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No More Lies
When Dr. Holland Banks, the head of the Century Psychiatric Hospital, discovers that she can hear people's thoughts, her newfound talent plunges her into a dangerous realm of corruption and betrayal where she must place her trust in a mysterious stranger. Original.
406 pages, Paperback
First published September 2, 2003
2 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
About the author
Susan Squires
41 books203 followersSusan Squires is a NYT bestselling author known for breaking the rules of romance. Whatever her time period or subject, some element of the paranormal creeps in. She has won multiple contests for published novels and reviewer's choice awards. Publisher's Weekly named Body Electric one of the ten most influential mass market books and One with the Shadows a Best Book. Time for Eternity received a starred review.
Susan has a Masters in English literature from UCLA and once toiled as an executive for a Fortune 500 company. Now she lives at the beach with her husband, Harry, a writer of supernatural thrillers, and three Belgian Sheepdogs, who like to help her write by putting their chins on the keyboardddddddddddd.
Susan has a Masters in English literature from UCLA and once toiled as an executive for a Fortune 500 company. Now she lives at the beach with her husband, Harry, a writer of supernatural thrillers, and three Belgian Sheepdogs, who like to help her write by putting their chins on the keyboardddddddddddd.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 30, 2021
Read for the URR Halloween 2018 Reading Challenge: A romantic suspense romance.
There was a decent story in here somewhere if I remember correctly... possibly about how an abrupt mutation in human DNA has some of us developing the ability to mind-read or something? Whatever that was or could have been disappeared under a relentless barrage of tired clichés, half-assed musings about pretty much anything from the meaning of life to the most appropriate way to eat your oysters, wooden characterization and lame dialogues. But wait, let me introduce the characters:
The Stuck-Up Bitch
She's got animplausible impressive resumé:
But in an incredibly reactionary twist it's soon revealed that Dr. Banks (never call her Holly, please) obtained her impressive achievements for all the wrong reasons (daddy issues, insecurities, a life otherwise empty of interests of any kind, etc.). Right, because for all that Dr. Holland Banks is an overachiever where her professional life is concerned, she has no idea what to do outside of it, having no friends, lovers, hobbies or even basic likes and dislikes (she does have, however, all the sparkly personality of your vacuum cleaner when turned off.) So that you don't miss all the subtle clues that Squires puts in place to signal that Dr. Banks is, in fact, a Stuck-Up Bitch, she dresses her as any good Stuck-Up Bitch should: a touch of make-up, a string of pearls, linen power-suits and hair severely held in place in a tight chignon. But whatever else you can fault her with, Holland holds her job in high regard:
Right. She also usually refers to her patients as "crazies" and to the hospital where she works at as a "loony bin" like I'm sure most professionals in the field do.
And since this is a romance, and we have a Stuck-Up Bitch... you know who's coming next:
The Bad Boy
Jeff's a hardened journalist (both figuratively and literally, since he obviously looks like a Greek god), an investigative reporter who snubs the Pulitzer Prize ("I don't need a certificate") and only wants to uncover the Truth. He used to live wild in his youth, stealing cars and boxing in smoker fights while being the kept man of various wealthy, predatory women, but then he decided to give Stanford University a chance to impress him after having discovered Faulkner's work:
Yeah, Jeff's really smart. In fact he's beenmansexplaining things to her since they first met, and thanks to his Life Lessons Dr. Banks is finally able to find her True Self. Fu*k the prim psychiatrist! Holland now wears sexy floral dresses and keeps her hair down, she lets him call her Holly (in turn, Jeff sometimes allows her to drive their car and also feeds her beignets that she eats WITH HER HANDS in what I can only assume it's either meant as a powerful metaphor for female empowerment or as a strong, urgent message about the redundancy of cutlery) and she's finally figured out how her life before meeting this incredible male specimen has been nothing but an empty lie, her success worthless and her ambitions meaningless.
Oh, and Jeff is also teaching her stuff about art:
The Magical Negro (also comes in the Oyster-Eating and Blues-Playing flavors!)
The disposable, interchangeable sidekick with a funny name (there's actually three of them, but how could one tell them apart really?) that knows useful stuff and provides some much-needed comic relief. And dies. But mostly makes you laugh, really. And in case you've ever wondered, YES! you can totally tell black and white people apart by the way they think! Let's give it a try, shall we? Guess who's thinking:
a) Dr. Holland Banks
b) Felipe, Rusty & Lemon (AKA the Magical Negros: but seriously, no need to remember their names)
c) William Faulkner
I'll leave you to ponder on this one, 'kay?
The Villains
I don't want to give away too much, but: they're evil. They look evil, they talk evil, their manners are evil, their evil plans are evil. In their spare time, they're scientists and politicians, like all evil people are.
