Lie Beside Me (DCI Jonah Sheens #3) by Gytha Lodge I love this series and now I'll have to wait a year to read the next book. I have to go with the assumption there will be more because I want to see this team for a long time in the future. DCI Jonah Sheens and his team take on a very perplexing crime. The reader knows that a woman wakes up in bed with a bloody, dead stranger. The team arrives on the scene but what they find is a bloody, dead man in the front yard of the house. Right off the bat...

This is my first rodeo with Jonah Sheens and my first encounter with the works of the author! You may easily catch up Jonah’s backstory, his new relationship and past drama with his ex which don’t directly affect the story’s progression! Because in my opinion this gripping, riveting, definitely unputdownable journey’s one and only star is Louise Reakes! She’s struggling alcoholic, drinking her sorrows, insecurities, her flaws, her husband’s disloyalty with his ex! She keeps hanging with April w...

Louise wakes up with a hangover (again) - she doesn’t remember much about the night before, and once again that’s become the norm. As she slowly gathers her thoughts, she realises that the bedsheets are soaked in blood, and even worse, there’s a dead man lying next to her, and it’s not her husband - in fact, she has no idea who he is.Not unnaturally, Louise is the prime suspect here, and gradually, she tells us her own backstory, as she wrestles with details of events leading up to that fateful

**4.5-stars**Lie Beside Me is the third book in the DCI Jonah Sheens series. As with many Adult Mystery series, these books don't necessarily need to be read in order. Personally though, I would recommend it, mainly due to interesting background information involving the main detectives. With this being said, any of the books in this series would also make great standalone novels. However, I feel like once you read one, you'll want to read them all!With her husband away on business, Louise Reake...

Gytha Lodge's latest in the DCI Jonah Sheens and his police team based in Southampton is an intricate, complex, multilayered, character driven psychological thriller that confirms Lodge's reputation as a brilliant crime writer. Musician Louise Reakes wakes up early one cold and snowy morning with no memory of the night before, and lying in her blood drenched bed beside her is a dead man she has never seen before. Horrified, her husband Niall abroad on a conference, expected to return later today...

This book has a similar premise to The Flight Attendant. A woman wakes up from a serious drinking episode with a dead man in her bed. But the similarities end there. The book alternates between Louise, the woman who awakes to the body, and DCI Jonah Sheens and his team, charged with the investigation. Oh, and by the way, by the time Sheens is called, the body is in the front garden. Louise’s chapters are told in the second person, as she traces her relationship with her husband and her descent i...

Imagine going out one night with a friend, getting blind drunk and waking next morning with a dead man in your bed. This is what happens to Louise Reakes. Louise narrates part of the story and the rest is from the perspective of the police investigation led by DCI Jonah Sheens. Now this is how you do a high quality police procedural! Apart from the fact that it is extremely well written with an excellent plot, one of the greatest strengths of the book is the outstanding characterisation. The pol...

Lie Beside Me by Gytha Lodge is a 2021 Random House publication.This series keeps getting better!Louise’s husband is out of town, giving her the perfect excuse to go out partying with her best friend, April. The trouble starts when Louise, as per usual when she’s out with April, gets rip -roaring drunk, then April leaves her at the bar to run off with a guy she just met…Louise wakes up with the mother of all hangovers and discovers a man in bed beside her- a dead man…Panicked, Louise moves the b...

This police procedural was just ok for me. Louise, who is drunk a lot of the time, wakes up in her own bed next to a a murdered stranger. The rest of the book goes back and forth between the police investigation and Louise’s backstory. Her story is told awkwardly in the form of a letter to her husband Niall. Does he really need to be told how they met? Niall has his own secret issues with his ex-wife Dina. And then there is April, Louise’s best friend and enabler, a flamboyant American. We also

Louise wakes up in the middle of the night cold and thirsty from a long night of drinking and curls up against her husband and finds he is all wet so Louise turns the light on and finds not her husband but the dead body of a man she doesn't know covered in blood. Louise panics and knows she has to get the body out of the house before she calls the police and her husband because if her husband finds out there was a man in her their bed it will be the end of their marriage. Unfortunately Louise do...

