From Product Description:

LIES OF THE HEART begins as a story about a mentally challenged man named Jerry who is on trial for the murder of his speech therapist, Nick Burelli, and evolves into an intimate, in depth look at the dynamics responsible for the events leading up to the tragedy. <br /> <br />Katie Burelli's basic problem is that she has always felt undervalued by her friends, her family and her husband and protects herself by watching life go by rather than participating in it. Her pursuit of a career in documentary filmmaking allows her to remain in her comfort zone and just "watch" the lives of others unfold. In fact, two of the most likable characters in this book are the subjects of one of Katie's documentary projects, the Cohens. <br /> <br />Katie enjoys the devotion Jerry shows her and does seem to get some sort of satisfaction from being able to manipulate and control the mentally and emotionally scarred thirty-eight year old. Her husband, Nicky, has some envy, self-esteem and control issues of his own. These two immature and selfish individuals constantly play head games with each other and use Jerry like a ping pong ball in their game of "he likes me better than you". Neither of these supposedly educated people has the slightest inkling of who they are or what they really want, but they are both sure of one thing ......they want to be better than the other guy. Although they purportedly love each other, their marriage is built on shaky ground and their relationship has more to do with sexual satisfaction and self gratification than with the sharing of common goals and building a life together. <br /> <br />In recounting the events that led up to the murder, a fair and impartial jury would be quick to see that the only individual who is truly without culpability in this entire scenario is Jerry. <br />

Michelle Boyajian's debut novel is like an onion, where each page peels away another layer of the story and with each new revelation, you're having to adjust yourself, your position and opinion, and your understanding of the characters and their story. It's like those scenes in movies where you start with the camera focused on one person, then zoom out to the house that person is in, then their community, their town, country, region, and then you're viewing the entire globe and it's becoming smaller and smaller. It's hard to write a review of this book because there are so many plot twists and revelations that one would want to include in order to discuss the largest and most comprehensive image we're given, but I will try to stick to what I CAN say so as not to ruin anyone else's experience of reading this book. <br /> <br />The way LIES OF THE HEART unfolds is what adds to the mystery and creates the "onion" effect. The book's main character is Kate Burelli and it starts at the beginning of the trial in which Jerry, a developmentally disabled man, is accused of shooting Nick, his speech pathologist and Katie's husband. The story then has two threads: one of the trial and the other of Katie, her marriage with Nick, and then the addition of Jerry. This second thread is leading us up to the first one, and as they draw closer and closer together, things become increasingly complicated and tangled, while at the same time much, much clearer and simpler. <br /> <br />We start the book thinking we know who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are, who our narrator is, who her husband was, etc. As the story progresses we begin to question all of our perceptions; what we thought of the three main characters, as well as other secondary ones, starts to change, shift, switch, and transform. We begin to see the various dimensions of these complex people and yes, much of it is not rainbows and flowers and butterflies. It felt real to me, though, and all the more important for a reader: it was fascinating. It was absolutely wonderfully done and once you get sucked in (which doesn't take long in my opinion) this book becomes a page-turner. <br /> <br />The characters are interesting, complicated, well-written, and emotionally provoking. You in turn feel sadness, impatience, sympathy, pity, anger, affection, frustration, and about a hundred other emotions for them. Kate, whom we know the most intimately as we are shown everything through her eyes, was extremely compelling to me, in both good and bad ways. Katie's parents brought some wonderful (and at times much needed!) humor to the book, and I thought the background story of the Cohens was very moving and a great addition. Many reviewers have mentioned Katie's relationship with her sister, but I do not think that this relationship is as central as some have made it out to be - it's no more important than her relationship with her mother (though both of them *are* important). One criticism I do have (which may seem minor but really annoys me) is about the cover: I don't think they should have chosen that one thing to allude to, out of all the choices they had; it seems to cheapen everything to reduce it to that. <br /> <br />Other reviewers have written they thought the ending was too neat, but not only do I disagree, I'm not even really sure how they could interpret it that way. Even at the end, we're left with questions, wanting to know more about what happened and about these people, their inner thoughts and lives. I don't know if this will make me sound masochistic, but I think it's absolutely fabulous! There will be parts of this story that speak to you, and others that leave you wondering, vaguely uncomfortable and uneasy. That a writer is able to do this with words on a page shows how talented she is and how engaging her story and characters obviously were; as a reader, I can only appreciate and welcome this. <br />[This review is of an advanced copy format of the book]

