adrienne never wore jeans! She’s much too classy for jeans. She’ll slash a tire, but she wouldn’t be caught dead in jeans. Pun intended.)
Who is the body under the floor?
Tricia listens to the last tape of PL and Adrienne, where PL tells Adrienne she doesn’t need to do therapy anymore. Adrienne can finally say it: PL’s story is a bunch of lies! She knows PL murdered her friends and fiancé at the cabin after PL caught him cheating with her friend Alexis. Then Adrienne asks “Patricia” to do something for her. Patricia! Puh-Tricia!
(Are you shocked? You should be shocked because there is not a single easter egg in the first three-fourths of the book that makes this make even a smidge of sense. Classic Freida!)
Adrienne is no dummy, though (ha!) and totally picked up on Puh-Tricia’s lies. Not just murdering her friends and fiancé, Puh-Tricia also messed up her grandmother’s medication years ago and inherited all of her money. Also some injured people and animals in her wake.
(Did Freida just google signs of a psychopath to write this part?)
Puh-Tricia does what Adrienne wanted and shows up at her house with EJ in the car. She drugged him at a casino and loaded him in. After marching him into Adrienne’s office, she leaves. Adrienne opens up the loose floorboards and rolls EJ in, leaving him to suffocate and die. (Whoa!) She waits for him to stop making noises, and then says “Goodbye, Edward.”
How does it end?
Puh-Tricia finishes the tape and fills in the details for us. Yes, she murdered them all. She really only wanted to murder Alexis but that would but suspicion on her. She also realized that Adrienne must have murdered EJ / Edward as soon as she saw news of his disappearance.
(I bet you were thinking EJ was really Ethan, didn’t you? Of course you did, because Freida shoved so many clues suggesting that down our throats that we couldn’t avoid it!)
Meanwhile in the past, Adrienne lives with the stench of the dead body for months. She goes on tour for her book. No one suspected her (well, besides Puh-Tricia). She goes to see Luke and lie to him about what happened. They both want to rekindle, but she can’t invite him to the house because there is a smelly body rotting away.
(That dead body really made the real estate value take a hit for awhile, didn’t it? Thankfully Adrienne isn’t selling and has no friends. She also paused her practice because of her book. That body can stay down there forever, for all she cares!)
Puh-Tricia is waiting outside of her house to confront her about Edward / EJ. She’s worried they’ll get caught because she was captured on camera at the casino with him. Adrienne says they both need to keep the secret, but Puh-Tricia lives by that line that “two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.” So yes, Puh-Tricia is the one who killed Adrienne. She gets worried when she sees the house go up for sale because that many people walking through will surely stumble on Edward / EJ’s body. She had to find a way to look for it.
(Of course! She is a clever girl. Just needed an open house scheduled conveniently during a blizzard to get it done.)
Unfortunately, Luke now knows there is a dead body that is not Adrienne’s under the floorboards. Ethan returns and they go to bed (leaving Luke tied up). Puh-Tricia wakes in the night to find Ethan burning the tapes belonging to “GW” who is really named Gail and is his mother (the woman from the grocery store! Of course!). She remembers Adrienne telling her that Gail died falling down the stairs and left her son a large inheritance.
(I’m sorry but even if she were dead, why would a therapist tell a client the name and details of another patient? This isn’t the first time either!)
Puh-Tricia intentionally crossed paths with Ethan and the rest was, as they say, history. Kind of. She brought him to look at the house hoping he’d confess. When he doesn’t offer it up, she tells him she listened to his mother’s tapes. Ethan finally confesses he killed her. (Of course you did, Ethan. We all knew that already.) Puh-Tricia confesses her own murders at the cabin and Adrienne. Ethan isn’t horrified as most would be. He’s worried Luke knows too much so the two decide maybe they can murder him together.
(I’m so sorry but this is so absurd I couldn’t decide if I was tickled or annoyed by this. Maybe both.)
Two years later, Ethan and Puh-Tricia are living in the house. They have a daughter. They bought the house that weekend. Luke and Edward / EJ are buried on the property. (There’s children now, they can’t just have dead bodies under the floorboards!) Oh, and Puh-Tricia is pregnant again.
What did I think?
