The Victoria Lie by Sarah Marie Graye - Book Tour
The Victoria Lie
WHEN IS A LIE A LIFELINE?
...To Tori lies are everything.
ZOE wants to end her life. But she can’t just leave a note. She needs to say goodbye to boyfriend JAMES and best friend ALISON.
TORI is waiting in the wings to fill the space ZOE will leave behind, wanting to claim both James and Alison for herself.
But with ZOE still alive and Alison's childhood friend RUBY now on the scene vying to fill the gap, TORI realises she has her work cut out.
Just what lengths is TORI willing to go to in order to claim Alison and James for herself?
And what does any of this have to do with BETH and FAYE?
The Victoria Lie is perfect for fans of Gail Honeyman, Maggie O'Farrell, Patrick Gale and Elizabeth Strout.
Note from the publisher:The Victoria Lie (The Butterfly Effect Book 2) is a standalone story and can be read without reading The Second Cup (The Butterfly Effect Book 1) first.
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TRIGGER WARNINGS: Suicide, depression, IRA bombings, ADHD, Autism, neurodiversity, neurodevelopmental disorders, Sarcoidosis, lying, manipulation.
Today I have Sarah Marie Graye, author of The Victoria
Lie, joining me on the blog as part of the Book Launch Blog Tour. I’m sharing
a section from Chapter 6, where Tori – who is desperately trying to cement a
friendship with Alison – feels like a spare part after Alison’s childhood
friend Ruby arrives in London. I think it’s a feeling most of us can relate to.
Amazon US - https://amzn.to/2Oq3Qng
Amazon UK - https://amzn.to/2Rbz9Rd
Excerpt
When we get to Alison’s flat, I stand
awkwardly in the hall while the two of them carry bedding from Alison’s room
into the lounge, sorting out some sort of temporary bed for Ruby. My place is
such a trek from here and I know I won’t get offered a temporary bed, so I need
to convince them to go drinking in the centre instead of anywhere around here.
I hear movement. I watch Ruby head out of
the lounge and into the kitchen and hear the rustling noises of someone
searching for things in an unfamiliar place. Lots of banging doors. The
tinkering of glasses.
“There’s wine in the fridge.”
I hear the fridge door open.
“Oh wine cow! No, two wine cows.”
Now this I have to see. I head into the
kitchen and have to strain to look over Ruby’s shoulder to see what wine cows
are because the door of the fridge opens the wrong way into the room. It’s the
sort of kitchen layout that would be infuriating to any sane person, but I
still ache to live here.
There are two wine boxes on the top shelf,
one white, one rosé. Each has a plastic tap poking through the cardboard like a
forlorn udder. Ruby stands with the fridge door ajar while she tilts one of the
wine boxes in order to read the information.
“Don’t stand with the fridge door open!” –
I want to scream this out loud, but the words just ring around inside my head
instead.
You come out of your teens battered and
bruised: “If you live in my house you live by my rules” and “If you don’t like
it get a job so you can live elsewhere”. By the time you leave it’s obvious
your parents don’t want you around anymore and you’re questioning why they ever
had kids.
I never wanted to live in their house and
by their stupid rules, so as soon as I was old enough, I got a job and moved
out. But the rules have followed me and I now find people standing with the
fridge door open as infuriating as my parents did.
“Hurry up!” Alison shouts from the lounge.
“White or pink?” Ruby shouts back.
“Pink! And bring the cow biscuits!”
Wine cows. And now cow biscuits? They have
their own language. Ruby’s friendship is far more ingrained into Alison’s life
than I’d hoped.
Ruby carries the wine cow and cow biscuits
(a packet of Fox’s Malted Milk biscuits which have cows on the front) into the
lounge. I bring the three oversized wine glasses – just as important but met
with less enthusiasm.
The sofa is now made up as Ruby’s bed, so
it makes sense that Ruby sits on it at the pillows end, with Alison taking what
will be the feet end. It’s a sofa big enough for three people but they’re
lounging across it in a way that makes it just for two.
I’m left with the armchair in the corner –
the seat I would have coveted as a child as it would have been Ellie’s, but it
sets me adrift.
The wine and biscuits are shared with me across
the void of carpet, but the history, the in-jokes, are not.
Author Bio
Sarah Marie Graye was born in Manchester, United Kingdom, in 1975, to
English Catholic parents. The second eldest of five daughters, to the
outside world Graye’s childhood followed a relatively typical Manchester
upbringing... until aged nine, when she was diagnosed with depression.
It’s a diagnosis that has stayed with Graye over three decades, and something she believes has coloured every life decision, including the one to write a novel.
Graye wrote The Second Cup as part of an MA Creative Writing practice as research degree at London South Bank University – where she was the vice-chancellor’s scholarship holder.
First published in July 2017, The Second Cup was: longlisted for the Book Viral 2017 Millennium Book Award; a finalist in Read Freely’s Best Indie Book 2017; a finalist in the 12th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards; a semi-finalist in the Online Book Club 2017 Book of the Year Award; and a "distinguished favorite" in the 2017 NYC Big Book Awards.
Graye was diagnosed with ADHD in November 2017... and published an extended edition of The Second Cup in February 2018 so she could diagnose one of her characters with the same condition.
Graye's second novel, The Victoria Lie, was published in August 2018, and explores what it mean to be neurodiverse as an adult, looking at both high-functioning Autism and ADHD.
It’s a diagnosis that has stayed with Graye over three decades, and something she believes has coloured every life decision, including the one to write a novel.
Graye wrote The Second Cup as part of an MA Creative Writing practice as research degree at London South Bank University – where she was the vice-chancellor’s scholarship holder.
First published in July 2017, The Second Cup was: longlisted for the Book Viral 2017 Millennium Book Award; a finalist in Read Freely’s Best Indie Book 2017; a finalist in the 12th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards; a semi-finalist in the Online Book Club 2017 Book of the Year Award; and a "distinguished favorite" in the 2017 NYC Big Book Awards.
Graye was diagnosed with ADHD in November 2017... and published an extended edition of The Second Cup in February 2018 so she could diagnose one of her characters with the same condition.
Graye's second novel, The Victoria Lie, was published in August 2018, and explores what it mean to be neurodiverse as an adult, looking at both high-functioning Autism and ADHD.
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