**I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts are 100% my own.

About the Book

Book: The Camera Never Lies
Author: David Rawlings
Genre: General fiction/allegory/magical realism

Release Date: December 3, 2019

David Rawlings, author of The Baggage Handler, returns with another probing story: what would you do if your secrets were revealed to those around you?

Daniel Whiteley is a successful couples counselor who regularly puts families back together, helping them face up to the things in life they hide. But his own marriage is falling apart.

His wife, Kelly, knows Daniel is hiding something from her, but she doesn’t dare probe for fear her own secrets will be revealed.

When his grandfather dies, Daniel inherits an old SLR camera from a time when cameras pointed away from the person taking the photograph. On the camera is an inscription: “Use this camera wisely and remember, regardless of the picture you think you took, the camera never lies.”
When Daniel first uses his new camera he finds someone has already filled the roll of film. Annoyed, he processes the film and finds photos of a secret that he’s been hiding from his wife and daughter.
He has no idea who took them.

Now every time he uses the camera, the photographs reveal another secret about himself the he is desperate to keep-as well as those of his wife, which he is desperate to uncover.

Click here to get your copy.

About the Author

David Rawlings is an Australian author, and a sports-mad father of three who loves humor and a clever turn of phrase. Over a 25-year career he has put words on the page to put food on the table, developing from sports journalism and copywriting to corporate communication. Now in fiction, he entices readers to look deeper into life with stories that combine the everyday with a sense of the speculative, addressing the fundamental questions we all face.

My Review

Coming from Thomas Nelson- a Christian publisher, I expected that The Camera Never Lies would be much more faith based with a supernatural twist. I was rather surprised that God was- to the best of my recollection- not mentioned at all. Nor was faith really. If they were, they were so little of the focus that I failed to remember those instances anyway. I say this not as a negative, just a surprise to me. Though I DO personally enjoy stories with more Christian content, I know that that is not the case for everyone. As such, I think that this story on the importance of truth in marriage and in life can reach a broader audience than what your typical Christian fiction story might. It is a story we can all enjoy, and can feel assured that there will not be any inappropriate content as well.

In The Camera Never Lies, we meet Daniel... a marriage counselor whose own marriage and family seems to be falling apart. When his grandfather leaves him an old camera, he learns that 'the camera never lies'. When he takes the film to be developed, he realizes that things aren't as they should be. The camera is not capturing the faces that we put on and present to the world, but rather the truths behind the mask.

Sounds fascinating, doesn't it? I love a good story with a magical/supernatural aspect to it myself. I don't read them as often as I would like as I try to stick to clean reads, which can be a little harder to find in that genre. Aside from that, I am a hobby-ist photographer so just the camera aspect appealed to me in that regards as well. Is this style going to be for everyone? Maybe not. I know many who generally enjoy Christian fiction might not enjoy the magical aspect of the story... but personally, I really enjoyed it. My only real complaint is that it was quite short! I read it in less than a day... admittedly I am a speed reader anyway but this was quick even for me! I would have loved a longer story to dig even deeper into the lives of these characters or perhaps the mysterious camera shop owner. Still, it was a great quick read and one that I would certainly recommend.