"Lies of the Heart" is a much-admired debut novel from Michelle Boyajian. It can best be characterized as a literary suspense/courtroom drama, centering on Katie Burelli, a would-be, unsuccessful maker of documentary films, resident in Warwick, Rhode Island. We first meet Katie as she dutifully attends the murder trial of Jerry, a mentally handicapped man, who has been a patient of her husband Nick, a speech therapist. One day, Jerry shot Nick full in the face, in cold blood apparently, and killed him instantly. Katie now sits in the courtroom, playing and replaying her life and marriage, trying to figure out why things have gone so wrong. <br /> <br />As she does so, she comes to realize that, as she has spent her life in the shadow of her prettier, smarter, more sociable elder sister Dana, she has gotten more used to observing it rather than living it: thus, her desire to be a filmmaker. She comes to realize, also, that she has chosen not to communicate with the most important people in her life, her family and closest friends: and that, as a result of these personal shortcomings, she has invested too much of herself in her husband and marriage. And, as cracks in her marriage began to appear, both she and her husband have invested too much of themselves in Jerry, hoping that by fixing him they could fix themselves. So he spends weekends with them, accompanies them on their leisure time recreations, and is taken along when they visit her family. Then something goes disastrously wrong. <br /> <br />I have no experience of working with the developmentally disabled community, and can not speak to Boyajian's portrait of that community, or its members. But I don't understand why a young couple would choose to bring any third party so closely into their lives. <br /> <br />"Lies" also caused me some further misgivings, which can perhaps be best summarized by saying that this book is the product of a young woman, writing for other young women. I'm really not interested in a 350 page explication of anyone's marriage, not even mine, and disliked the laser-light intensity of the author's concentration, throughout the book, on Katie's marriage and problems. We are told that Katie has been obsessional about her husband and marriage, and this book almost reads as if, perhaps was meant to read as if, it was written by the obsessional Katie. The beloved English author Jane Austen once wrote about her "little bit (two inches wide) of ivory" on which she worked "with so fine a brush." But believe me; Jane Austen packed a great deal more - more characters, more action, more humor, more life -- into her two inches of ivory than Boyajian does into this effort. <br /> <br />Michelle Boyajian is a graduate of NYU, Miami University, and the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she received her MFA and the Austin Robert Hartsook fellowship in Creative Writing. Her most recent short stories appeared in Third Coast and Timber Creek Review and were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. <br /> <br />This is a strong, assured piece of work for a debut; the author writes very well, and she may well expand her world view in future. Meanwhile, she gets an extra star for the local connection. <br />

Katie Burelli sits in the courtroom listening to endless testimony of her husband's murder; with each witness' account of the incident, Nick is taken from her all over again. Silently, Katie counts out the seconds it would take to reach the defendant and cause him harm before she could be detained. <br /> <br />A deep sense of loss gnaws at Katie as she mentally replays the past few years of their marriage and what became the beginning of the end, just a month before the shooting when Nick left her. Now Nick is gone forever, shot point blank by Jerry, a mentally challenged man with the IQ of a 10-year-old, whom the Burelli's loved like a son. <br /> <br />Katie aches for Nick. The hole in her heart in competition with the void left in their home; all the time knowing they were there well before Nick died. From the beginning, Katie lost herself in who Nick was, giving everything up for his love, dedicated to loving him. Lacking her own direction, Katie's insecurities and low self-esteem was tinder for Nick's private skeletons of doubt; resulting in vicious verbal attacks that later turn into pleas of forgiveness and passion. <br /> <br />By the end of the trial, Katie will learn more than she cares to know. Eventually realizing what she thought was swimming was simply treading water. Jerry may have pulled the trigger, but Katie may have had more to do with the death of her marriage and Nick's final breath than she wants to admit. <br /> <br />Boyajian's debut is well-done. It's both a loving portrait and a cautionary tale of marriage. Lies of the Heart illustrates the importance of knowing who you are as an individual before linking yourself as a couple; as the price of losing yourself in someone else can be a high one.

The description for "Lies of the Heart" had me very interested in reading the book. My interest soon waned, and finishing this book turned into a chore. The characters are unlikeable, which makes it difficult to feel any sympathy or interest in their struggles. The main character is needy, bitter, and cold. Her husband, the murdered man, is emotionally and verbally abusive as well as selfish and self-centered. The story focuses on the problems with their marriage, which by the end of the novel we are supposed to believe are the wife's fault for being too in love and too dependent on her husband. Her behavior, while immature, doesn't justify the abuse. <br /> <br />If you are hoping to find a book that deals with issues surrounding murder trials for the mentally handicapped, this is not the book for you. There are almost no references to the moral implications of putting someone with an extremely low IQ on trial for murder. What could have been the most interesting part of this book is almost completely ignored.