Amber Reynolds

Quick Facts

• Role: Protagonist and first-person narrator of Alice Feeney’s psychological thriller Sometimes I Lie
• First appearance: The novel’s opening confession (“Sometimes I lie”) as she narrates from a coma
• Narrative frame: Three intercut timelines—“Now” (coma), “Then” (the week before the accident), and “Before” (childhood diary entries)
• Key relationships: Husband Paul Reynolds; “sister” Claire; ex-boyfriend Edward Clarke; boss Madeline Frost; work friend Jo
• Occupation: Radio producer; architect of the workplace scheme “Project Madeline”
• Core tensions: Identity performance, jealousy, trauma, and the weaponization of truth

Who They Are

At first glance, Amber Reynolds is a victim with a voice: a woman locked inside her body, narrating from a hospital bed while the people around her betray, confess, and scheme. But Amber’s “voice” is a performance that constantly recuts the footage of her life. She is both detective and culprit, protagonist and antagonist, writing and rewriting herself through shifting timelines.

Her coma becomes more than a plot device—it mirrors her interior life, where memory and motive are sealed off, and the self is suspended between versions. The state she narrates from evokes profound Confinement and Powerlessness: she’s trapped physically, but she also traps others inside stories she controls. Even before the twist, Amber is best understood as a woman who survives by playing roles—wife, sister, colleague—and then making those roles real.

Personality & Traits

Amber’s psyche is a mosaic of contradictions—self-loathing and grandiosity, fear and audacity—held together by one steady impulse: control. She copes by performing versions of herself for different audiences and by shaping reality until it fits.

• Unreliable and deceptive: Her first three facts—“I’m in a coma… Sometimes I lie”—signal a narrative built on deliberate misdirection. Amber curates scenes, withholds context, and arranges revelations to keep both characters and readers off balance, embodying Deception and Unreliable Narration.
• Anxious and compulsive: She conducts ritual checks—locks, oven dials, handbag contents—to soothe spiraling panic. These routines are her private stagecraft, small rehearsals for larger manipulations and a bid for Manipulation and Control over a life that feels precarious.
• Vengeful strategist: “Project Madeline,” her meticulous plan to oust her boss, reveals a patient tactician who prefers elegant payback to impulsive fury—an instinct aligned with Justice and Revenge.
• Deeply traumatized: The childhood diaries describe neglect and a fatal fire that killed her parents. Whether these pages are confession or camouflage, they root her adult psychology in Trauma and its Lasting Effects: attachment wounds, hypervigilance, and identity fracture.
• Insecure and jealous: Her self-image is punishingly harsh. She constantly compares herself to her “sister” Claire, measuring her worth against perceived beauty, love, and ease, a fragile Identity and Self-Perception that propels many of her choices. In the mirror scene, she calls it “a face for radio,” revealing how thoroughly she equates being seen with being judged.

Character Journey

Amber’s arc is less a transformation than an unmasking. We begin with empathy: a woman in a coma who suspects her husband and “sister” of betrayal and perhaps attempted murder. As the “Then” and “Before” strands accumulate, her narration invites us to assemble a whodunit—only to expose, piece by piece, that the narrator has staged the evidence. The final turn reveals that the “Amber Reynolds” we’ve trusted is a constructed identity: the childhood friend Claire who survived the fire, stole Amber Taylor’s name, and built a life atop borrowed biography. The trajectory is chilling: from imperiled victim to architect of the peril, from sympathetic voice to consummate performer. By the end, what reads as recovery—“I remember everything”—is also reclamation of the role she has played best: Amber.

Key Relationships

• Paul Reynolds: Introduced as an unloving husband and early suspect, Paul Reynolds lives under a cloud of Amber’s accusations—infidelity, indifference, and possible violence. The twist reframes him: his marriage tied him to the real Amber Taylor, while the narrator’s bond with him is built on lies he never recognized, making his perceived cruelty part misread signal, part narrative manipulation.

• Claire (the real Amber Taylor): The novel’s pivotal relationship, with Claire cast as the beautiful, toxic sister. In truth, she’s Amber Taylor—the identity the narrator stole. Their bond curdles into obsession and rivalry, a case study in Sisterhood and Toxic Relationships, where love becomes surveillance and admiration becomes erasure.

• Edward Clarke: As a university ex, Edward Clarke is painted as a fixated stalker. The buried fact that the narrator framed him to sever his relationship with the real Amber exposes her long game: she scripts other people’s lives, then condemns them for the roles she forced them to play.

• Madeline Frost: Ostensibly just her boss, Madeline Frost is also family—her aunt who inherited the house after the fire. “Project Madeline” is therefore not only office politics but a personal vendetta, collapsing professional ambition into intergenerational score-settling.

• Jo: Her only work friend, Jo ultimately dissolves into the air—an imaginary friend reborn from childhood. Jo’s unreality is a devastating proof of Amber’s isolation and a reminder that even intimacy in this book may be a stitched-together story.

Defining Moments

Amber’s life is punctuated by scenes that double as misdirection—each moment both reveals and conceals.

• The opening confession

  • Why it matters: By admitting “Sometimes I lie,” Amber teaches the reader how to read her: skeptically, and with attention to what’s omitted as much as what’s said. It’s a contract and a dare.

• The diary entries

  • Why it matters: The “Before” sections furnish origin stories—neglect, the fire, the friend named Claire—yet their tone and timing make them suspect, exemplifying Memory and Reality. They are either a breadcrumb trail or a smokescreen; either way, they govern how we interpret the present.

• “Project Madeline”

  • Why it matters: Her office coup is a lab demonstration of her methods: patient observation, carefully leaked information, and weaponized persona. It previews how she handles far higher stakes.

• The car crash

  • Why it matters: This supposed inciting incident is a hall of mirrors. Amber’s conflicting recollections transform it from accident to possible attack to staged event, keeping motive and blame suspended until the identity reveal.

• Waking up

  • Why it matters: Regaining consciousness confirms what the structure has prepared us to suspect: the narrator is Claire living as Amber. The recovery scene isn’t closure; it’s recontextualization. Every relationship and memory acquires a new, darker meaning.

Essential Quotes

My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three
things you should know about me:

1. I'm in a coma.
2. My husband doesn't love me anymore.
3. Sometimes I lie.

This manifesto frames the novel’s rules. The list mixes verifiable fact, subjective interpretation, and confessed deceit, teaching us that truth here is a layered object—and that Amber will hand us pieces out of order.

This is what I do best: change to suit the people around me. I can do “Amber the friend” or “Amber the wife,” but right now it’s time for “Amber from Coffee Morning.” I can play all the parts life has cast me in, I know all my lines; I’ve been rehearsing for a very long time.

Amber is both actor and playwright of her life. The self is a role rehearsed to perfection, and the line about “rehearsing for a very long time” hints that this performance began in childhood and culminates in the full-scale identity theft.

I’m back now and I remember everything.

This line reads like recovery but works as a power pivot. Memory, which has been fractured and selective, snaps into a configuration that favors Amber’s control—suggesting that remembering is less about truth than about resuming authorship.

My name is Amber Taylor Reynolds. There are
three things you should know about me:

1. I was in a coma.
2. My sister died in a tragic accident.
3. Sometimes I lie.

The echo of the opening list seals the twist. By stitching “Amber Taylor” to “Reynolds,” the narrator fuses past and present identities; the final “Sometimes I lie” is both confession and victory lap, reminding us that even this “truth” may be curated.