Lies Out by L.T. Linden
Lies Out follows Connor and Celina. Celina is best friends with Connor’s sister, Gigi, and Connor hates her; he is polite but indifferent towards her for Gigi’s sake. Celina doesn’t know what she has done to make Connor hate her, but she is polite again for Gigi’s sake. Connor ends up in an accident, and Gigi is unable to be there for her brother, so Celina rushes to the hospital for her. Connor then needs physical therapy and someone to check in on him and report back to Gigi. Obviously, she asks Celina, which leads Connor and Celina to spend more time together, and eventually, they cannot ignore the pull. Can Connor get his head out of his arse long enough to not mess this up?
Would I humiliate myself again by kissing her? Maybe I should care about humiliating myself again. Maybe I should think of Gigi and the complication. All the reasons this is a bad idea. But my hand is already at the nape of her neck, tilting her face up. Her lips part on a sharp exhale. And I stop caring about anything else.
•Grumpy/Sunshine •Billionaire Romance •Bestfriend’s Brother •Forced Proximity •Hate to Love
I opened up my emails, which are linked to my blog and saw I had an email from L.T. Linden asking me if I would like to review her book, and I want to start off by saying I love when authors pop me emails. I may not always want to or be able to read your books, but I love authors popping in my inbox. I decided to check it out and noticed that it is her debut novel. It is not currently showing on Amazon or Goodreads, but she had sent me a BookSirens link for me to get the book to read and review.
I enjoyed this book; it was cute and gave me butterflies, which is what you want in a romance book. It is, in my opinion, a fast-paced book but not rushed. It is character-driven, but there is a good overall plot. You can tell that this is L.T’s debut book by the writing, and I don’t doubt that the more she writes, the better she will become.
I feel like Connor grew a lot as a character, which he needed to because he was a pretentious arsehole towards Celina. He judged Celina without truly knowing her. He thought that she was a liar because she had once said she didn’t like soft drinks and she didn’t like ice cream, but then he saw her drinking a Diet Coke and vanilla float. I was like, seriously dude, she may not like soft drinks, but like Diet Coke, it’s not that deep lol. I quite liked Celina, she was quiet and strong. She was caring and loved fiercely. At about 40% in, I got butterflies as they finally gave in to their want for each other, and it was just cute. Whenever a book gets cute and happy at the 40% mark, I know that the characters are going to face difficulties before the end of the book, and I was right. This was once again a time when I wanted to smack Connor. I respected Celina for how she handled it; Connor didn’t deserve her gentleness.
“Celina, I fucked up.” He says. “But I’m not giving up without trying. I’ll do anything,” he whispers. “Anything for a second chance.”
The book setting was good, a realistic setting. Although there was a lot of travelling back & forth on private jets.
The writing style, like I said, you can tell this was her debut novel by the way it was written. There were POV changes in the middle of chapters, which I found strange to begin with, and I think they would have worked better as separate chapters. I got used to them, though. The ending was cute and left me feeling warm and fuzzy. The book was easy to read. The flow was somewhat good, but also slightly stilted at times. Like I said, as a debut book, this was really good, and I can’t wait to watch this author grow.
The book is set to release on 16th May 2026. I will put the BookSirens link here if anyone would like to request an ARC read. Obviously, this is only if you are going to read and review the book. I’ve never linked to a BookSirens book before, so hopefully it works.
Thank you, L.T., for reaching out & letting me read your work. I look forward to watching you grow as an author.
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5
🌶️🌶️/5