That was a looonnng explanation and I dropped lots of my thoughts on the details throughout. Let’s pull back a bit. This book is riddled with plot holes and lazy red herrings. I won’t go into all of them, but here are a few things that bothered me.
While Tricia and Ethan are stranded at the house, the fridge is stocked with food (we later learn this was because Luke is living there, though we don’t learn how he had money to buy fresh groceries). Tricia is worried about the fridge being stocked, but Ethan writes it off as probably being the real estate agent, Judy. Now, I’m not a real estate agent. But if I were, I don’t think eggs, bologna sandwiches, and other standard grocery items are what I’d stock for the open house. Seems like maybe cold beverages and cookies would be more standard. Maybe a charcuterie platter. After several days, they find Luke and Ethan decides to walk to town to get a plow to get their car out.
Now hold on. They were close enough to walk to town this whole time? They couldn’t leave because their car was stuck so they just moved into this house instead of walked to town to get help? Ok…
We are led to believe that all of this happened because EJ had a hold over Adrienne, and she was forced to let things escalate until the murders were necessary. The video is question shows Adrienne slashing the tire of a car who cut her off. Whoa! That person should be in prison! (I’m kidding) Now let me first say, this is such a funny scenario. Some of the craziest people I know are therapists, so this kind of tracks that this proper, educated woman who also slash the tire of someone for a petty offense. Was this the first time she’s ever been cut off while driving?
Anyway… the situation progresses. It’s one thing when it’s merely the extra free sessions. But when it gets to the point of demanding sexual favors and murdering him over letting that video potentially leak? I think just let him release the video, lady. You can write about it in your next book. Also, I don’t think he would have released it because he wanted it as leverage. Sigh…
I can’t even get into how unprofessional this woman was as a therapist. She introduced her patient to her boyfriend at the grocery store. She repeatedly shared information about her other patients with different patients, including their names and other biodata. Puh-Tricia was told that EJ inherited a ton of money! Why would she do that?
Perhaps the most annoying thing about this book for me were the twists. I’ve read enough Freida by now that I can pick up on a few things. One of her absolute favorite ways to try and trick her readers is to give a character in one timeline an initial that corresponds with the first name of a character in the other timeline (in this case, EJ and Ethan). Its not enough for her to set that trap and hope some people fall into it or consider it an option. She has to spend two-thirds of the book beating the reader over the head with how similar they are. The same background, the same physical characteristics, the same way they got rich. She does this in nearly every book. Then towards the end she reveals, they aren’t the same person after all! Haha, tricked you!
This is sooo lazy. Of course everyone thinks EJ and Ethan are the same. She literally wrote them to be the same. She gives no hints that it could be someone else. Also she never gives us the real option. Who is Edward? I don’t know! I guess he is EJ!
Freida also uses the trope of having a character go by a nickname (that the reader is never told is a nickname) only to later reveal they are actually the person in the other timeline who didn’t go by a nickname. In this case, Tricia was PL from the tapes and the book. Oh, you didn’t realize her real name was Patricia? You never learned her last name? Everything about her in the second timeline was the opposite as the first. She didn’t even really lie to the reader. This isn’t an unreliable narrator situation where the character directly narrates to the reader, and we realize we can’t totally trust their version of events. This is lazy. Lazy!
When I see people talk about how good Freida McFadden is at a blindside, I realize that maybe we shouldn’t be asking authors to aspire to that. We love a twist. But the best twist in my opinion is the one I can look back on all of the clues to and wonder how I missed it. It’s clever, intricate, well-crafted. A blindside is really just a way to pull the rug out from under the reader. Freida’s tactic is to hide everything so that when she reveals it, there is no possible way the reader could have guessed it because it doesn’t make sense.
Alright that’s enough for now. Did I hate the book? Not really, not as much as some of her others. It irritated me and it was sloppy. But it was also entertaining. The flashbacks kept it interesting so we weren’t stuck with Tricia and Ethan the whole time. I can see why lots of readers loved this. I wasn’t one of them, but that’s ok! If you want an easy read that you don’t need to over-tax your brain to keep up with, this is a good choice. A nice palette cleanser in between denser books.
Until next time, Freida McFans (and McHaters)!
