Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent
Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent
My awesome husband bought this book for my birthday and it took me about 7 months to get around to reading it. I wish I hadn't waited so long.
I read Liz Nugent's Unraveling Oliver which was so terrible that it was good, but this one was even better. While you will go in knowing someone was murdered, trust me when I say you're only scratching the surface of the horror and dysfunction of this book.
My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.
Lydia and her husband Andrew Fitzsimmons kill Annie Doyle. We don't know why. We only know that while Andrew is deeply, deeply disturbed and traumatized by what they did that night, Lydia basically moves along as though nothing is wrong. Don't be all forgiving of Andrew though, because while he feels some remorse for the murder he committed with his wife, he's an awful, awful dad to their son Lawrence. And honestly, Lydia isn't that great of a parent herself. But also don't feel too terrible for Lawrence right away either.
This story had more twists and turns than a dog's hind leg. Every time I thought the horror was good and over, it became even worse, and worse after that! The ending is literally one of the most haunting I have ever read.
I counted that as a good thing, because I laid awake thinking about the ending and just really wondering how it had all gone wrong and what could've gone better. All I could think of is that one character could die before any of this started.
This book does have a very gothic mansion-y feel, even though it's set largely from the 80's to present day. I'm not sure how Nugent does it, but just reading this novel makes you want to take a shower and scrub all the grossness off. And that's actually a compliment, because I'm not easily grossed out by anyone's writing. That being said, it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, so if creepy, psycho women, terribly adjusted young men, drug abuse, poverty, and Oedipal vibes creep you out to the point where you hate reading about them, I would strongly suggest skipping this book.
There is also a trigger warning/spoiler:
Spoilers:
Okay, where the hell to start?
Lydia was unable to have more children after Lawrence, and they were unable to adopt. So naturally she asked Andrew to find a vulnerable young woman to sleep with, get pregnant, and pay to be an under-the-table surrogate. Andrew finds Annie, who is actually a sex worker with a heroin addiction, and she lies to Andrew about being pregnant, and in fury he strangles her. Lydia finishes the job by hitting Annie over the head repeatedly.
Lawrence, a teenager at this point, accidentally finds out what his father has done after his father lies to the police, and then after Andrew dies of a stress-induced (?maybe??) heart attack, he accidentally finds Annie's body in the backyard. While he understands his dad's role in the crime, he doesn't realize Lydia was also involved.
For some godforsaken reason, Lawrence becomes totally obsessed with Annie. It's too creepy to even cover here. Anyway, he goes out of his way to meet Annie's family and ingratiate himself to them. Then he falls in love with Annie's sister, Karen. Or maybe just the thought of her being Annie's sister, anyway. He deliberately tries to make Karen believe that Annie is still alive and that she just ran away to start a new life. Karen finds out that Lawrence faked the letters from Annie, and obviously she runs away because that's insane.
JUST KIDDING!
Karen finds a way to justify Lawrence's lie and sees it as him confessing his feelings for her.
It turns out that Lydia also killed her sister where Annie is buried in the garden.
Karen and Lawrence's relationship grows stronger and you start to root for them, because maybe Lawrence will have a chance at being a normal guy. Lydia is going to be the mother-in-law from hell, of course, but we can get past that, right?
NOPE. Because nobody can have Lydia's baby! So she makes Karen think that Lawrence killed Annie. Lawrence is arrested, but during the arrest he has a heart attack, and before he can make any of the truth known, he is deprived of oxygen so long he becomes brain dead.
Lydia is delighted because her little boy will be hers for ever and ever, and he can never tell anyone her secret. And then she chains him up outside where she can hear him wailing, dying in the garden, as she slips into dementia/psychosis.
I also forgot the part where Lydia drugs Lawrence with something akin to Adderall so he can lose weight, and that she maybe killed his grandma too. There's just a lot going on here.
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