#Review This Much is True by Katherine Owen

This Much is True by Katherine Owen
Find the Author: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads
on August 11th 2013
Purchase links: Amazon
Add to Goodreads
Source: Xpresso Book Tours

Both on the verge of fame. A ballerina who lies. A baseball player who believes her. Well, the truth changes everything.

Tally Landon is just trying to survive the death of her twin sister, graduate from high school, and escape her tragic story by pursuing her ballet career in New York. She doesn’t count on Lincoln Presley, Stanford’s baseball wonder, to affect her at all. Adding him to a long list of one-night stands is the plan. Lying to him about her age and name is her standard method of operandi. She doesn’t count on being found out, on seeing him again, or falling in love.

Lincoln Presley’s life is all mapped out for him. There is only baseball. With Major League Baseball circling their favorite prospect with a lucrative offer, he cannot afford to mess up. And, he doesn’t; until he meets up with the girl he saved in that burning wreckage on the 101 on Valentine’s Day months before. By the time he learns her real name and of all the lies she’s told, he’s in far too deep to ever really let her go.

Fate has a different set of plans, but when fame and lies tear them apart, one truth remains.

We received this book/audiobook for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect our opinion of the book or the content of our review.

VIVIAN’S BOOK REVIEW: 5 STARS

This much is true for me…I had ALL THE FEELS while reading this book! Right off the bat, the first 2% in fact, I was BAWLING! Yes, curled up on the couch, snuggled in my blanket BAWLING. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a book do that to me so fast:’( There was no emotional connection formed for me with the characters at 2%, but yet, somehow Katherine Owen grabbed me by the heart and insisted I love the characters right away. I felt Tally’s pain at a profound level and I was gutted. At 2% I was completely taken by the book, that I had a hard time putting it down! I am going to do my best to describe this book and my emotions throughout without spoilers because this was one heck of an emotional rollercoaster of a ride for me!

This Much is True is about chance encounters and circumstances that keep the lead characters Tally Landon and Lincoln Presley apart and the innocent telling of lies by one of them leads to an eventual unraveling of their relationship and virtually keeps them apart. This love story is about how Tally and Lincoln love each other, lose each other and must slowly make their way back to each other and how fate intervenes along the way.

Their relationship is not paved smoothly AT ALL! They must go through trial upon trial upon trial before they find each other again. At one point, I even was thinking, “Is it worth it for them to even try anymore? Will fate just lead them to each other and take away all their suffering and pain from their choices?”  But NO! And honestly, life is MOST DEFINITELY worth all the ups and downs…it makes you stronger and Tally is BY FAR the strongest character I have read. Some of the readers may think she is selfish (because to a degree she is), but I see her as selfless. She sacrifices her mind, body and soul for others, especially Lincoln. She sacrifices EVERYTHING and EVERYONE for Lincoln and his success in his career. “The thing is you have all these plans, and you hope that things will turn out differently because you sacrifice so much and then nothing turns out the way you thought it would…” (Tally). One simple, seemingly harmless lie creates a domino effect of lies for these two and unravels in the worse of ways. “The lies have just built upon one another. One follows the other like connected dots on a road map; but this path leads me to him, and I can’t stop now. Not yet.”(Tally). When a relationship starts out with a foundation of lies, can it survive all the trials that follow? 

“My lies have cost me everything. I’m done lying. There are…so many lessons learned.” (Tally)

This book touches on some pretty heavy subject matter that not everyone wants to read about, let alone write about. Katherine touched on those topics and I think she did an AMAZING job of portraying Tally’s emotions while she’s going through those “matters” in the book. I could actually FEEL what Tally was going through. This Much is True is written in dual POV, so we also get to experience Linc’s feelings through their relationship…which I LOVED! Tally has sacrificed everything, but Linc has sacrificed things as well. Linc is definitely one of my new book boyfriends 😉

I think the moral to the story is: our choices in life, no matter how inconsequential they may seem, whether those choices are for the benefit of ourselves or for others, has consequences. Every action has a reaction. Every decision of ours affects us and others in life and should not be taken lightly. We can’t outrun our choices. Lying may be inevitable and come easily for some, but is it worth it? All the lies will eventually catch up with us and reveal themselves. It’s kind of like a ripple effect when you throw a rock in the water…the lie may start out small and seem inconsequential, but can potentially become SO MUCH BIGGER.

This is my first Katherine Owen novel and I went into it not knowing what to expect AT ALL and I LOVED it! I won’t lie, there were definitely times where I stopped reading and I was just like “I give up! These characters are tearing me apart! Can they just have their HEA already?!?” But no, this was not your typical “boy meets girl, they fall head over heels, little bit of drama mixed in here or there throughout the plot, and then HEA” kind of novel….NO…This Much Is True had SO MUCH MORE meaning behind it’s story and I am so thankful to have been given the opportunity to read this arc! Thank you Katherine Owen! <3

“Because this much I do know all lies eventually unravel and reveal themselves.” –Tally

I TRULY give this book 5 stars! 😉

***The Truth About Air & Water (Truth in Lies, #2) : The Truth In Lies Series. READ This Much Is True, book 1 first, although it’s been written as a standalone. Readers say, don’t do that. ***