Wallach’s Proof of Lies is first in the Anastasia Phoenix series. Three years ago, Anastasia and her sister Keira became orphans when both parents died in a fiery car crash. Now Keira has been kidnapped, and the Boston PD believes she is dead. Anastasia doesn’t share that belief and begins digging into the case in her own. The trail takes her to Italy, accompanied by a fellow ‘Dresden Kid’, the son of a family who works for the same company Anastasia’s parents did. Marcus is looking for a brother, also working for Dresden. What they uncover defies anything they could have expected, exposing a web of deceit and destruction leading back decades, and changing everything Anastasia thinks she knows about her parents and the company they founded.

This story drew me in right away, and kept me up reading past my bedtime! After my initial extra suspension of disbelief that was required for me regarding this underage kid travelling around to all parts of the world with only another underage kid as companion, I fell in love with the story. I’m not sure what led to that reticence in this case, since I know it would have been easier in a different historic period, or in a fantasy or sci-fi setting.

I appreciated the attention to detail in how the sisters each responded to their parents loss, and how much it shaped them. I enjoyed the attention paid to psychological detail. This also includes how Anastasia responded by slipping into a deep depression right after her sister disappeared. It took having something clear to focus on to drag her out of it. She did, at times, annoy me with how mistrustful she was of people. I realised this was very much due to the same trait in my own personality. It’s not from losing parents to death, but to emotional neglect/abuse from a young age. I trust very few people. The mistrust schema has shaped my life from a very young age.

The story was fast-paced, and easy reading. I do think another spelling/grammar check would not be amiss. These were minor things, and didn’t take from my overall enjoyment though. Julian ended up being my favourite character, amusingly enough. He has a good heart, underneath it all. He may have been ruined by Department D, and estranged from his family, but he doesn’t hold a vicious grudge. He offers help he doesn’t have to, especially once the teens primary source of funds dries up. He does have a bit of a reckless streak, and makes no bones about wanting to break open this story to recover what he lost as a journalist, but he respects Anastasia’s decision, and never goes behind their backs to do it. He seems to have become an older (richer) sibling. I don’t really know why I pictured him like this but I did 😂 (okay, not the vulcan salute, but it’s adorable).

Highly recommended!

***Many thanks to Netgalley and Entangled Publishing for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.