Really enjoyed this police thriller! The detectives were a very small part of the action, for me at least. The victim(s) were clearly center stage... It was a clever story that was divulged one tiny piece at a time. But it was always intriguing, never strained. I definitely recommend! **Thanks to NetGalley and publishers for the free advanced reader's copy!

3.5 stars. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of Lie Beside Me in return for an honest review. I have noticed that several crime stories have started with a similar concept where a person wakes up and discovers a person, maybe a partner or a one-night stand lying beside them in bed, dead and murdered. Once I saw that its author was Gytha Lodge, the author of two of my favourite 5-star police procedurals, I wanted to read it immediately. The two previous books featuring DCI Jonah S...

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication date: June 22, 2021 Gytha Lodge returns with book three in her Jonah Sheens series, “Lie Beside Me”. A newbie to both Lodge and the Sheens series, I was completely pulled into the premise. A young woman, Louise, wakes up after a night of drinking and partying, and there is a young man in her bed. What’s bad is the man is NOT her husband, Ni

A great, complex thriller with many unexpected twists and turns. Louise wakes up to find a man beside her, not her husband, and he's dead. She doesn't even recognize him, has no idea who he is or why he's in her bed. She panics.What a horrible realization that would be! She goes out partying with her friend, gets very drunk, and then finds herself in this nightmare of a situation with no knowledge of this man beside her. What happened? Did she kill him? Who is he?There was a rather complicated i...

Lie Beside Me is another great instalment in Gytha Lodge's DCI Jonah Sheens series. While Sheens takes top billing on the cover, a significant portion of the police procedural narrative is from the perspective of his team member, DC Juliette Hanson.The book opens with a jarring scene - Southampton-based professional harpist, Louise Reakes, wakes up disoriented after an evening of heavy drinking to discover that she's in bed with a male corpse, and it's not her husband's...After the death is repo...

In a world of unreliable narrators, this book is definitely intriguing. I loved the narrator, Louise, who suffers social anxiety to the point that she disassociates from interactions from others. To cope with this discomfort, she began to drink, heavily when amongst others. This has strained her relationship with her husband but enhanced her closest friendship with April, a fun loving woman, who lives in the extremes. One day, Louise wakes with a dead man in her bed and a bloody knife close by,

I started this book with zero expectations as I'd never read a book by Gytha Lodge before and now I feel as though I've discovered a new favourite author. Part psychological thriller, part police procedural Lie Beside Me hinges on a dead body mystery: how did a dead man end up in Louise's bed after a drunken night out? The pace fairly rattles along, never dipping for a moment and for every 'I think I know what happened' guess I threw at the book Gytha was one step ahead of me. What I found parti...

The story is told between a first person Louise, opening up the past to a letter to her missing husband Niall and a third person narrator which follows the present events after Louise's husband goes missing and she wakes up with a dead stranger in her bed.I think my favourite was the Louise chapters, as she's imperfect and honest, and she feels a very real person. Her drinking problem, streaks of inconfidence, secrets she keeps...I don't want to reveal too much of the plot as it's cleverly done

Two stars rounded up.I was intrigued by this book's premise: a woman ("Drunk Louise") is sleeping, wakes up, and reaches for her husband. The man in her bed is not her husband and he is not breathing. He also has been brutally stabbed.BUT THERE'S MORE: The police did not find the murder victim's body in Louise's bed. Instead, the dead body was found in Louise's front yard. DID LOUISE DO IT? If so, how did the body of the murdered man get from Louise's bedroom to her front yard? Louise has no mem...

A woman awakens to discover that the man beside her is not only not her husband, but he’s dead. Though she doesn’t remember what happened, she can’t believe she killed this man. When the police arrive, they find the body in the front yard. The woman is clearly keeping secrets and is a prime suspect.Lie Beside Me is told using alternating points of view – the suspect, Louise, and the detective, Jonah. Louise is insecure and a struggling alcoholic. Jonah is trying to find a killer. The mystery is