Beautiful Lies by Emilie Richards

Synopsis :

It is a pearl so flawless it has no price. But those who possess it pay dearly. Since the day nearly a century before when it was plucked from Australian waters, the pearl has cursed the Robeson and Llewellyn families, unleashing a legacy of rivalry, greed and murder that has spanned generations and continents.

Liana Robeson is now in possession of the infamous Pearl of Great Price and she, too, has experienced its high cost in heartache and tragedy. Suddenly her teenage son is missing and so is the pearl.

Desperate and afraid, she turns to Matthew's father, Cullen Llewellyn. Together they embark on a heart-pounding odyssey to find their son. Swept into the wild beauty of Australia, Liana and Cullen are plunged into a deadly game with a rival who will go to any lengths to possess a treasure as fatal as it is flawless....

OMP (Oh My Pearl!)….this book is something that I wasn’t expected. Talk about not judging a book by its cover but that was what I did and I was expected something rather in the line of Barbara Taylor Bradford but what I got was something along the line of Sidney Sheldon.

It was an intriguing book from start to end.  The writing was captivating, the storyline quite engrossing and the characters were quite engaging as well.  The story started with Archer Llewellyn and Thomas Robeson, best friends from war who discovered a priceless pearl in the waters of Western Australia.  From best friends, one of their hearts turned murderous and murdered his best friend for sole possession of the pearl – Pearl of Great Price and indeed those who owned the pearl in generations to come also paid great price for it, some with their lives, some with their sanity and some paid the price of love and happiness.

This is my first time coming across this author so I was extremely but pleasantly surprised by it.  The author said she based the story on the legend of an unlucky pearl found off the coast of Broome at the beginning of the century. The pearl has since been lost at sea so while this story if fictitious, it does have a heritage to cling to.

Beautiful Lies is a beautiful read.  If you come across this book, go for it.