The general population
Dies, due to the Villains' evil plans. You know, between this book and Laura Thalassa's super-hyped Pestilence I've come to realize that unless you're an especially talented author like, say, someone of the caliber of Faulkner of the Lovely Interminable Sentences, maybe you'd better keep genocide and smut apart. Or if an author's really determined to write a book about lust in time of tragedy she could, I don't know, display the basic human decency of having her MCs thinking about something else besides their respective reproductive organs for 5 seconds given the fact that people are dying by the thousands all around them. Just a thought, eh. But what do I know, I guess I'm the stuck-up bitch here: I just can't seem to be able to get into a romantic mood while I know that mass suicides are happening and the author is presenting me with yet another description of Jeff's bulking thighs instead... I'll be honest here, I have this weird pet peeve: I find agonizing people a bit distracting.
No More Lies has a certain je ne sais quoi, a bizarre reactionary charm that makes it almost endearing in its misrepresentation of basically every single topic it touches (I didn't mention the Asian geneticist that "looks like a 12 years old" and creeps Holland out when she catches her lusting after Jeff because *Eww! she looks like a kid!* before but... well, there's that, too): but unless you lost a bet and your friends are daring you to pick No More Lies up I don't really see why anyone should go through the pains of reading it. Basically, any book is better than this one, including every other by Susan Squires I've read so far.
There was a decent story in here somewhere if I remember correctly... possibly about how an abrupt mutation in human DNA has some of us developing the ability to mind-read or something? Whatever that was or could have been disappeared under a relentless barrage of tired clichés, half-assed musings about pretty much anything from the meaning of life to the most appropriate way to eat your oysters, wooden characterization and lame dialogues. But wait, let me introduce the characters:
The Stuck-Up Bitch
She's got an
Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude from Yale, premed. Second in her class in med school though she should have been first-would have been if she'd been male. Prestigious funded internship at the Neuro-Psychiatric Institute at UCLA. The groundbreaking studies on schizophrenia. They still called it the Banks Remission phenomenon. Rising through the ranks at several hospitals until now she was Director of Medical Services at Century Psychiatric Hospital, the most prominent private treatment and research center west of the Rockies-hell, west of the Mississippi. Head of the Schizophrenia Research Foundation. Not bad for thirtyfour.
But in an incredibly reactionary twist it's soon revealed that Dr. Banks (never call her Holly, please) obtained her impressive achievements for all the wrong reasons (daddy issues, insecurities, a life otherwise empty of interests of any kind, etc.). Right, because for all that Dr. Holland Banks is an overachiever where her professional life is concerned, she has no idea what to do outside of it, having no friends, lovers, hobbies or even basic likes and dislikes (she does have, however, all the sparkly personality of your vacuum cleaner when turned off.) So that you don't miss all the subtle clues that Squires puts in place to signal that Dr. Banks is, in fact, a Stuck-Up Bitch, she dresses her as any good Stuck-Up Bitch should: a touch of make-up, a string of pearls, linen power-suits and hair severely held in place in a tight chignon. But whatever else you can fault her with, Holland holds her job in high regard:
The gray linen dress with white piping would look crisp under her white lab coat. Professional, brittle... even, almost, true. That was the way psychiatrists had to look. They had to at least pretend that what they did was scientific.
Right. She also usually refers to her patients as "crazies" and to the hospital where she works at as a "loony bin" like I'm sure most professionals in the field do.
And since this is a romance, and we have a Stuck-Up Bitch... you know who's coming next:
The Bad Boy
Jeff's a hardened journalist (both figuratively and literally, since he obviously looks like a Greek god), an investigative reporter who snubs the Pulitzer Prize ("I don't need a certificate") and only wants to uncover the Truth. He used to live wild in his youth, stealing cars and boxing in smoker fights while being the kept man of various wealthy, predatory women, but then he decided to give Stanford University a chance to impress him after having discovered Faulkner's work:
"Ella Sue used to read Faulkner to me while we were naked in bed, and those lovely interminable sentences just trapped me, really. One day she moved on [...] but she left me with Faulkner. I had to get out of N'awlins. But I took Faulkner with me-and all her other books, too. Just took them and went as far as I could go. West Coast was farther than East Coast, so I landed at Stanford." Like anybody could just show up at Stanford. But she already knew he was smart.
Yeah, Jeff's really smart. In fact he's been
Oh, and Jeff is also teaching her stuff about art:
"You choose who you are, even if you choose the worst in you like Joe Christmas in A Light in August. But whatever you choose, you have to live with. Faulkner's full of that. He showed me some kind of road out. All Ella Sue's books did. Kinda balanced things."(Being a vacuum cleaner, that's somehow understandable poor thing: let us not judge her too severely).
That was just about the most eloquent tribute to the power of art Holland had ever heard. She had nothing to contribute about her life to compare with that.
The Magical Negro (also comes in the Oyster-Eating and Blues-Playing flavors!)
