The Lying Game by Ruth Ware

Four young girls play a cruel game with grownup consequences 

The Lying Game is played by four 15-year-old girls who are inseparable at an all-girls boarding school. Brought together at Salten House for different reasons, they are all troubled in their own lives and find acceptance and family among each other. Together, they play the lying game. Keeping a tally of points, each girl tells silly lies to their peers and adults alike. They only lie to others, never to each other.

The girls become so tightly woven together that they end up isolating themselves from their classmates. No one in the small town believes a word they say. Eventually they find themselves chained to a very big lie that they can't back out of, and they're removed from school overnight. Their group is divided and they reach adulthood on very different paths separated from each other. That is, until the three girls receive a three-word text from their friend Kate who remained in Salten.

All of them know what the text is about, but no one dares ask Kate about it over text. They all find themselves back in Salten in Kate's home. It's clear someone knows too much about their expulsion from Salten House. The police are now involved, and all of them have so much to lose that they only have one choice - get their story straight and keep lying.

I felt their excitement, I felt their fear, I was one of the girls.

I felt like a fifth in their suspenseful story. I physically felt tense throughout this book and I was impressed with the friendship it entailed. I have a scatter of friends myself, but I never had my own "tribe" as they say these days. A collection of friends who are equally devoted to just each other. These girls had a special bond even if it caused them a little trouble growing up. 

Ruth Ware does a great job making the reader care about the girls. We know they've done wrong and yet we are on their side. We want to help them. Just when you think you know the truth of what happened and whom is truly responsible, Ware provides another equally probable story line and as a reader we just can't decide what to believe. Not unlike the girls of Salten.

The Lying Game is a must-read. I don't say that about every book I read, and I read a lot. ;) I've already placed holds on Ruth Ware's other books from my library. I loved it so much, I may just have to post a separate blog simply to answer the book club questions.

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Bad Sister by Sam Carrington

A cold dark night interrupted by fire.

Bad Sister starts with a pretty dramatic scene, two children standing outside of their burning home while watching their trapped father scream from his bedroom window. Said Sister is furious with him for starting the fire and is sure to tell the police that it was him. He always played with fire and now he's burned the house down. 


Fast forward several years and we are introduced to a whole slew of dramatic mysteries. A prisoner is found dead outside of the prison gates with markings on his body and the name of a woman on the palm of his hand. A therapist who has changed her name to salvage her psychiatric practice is trying to hide from a public scandal tied to the dead prisoner. Add to that, a patient of the psychiatrist is a woman with a young son who are both in the witness protection program and trying to build a new life.

A few too many story lines

The book was a little hard to remain interested in because of the various points of view. We are in a different mindset of each character at each chapter. That is not uncommon and it can really work, there were just too many people to jump between. I found it difficult to uncover who this book was truly about. It sounded like it was about the ¨Bad Sister¨from the title; however, it's quite a while before we realize who in the story is the sister. Even longer to figure out why she was "bad". Having read the whole story I still feel like the story was less about the siblings and more about a completely unrelated story line. This book was truly dedicated to a different single character and could have been titled differently.

I did get fully intrigued at about 60% of the book because that is when the various story lines all started to weave together. I wasn't able to fully predict all of the answers to all of the mysteries so it did keep me entertained in the end. The author has a very creative mind to be able to weave together so many complexities to fit into one story. I feel that several of the situations in this book could have been explored in individual books rather than just this one.