Dr. William Wooler had been having an affair with a neighbor's wife. Nora Blanchard, a volunteer at the same hospital where he was on staff, had fallen for the handsome doctor. Despite her conviction that William was her soulmate, she broke things off, fearing her husband suspected what was going on, the stakes of his discovery too high for her to continue the risky liaison. Heartbroken, William left their final rendezvous to go home to what he assumed would be an empty house, his wife at work and his two children still at school. Instead, he finds his nine-year-old daughter Avery there alone and unsupervised, sent home from afterschool choir practice for misbehaving and disrupting the class. When she gets out of hand and backtalks her father, William slaps her hard enough to knock her to the floor. Shocked at his actions, he apologizes profusely, begging her not to tell her mother, and leaves to cool off.
But did he?
That becomes the question when Avery mysteriously disappears without a trace.
EVERYONE HERE IS LYING by veteran author Shari Lapena is an entertaining domestic thriller perfect for losing yourself in while letting all else around you wait until later! A missing child, her father a suspect in her disappearance, but what really happened to nine-year-old Avery Wooler?
Told through multiple points of view, the story follows the police investigation into Avery's disappearance, and no matter whom the detectives question, the suspect or witness is always hiding something. Ulterior motives, jealousies, and secrets abound while a little girl's life hangs in the balance.
An interesting aspect of the story is that except for Detective Gully and a couple of individuals peripheral to the case, most of the main characters are not very likable people. Even the distraught mother of the missing girl was hard for me to like, although I could understand her panic and pain. The missing girl, Avery, is a difficult child with an off-putting manner, manipulative and entitled from the start, but I didn't want anything bad to have happened to her. In this instance, I didn't need to like these people to find the story completely riveting.
Welcome to Stanhope. A safe neighborhood. A place for families.
William Wooler is a family man, on the surface. But he’s been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter, Avery, unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper.
Hours later, Avery’s family declares her missing.
Suddenly Stanhope doesn’t feel so safe. And William isn’t the only one on his street who’s hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, Avery's neighbors become increasingly unhinged.
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