No Amends by Angela Lam – Review by Ayla Phipps

No Amends by Angela Lam
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Love is like business. This is the first book I have read by the talented Angela Lam and honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect. That said it somehow was the perfect book for this Friday the thirteenth. Told from the dual perspectives of Tang and Dee we are taken on a rollercoaster of emotions, revelations, and mysteries in this quick read.
Tang is a writer, and real estate agent when not writing. Fourteen months earlier she was in San Franscisco for a writers’ conference when everything changed. Her original concept was denied time and time again but a chance encounter at a local restaurant changed everything. Dee a sales rep for a start-up tech company in New York is in San Franscico on business and visiting her twin brother Chris when she meets Tang. Making a comment about being the luckiest to Tang changed both of their lives. That simple moment gave Tang a new concept for her book and the next morning she lands a literary agent. Dee is full of secrets and lies. Starting with a slip of the memory by her brother on her name and a knee jerk answer about losing her son in childbirth there was no end to the lies Dee spun for herself with Tang. Everything was going too well but something was off, one intrusive thought to check Dee’s purse reveals her real name and begins the web of lies being untangled. Tang thought she had it all, the perfect girlfriend, Layla, but a chance encounter and a dark desire she couldn’t deny led to a journey of realization she never could have predicted.
Whose car went off Hangman’s Bluff? How could everything start with something as simple as a name? While the world the story is based on is reality the characters are relatable in every sense, even to the extreme in some cases to people in the world. Sometimes the world seems to give you everything, giving you chances to be honest and open, but what happens when you don’t take those moments? What happens when you continue to build on the shaky supports of lie upon lie? I didn’t know what to expect with this book, it seemed interesting and under two hundred pages was a quick suspense for a spooky day. The thoughts I was left with had me ready to go in search of my next Angela Lam book as soon as possible.

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