Published By: Headline
Pages: 352
Released On: 20/01/2026
Everyone at Chantilly’s Bar noticed out-of-towner Camille Bayliss. Red lips, designer heels, sipping a Negroni. But that woman wasn’t Camille Bayliss. It was Aubrey Price.
Camille Bayliss appears to have the picture-perfect life; she’s married to hotshot lawyer Ben and is the daughter of a wealthy Louisiana family. Only nothing is as it seems: Camille believes Ben has been hiding dirty secrets for years, but she can’t find proof because he tracks her every move.
Aubrey Price has been haunted by the terrible night that changed her life a decade ago, and she’s convinced Benjamin Bayliss knows something about it. Living in a house full of criminals, Aubrey understands there’s more than one way to get to the truth – and she may have found the best way in.
Aubrey and Camille hatch a plan. It sounds simple: For twelve hours, Aubrey will take Camille’s place. Camille will spy on Ben, and the two women will get the answers they desperately seek.
Except the next morning, Ben is found murdered. Both women need an airtight alibi, but only one of them has it. And one false step is all it takes for everything to come undone.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Headline for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I do have a copy of Ashley’s book First Lie Wins, but I haven’t got round to reading it yet, but I had heard great things about her writing.
It flips forward and backwards in time which I struggle to get on top of. I usually have no problems with stories told this way, but for some reason I struggled.
We have the POV of Camille, Aubrey, Camille’s husband Ben, and his business partner Hank. I enjoy multiple POV books generally and it does work in this considering it’s such a layered story. My difficulty was that, at times, Camille and Aubrey were pretending to be each other. Which then makes the POV switch difficult because I’m not sure if I’m reading Aubrey be Camille or Aubrey being Aubrey.
I did enjoy it, I really did, but I would have preferred if it had stuck to one form of narrative. Either write it in chronological order, or write it backwards. But there seems to be no rhyme or reason here. We’re looking at one date, and then the next half dozen chapters are in the present, and then we go back a decade, and then back to the original weekend, then the present again etc. and I got quite lost.
I’ll be honest, regardless of how enjoyable I found it, when I was reading it I had very little idea what was going on. I mean, I got the overarching story, but whilst reading individual parts of the book, I was confused. There’s so much going on, so many people, and a lot of secrets and unfinished sentences, so if someone had asked me what was going on whilst I was reading it, I couldn’t have fully explained.
It is very good, don’t get me wrong. I really did enjoy it and I would definitely recommend it and I’ll be moving her other book up my tbr list. But I think my issue stems with the pacing. It’s not even 400 pages so it’s not long, but it feels long with all the chopping and changing between people and times. It means I was confused and did have to keep flicking back to remind me who I was reading about.
There are a lot of twists and turns. I know I am notoriously bad at guessing outcomes in thrillers, but I was shocked at the reveal, I’d have never guessed it.
It was tense, definitely the epitome of a psychological thriller. It’s about secrets and lies, trust and distrust, who can we believe; a perched on the edge of your seat looking over your should kind of read.
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