Faith’s father has been found dead under mysterious circumstances, and as she is searching through his belongings for clues she discovers a strange tree. The tree only grows healthy and bears fruit if you whisper a lie to it. The fruit of the tree, when eaten, will deliver a hidden truth to the person who consumes it. The bigger the lie, the more people who believe it, the bigger the truth that is uncovered. The girl realizes that she is good at lying and that the tree might hold the key to her father’s murder, so she begins to spread untruths far and wide across her small island community.
But as the tree bears more and more fruit, she discovers something terrifying – that her lies were closer to the truth than she could ever have imagined…
How did I get the book? StorytellersInc Book Club
Genre: Historical Fiction / Fantasy
Review: There are so many things I want to praise about The Lie Tree. Foremost, Frances Hardinge’s beautiful writing – which is just beautiful and paints the landscape of the story, characters and of course the environment they inhabit. Particularly when it came to the actual tree, which grows with each new visit from Faith, it’s eerie.
Faith herself is one of those characters that I loved to read. She’s clever, resilient but also naive. Constrained by being young and female in a society that takes no notice, Faith fights for her father’s murderer to be brought to justice, but she also falls into the same traps of judging others, especially her mother. Their relationship was actually one of my favourite things in this story because I was waiting for it to come to blows.
The Lie Tree is rich in story development. I enjoyed the book a lot so didn’t mind that it took a little time to set everything up. I’ll be sure to read more of Frances Hardinge in future.
Recommend it?
Absolutely
Luna's Little Library 