Everything but the Truth: Gillian McAllister

Product Information

Our main character, Holiday, is in a really odd situation since she can’t be honest about her life. I understood how she found herself there and how it just gradually spun out of control. I don’t agree with her actions, and think she should have just been honest, but I do understand how it got to the point it did. Plus it made for an interesting story, and that’s really the point isn’t it. :)

Everything but the Truth by Gillian McAllister | Goodreads

In the Highlands of Scotland two people fell in love like two peas in a pod. Only to discover that they're going to have a baby and don't really know anything about each other, apart from knowing that they were meant to grow old together. The story is very believable and all the main characters are as close to real life as you can possibly imagine. I related to the storyline instantly and I can imagine a high percentage of people will feel the same once they have read this book. Learning to trust, forgive, accept and move on, are things we all have to deal with, and Gillian manages to portray this impeccably throughout the whole book.

Christmas Cards & Gift Wrap

I really enjoyed this great psychological thriller. It’s a pacey, fun read which kept me completely absorbed. Hubbard builds a convincing and beautiful tapestry of the important relationships in Holly's life, and how each of these relationships have contributed to who she is today. Consequently, when Holly fears the loss of a friendship, Hubbard uses it as a great tool for showing Holly's burgeoning growth and maturity, and the evolution of that friendship. This book is set into three parts who? What? Why? Each section unravelling to answer each of these questions. Which I thought was fascinating and really clever.

Everything but the Truth - Kindle edition by McAllister Everything but the Truth - Kindle edition by McAllister

Overall, despite the cheesiness (and I mean that in a cute/fun way) and predictability, I found that I really enjoyed this book. It was a fun, light-hearted romance and the characters, though not totally stand-out, were awesome in their own way and awesome enough that I DID care about them enough to see how their stories ended. Plus, the ending DID make me cry, so, ya know... Predictable, but sweet and epic! So if all that is your kind of thing, then this book is definitely for you! At first, I was going to go on this whole rant about Alex and how I didn't fully trust her and how she was a crappy friend because I'm so tired of books with crappy female friendships. But then there’s a huge revelation/explanation for her and her behavior – something I’d suspected a few chapters before we were officially told – and everything made so much more sense! So I won’t rant about crappy female friendships in this review and in relation to this book. But in general, I do wish we’d see less of this trope in YA! Everything But the Truth is a wonderful story with a lot of depth. Sure, it's a romance at heart but there's so much more to this story. It explores a very close relationship between a mother and daughter who get along so well she can open up about anything. It's also about the strong friendship between two best friends who are soon going off to different colleges and feel like they might be losing touch with each other. And ultimately, it's about a very intelligent and nice girl who is willing to go above and beyond to help the elderly residents. The plot has a very simple boy like girl, girl like boys story line with that main complication - that Malik doesn't know who Holly actually is. It's a super short read with very simple pacing. There's a satisfactory happy ending so you'll be finishing the book feeling joyful that everything is solved, including the friendship problem. It's a small thing, but it hasn't been that long since the debate on whitewashing in YA, so I absolutely appreciate this step forward.An utterly unique story with a deep heartbeat and expertly crafted moral dilemmas' Holly Seddon, author of Try Not To Breath If you’re looking for an easy-breezy type of romance, you could give Everything but the Truth a try. It may not blow you away, but I promise it’s not a chore to read either. It’s fun, it’s cutesy, it has its share of funny moments. I don’t regret getting to know these characters at all. I think all of the books in the If Only line are great for an afternoon of summer reading; I’m definitely looking forward to future books in the series! In this novel, there are moral dilemmas, and I would argue that if you polled people, you would get all sorts of different opinions and takes on what the correct decisions would have been under these circumstances. The ending was just perfect. I closed the book with an 'awwwwwww' that left me feeling optimistic and excited about life.