Review by Booklist Review
Like all mothers in London's Wimbledon Village, Faiza follows a strict code of Botox parties, designer bags, and lavish spending. But when her husband, Tom, loses his job, she has six weeks to recover £75,000 or confess two terrible truths: their emergency fund is gone, and she's to blame. To conceal their financial woes and her blunder, Faiza lies to acquaintances, family, and even Tom with terrifying ease. She applies for loans and sells family heirlooms to stave off a looming wave of bills, desperate to cover her tracks just a little longer. As she navigates the worries of her Pakistani immigrant parents, she also grapples with racism from other mothers, fetishization from men, and the struggles of her children, who are half-white. This evocative debut confronts the perils of pretending all is well, exploring in vivid first person how a simple lie can spiral into unforgivable choices. Faiza's deception becomes all-consuming as everything she seeks to save begins to crumble. A suspenseful novel on marriage and morality for readers of Celeste Ng.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Ali-Afzal's solid debut follows an English Pakistani woman who is desperate to fit into her affluent Wimbledon neighborhood. Over the past few years, Faiza Saunders has secretly blown through her family's £75,000 emergency fund with a series of "shorthand" purchases meant to show she's a "yummy mummy," that her three kids belong with their peers, and that her marriage is enviable. When her husband, Tom, loses his job, Faiza is convinced he will leave if she tells him about the depleted fund, and she has a matter of weeks to replenish it through whatever means necessary. As the lies snowball, so does the anxiety. At the heart of the story are the complicated issues Faiza deals with: a desire to provide her children with a life free of the racism she endured, her struggle to code switch to please others, and the real discord between her and her husband ("For Tom, money was utility and security. For me, it was a solution to all kinds of problems"). While Ali-Afzal makes this overlong by a few too many redundant scenes involving the central dilemma, she ably conveys how money has become a taboo subject for the couple. Chock-full of understandable bad decisions, this page-turner is sure to get readers talking. Agent: Jenny Bent, the Bent Agency. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Ali-Afzal's debut centers on Faiza, an English Pakistani woman living in London's impossibly posh Wimbledon Village. Faiza is a fortysomething mother with a banker husband and a gaggle of shallow friends--the UK version of "ladies who lunch." She is the worst kind of shallow woman, who wants so desperately to fit in and "keep up with the Joneses" that she lies to everyone, including herself. Disaster strikes when Faiza's husband is laid off, and Faiza realizes that they might need to draw on their emergency rainy day fund. The only problem is that there is no emergency cash, since Faiza spent it long ago. Can Faiza keep the truth from her husband long enough to replenish the fund? What follows is one ridiculous situation after the next, with lies piling on top of lies. This audio's saving grace is the narrator, Aysha Kala, who imbues Faiza with depth and brings out the nuances in Faiza's friends and family. VERDICT An interesting premise, but an overlong and exasperating book. Despite the skillful narration, this one is a strictly optional purchase.--Anna Clark
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
From the pressure cooker of upper-class suburban London comes a painful story of paranoia and betrayal. Like Big Little Lies and Little Fires Everywhere, Ali-Afzal's Would I Lie to You? delivers a fast-paced critique of class and motherhood. Narrator Faiza is the perfect housewife--casting aside her degree from Oxford to raise her three children and keep up appearances in wealthy suburban Wimbledon, she goes to Botox parties and participates in fundraisers for the local prep school. Faiza wants to belong at all costs even as she longs to be talked to "as if I was a person and not a walking, talking ethnicity," to escape her immediate classification as "exotic." When Tom, her husband, loses his job, she goes to great lengths to hide the fact that she's used up their rainy-day fund to play in this society. She grew up with Pakistani immigrant parents fighting over money, and she doesn't want to repeat the same pattern, so she hides her spending from Tom--but soon their loving marriage begins to feel the strain of Tom's depression and Faiza's web of lies. Faiza returns to a demanding sales position after more than a decade out of the workforce, and she continues to use lies as her armor as she struggles to keep up with women like Julia, her nemesis, an unkind and racist socialite. Though Julia and her Harvey Weinstein--like husband are a sometimes crudely drawn stereotype of a power couple, Faiza and Tom and their children can sometimes surprise. The book begins with a strange 10-line prologue, hinting at suicide, written in a voice that isn't Faiza's first-person narrative. It seems tacked on to drive the reader through the novel, which does not need this help. A sometimes-engaging thriller about a woman who pushes a marriage over the brink. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
