The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams

41087364. sy475 — This book is still available to request on NetGalley as of the writing of this post

I requested this book because I thought the idea of playing on words sounded intriguing. Once I started it, I realised I did not have the patience to note the subtle undertones of the words being discussed, both the real and the made-up. This part did hinder my enjoyment of the book, but I slowly worked my way through it and did find other things to like about it.

It is a dual timeline, and the past does not have a very heavy bearing on the present. It is a more like slight interference. This basically meant I treated both as parallel individual stories except for when there were some repercussions felt in the present. Our protagonists (both past and current) work at a publishing house that published a dictionary. It was fascinating to see how the construction of such a thing would work, and for anyone even remotely interested in dictionaries, this will be even more enthralling. We have a man bored with his job, leading a life with a significant lie when he decides to throw more into circulation. His personal life gets pretty complicated by the time the narrative ends. In our current timeline, we have Mallory who is not so bored with the minimal work she now has to do with the dictionary, she is hiding part of herself from the world at large, and individually, her story was cute. The conversations she has with her partner are also pretty entertaining. It is not a fast-paced book but does have some unique content.