The disposable, interchangeable sidekick with a funny name (there's actually three of them, but how could one tell them apart really?) that knows useful stuff and provides some much-needed comic relief. And dies. But mostly makes you laugh, really. And in case you've ever wondered, YES! you can totally tell black and white people apart by the way they think! Let's give it a try, shall we? Guess who's thinking:
"Keep it comin', bro. Yeah, roll yo' guitar in there."
"Good as that sweet lil' sugar drop I had las' night. Coulda licked her 'til she melted."
"Damn straight, man. I got needs, and oysters make you strong."
"I'm jes' sicka tourists is all. When we off?"
a) Dr. Holland Banks
b) Felipe, Rusty & Lemon (AKA the Magical Negros: but seriously, no need to remember their names)
c) William Faulkner
I'll leave you to ponder on this one, 'kay?
The Villains
I don't want to give away too much, but: they're evil. They look evil, they talk evil, their manners are evil, their evil plans are evil. In their spare time, they're scientists and politicians, like all evil people are.
The general population
Dies, due to the Villains' evil plans. You know, between this book and Laura Thalassa's super-hyped Pestilence I've come to realize that unless you're an especially talented author like, say, someone of the caliber of Faulkner of the Lovely Interminable Sentences, maybe you'd better keep genocide and smut apart. Or if an author's really determined to write a book about lust in time of tragedy she could, I don't know, display the basic human decency of having her MCs thinking about something else besides their respective reproductive organs for 5 seconds given the fact that people are dying by the thousands all around them. Just a thought, eh. But what do I know, I guess I'm the stuck-up bitch here: I just can't seem to be able to get into a romantic mood while I know that mass suicides are happening and the author is presenting me with yet another description of Jeff's bulking thighs instead... I'll be honest here, I have this weird pet peeve: I find agonizing people a bit distracting.
No More Lies has a certain je ne sais quoi, a bizarre reactionary charm that makes it almost endearing in its misrepresentation of basically every single topic it touches (I didn't mention the Asian geneticist that "looks like a 12 years old" and creeps Holland out when she catches her lusting after Jeff because *Eww! she looks like a kid!* before but... well, there's that, too): but unless you lost a bet and your friends are daring you to pick No More Lies up I don't really see why anyone should go through the pains of reading it. Basically, any book is better than this one, including every other by Susan Squires I've read so far.
August 25, 2012
No More Lies by Susan Squires
I enjoyed this story.
The description of the book I am listing below is from the back jacket of the book. I'm adding it because I believe the one on the Goodreads page does not depict this story.
Dr. Holland Banks is head of the Century Psychiatric Hospital and president of the Schizophrenia Research Foundation...but is she going insane? The rest of the world seems to be. There's a sniper on the loose, she's being stalked, her father is conducting deadly experiments, and she's begun to hear voices: other people's thoughts. But a man was just admitted to her hospital—lone who searched her out, whose touch can make her voices subside. Is he crazy, too, or a solution to her fears? A labyrinth of conspiracy is rising around her, and Holland's life is about to change forever. Very soon there will be...NO MORE LIES.
I enjoyed this story.
The description of the book I am listing below is from the back jacket of the book. I'm adding it because I believe the one on the Goodreads page does not depict this story.
Dr. Holland Banks is head of the Century Psychiatric Hospital and president of the Schizophrenia Research Foundation...but is she going insane? The rest of the world seems to be. There's a sniper on the loose, she's being stalked, her father is conducting deadly experiments, and she's begun to hear voices: other people's thoughts. But a man was just admitted to her hospital—lone who searched her out, whose touch can make her voices subside. Is he crazy, too, or a solution to her fears? A labyrinth of conspiracy is rising around her, and Holland's life is about to change forever. Very soon there will be...NO MORE LIES.
January 25, 2015
an amazing book. It started out harmlessly, I had to discipline myself not to give up. But then -about the time when Dr Banks, the daughter, has her first encounter with the mysterious "stalker" - as the story progresses you are drawn into a really evil plot- extremely clever, a good dose of science- fiction to give you food for thought. From 96% to the end it is breathlessly thrilling, the pull is enormous- it is like an action movie displaying inside your head- normallly that wouldn´t have been my choice of book or film at all, but by that time you have really started to become friends with the protagonists and you MUST see them through this till the end.
Plot: clever
Language:impeccable
So- 5 stars well-deserved because that book really amazed me. It is very intense and leaves your head quite full at the end.
Plot: clever
Language:impeccable
So- 5 stars well-deserved because that book really amazed me. It is very intense and leaves your head quite full at the end.
Read
July 28, 2011got intersting in da middle n became cooler n cooler........
March 16, 2016
Very disconnected writing pattern and an unbelievable plot right through the whole story.
November 5, 2007
read 09.28.06
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews