Okay, I am hooked like a catfish on chicken liver bait on the Lily's House series. I always get stoked whenever I stumble across a new author to follow, and Rachel Branton is that. So, thank you to the recommends crawl of whatever Amazon page I was browsing.
Tell Me No Lies is the second book in the Lily's House saga. It focuses on Lily's older sister, Tessa, who was a supporting character in the first book, House Without Lies. It's been a year since the events of that first book, so let's catch you up. But, wait, here's a **plot spoiler** alert.
Sucks to say that Lily's House - a haven for troubled runaway girls founded by foster parent Lily Perez née Crawford - isn't doing so well. Lily is three months behind on the mortgage payment. The upkeep, not to mention, the cost of feeding and clothing the girls, have added up and overwhelmed Lily's and her husband Jameson's budget. Lily is also pregnant, and it's not been an easy pregnancy. She's had to quit her schooling and her job. So, yeah, even less money coming in.
Lily's older sis, Tessa, has always had her back. It's why Lily isn't sweating it. While Lily is still two years away before her sizable inheritance from her grandpa kicks in, Tessa is twenty-five years old, meaning she can collect on her own inheritance, providing she gets married. And Tessa's getting married. In a few days.
Not so fast. (And remember, spoilers alert!) This book opens on a gutted Tessa. She'd just found out her fiancé had cheated on her. She can't marry the jerk now. But she's desperate to help Lily not lose her home. Cue the dusting off of that age-old rom-com trope: The Marriage of Convenience.
Observe as Tessa cooks a half-baked plan to go to Vegas and marry the first guy she sees. Observe that plan go up in smoke when her parents' neighbor, Gage, walks up and becomes a candidate for the altar.
Here's the thing. (There's always a thing.) Gage doesn't have the most pristine reputation. Rumor has it that he's an ex-con, that maybe he killed someone. His rough appearance doesn't exactly say law-abiding citizen, him looking like a shaggy mountain man. But Gage and Tessa have a nodding acquaintance, having had conversations in passing these past months, she when visiting her parents and her horse, he because the eye sore tract housing development, that he lives on, abuts her parents' three-acre land in Flagstaff, AZ. Tessa had never had the guts to ask Gage about the gossip said behind his back.
Anyway, fast forward to their entering into a business arrangement. Gage and Tessa will tie the knot with the understanding that it's temporary and that Gage will walk out of it with money in his pocket. (Tessa had even drawn up a contract.) Off they go on Gage's motorcycle, heading for Vegas, to one of those little churches with the gaudy neon sign over the door.
Tell Me No Lies is another terrific read from my favorite writer in this moment. While Tessa grew on me as a character, I'll be honest and say that my main drive was finding out what Lily's been up to. I actually felt a twinge of "Oh, no!" when we're alerted that her home for runaway girls wasn't doing so well.
Maybe the author had an inkling that Tessa pales in comparison with Lily as far as interesting characters go. It's a smart move having what starts out as a typical rom-com morph into a murder mystery, and that's all I'll say about that.
In the town of Kingman, we meet a wonderful character in Gage's deaf sister, Mia. And, right then, I had this notion that it would've been cool if Tessa already knew how to sign, like maybe she'd hung out with her sister's husband Jameson and his family enough. If you remember, Jameson's baby sister, Angela, is also deaf. I will say that it's Mia who galvanizes the whodunit bits of the plot.
As far as the love story goes, it's pretty good. Branton really knows how to write relationships. I like that Gage isn't some smug, "look-at-me-I'm-a-hot-dude" dude. And, as with Lily's story, I appreciate that there wasn't some lame obstacle to keep our couple from getting together. I really detest that Hallmark rom-com trope in which one character overhears a conversation, misunderstands it, and storms out on their love interest. Thankfully, none of that here or in Lily's book. Oh, there was the nonsense of Tessa's continuing to believe that Gage was just in it for the money, but the author didn't build that up into a major relationship-wrecking plot point. Barely worth a worry was when the cheating ex-fiancé swung by to try to win Tessa back. That ex-fiancé carries on showing his true colors. Anyway, good book.
By the way, if you simply must know, Gage is actually a geologist working for a mining company. But that doesn't mean he didn't kill someone. Dunh-dunh-DUNH!
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