Thursday 10 August 2017

Isabella's Reading Corner: The Lying Game



The Lying Game
Author: Ruth Ware
Publication Date: July 25th 2017
Publisher: Simon & Schuster




It starts with a text in the middle of the night. Isa, Fatima and Thea receive the same urgent message: 'I need you'. It's soon apparent this is not the first time they've heard these words from their friend Kate. They rush to her dilapidated home in Salten, with no knowledge of why she has summoned them.

Seventeen years earlier, Isa and Fatima meet while attending their first year at boarding school. Kate and Thea are returning students and are already friends. Fate has brought them together and the four quickly become inseparable. It is there that Thea introduces them to the Lying Game, which has one important rule - they can lie to anyone else, but never to each other.

As narrator, Kate goes back and forth between past and present. Her voice is evocative and expressive as she recalls her history at Salten House. The women are all very different in discernible ways, with their own distinguishing characteristics. There is a strong intensity and dynamic between them that begins from the moment they meet to the present day. 

The setting of the book is described in beautiful detail. The wild nature of the sand dunes, salt marshes and winds from the sea are offset by the severity and angular lines of Salten House. Ware vividly depicts the isolation of the Reach and the Tide Mill, where Kate lived with her father when she was at school and continues to live. 

While reminiscing, Kate reveals that something sinister took place involving her and her friends. Secrets and significant clues are disclosed gradually, but there is new danger awaiting and the story moves at a rapid pace. I finished the book in one sitting, wanting to find out what was behind the mystery being concealed. Haunting and quietly atmospheric, The Lying Game kept me thinking long after I finished reading.


From the publisher:
From the New York Times and #1 Globe and Mail bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10 and In a Dark, Dark Wood—a novel about the slipperiness of truth and the price of friendships.

“I need you.” Three small words that change everything.

Isa Wilde knows something terrible has happened when she receives this text from an old friend. Why else would Kate summon her and their two friends Thea and Fatima to the seaside town where they briefly attended school together seventeen years ago?

The four friends first met at Salten House boarding school, where they quickly bonded over The Lying Game, a risky contest that involved tricking fellow boarders and faculty with their lies. But the game had consequences, and the girls were eventually expelled after Kate’s dad, their beloved art teacher, mysteriously disappeared. Forever bound by their lies but needing to forget their past, they went their separate ways—Kate remaining in Salten while the other three left to start new lives in and around London.

Now reunited, Isa, Kate, Thea, and Fatima discover that their past lies had far-reaching effects and criminal implications that threaten them all. In order to protect their reputations, and their friendship, they must uncover the truth about what really happened all those years ago.

Atmospheric, twisty, with just the right amount of chill, The Lying Game will have readers at the edge of their seats, not knowing who can be trusted in this tangled web of lies.


You can read my original Isabella's Reading Corner post on The Lying Game here.

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