I enjoyed this book. It kept me engaged right from the start. The characters worked well together and the whole time I was reading I was trying to work out the truth.

Four girls, friends from the time they were young teenagers in a boarding school in Salten have remained friends though their lives have taken them in diverse paths. They have not met for years but when a message comes from one of them "I need you" it draws them all back immediately despite each one having responsibilities which they cannot shake off easily.

A secret they share buried so deep that should it get out, consequences will be very tough on all of them. They could lose their careers, their families, their marriages and their lives. Arriving in Salten the four try to come to terms and to organise the identical story that they should come up with, in case the worst scenario happens. Unravelling slowly first through a dead sheep left on their doorstep following up with unsigned notes, they know that they are not the only ones privy to their deadly secret.

The setting of a very closed village where the four girls are even decades later disliked and shunned, the isolation and general desolation of the village all add to the scenic gloom where you know that sooner or later things are going to come to a climax which is not going to be good for any of them. Descriptive of the marshes and the tides and the seas around Salten are so good that you can feel how much the environment added to the story's telling. For someone who has not seen this kind of scenery, it was very evocative of the dangers and the treachery of these tides and seas.

This is not the happy reunion of school girls meeting after seventeen years. This is a dark and dangerous period in their lives. It was as good as watching this in a movie. You felt the atmosphere pull you into the story.

Goodreads and Amazon review up on 27/8/2017. Review on my blog posted on 10/9/2017. Also linked to my FB page.

This is the story of four school friends and how their actions as teenagers affect them in later life and eventually come back to haunt them. Ruth Ware is brilliant at describing each of the girls and also manages to describe Salten (the location of their boarding school) so vividly that I felt like I knew the marshes around The Tide Mill (the house where Kate lived and the others visited at weekends). There is a dark mystery right from the start which is revealed at the end of the book in a dramatic conclusion. Maybe the middle chapters became a little ponderous with far too many descriptions of Isa's feelings about her baby Freya (and definitely far too many descriptions of her continual breast feeding) but in all it is an interesting and beautifully written book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book really well written and a good story line. This book didn't disappoint, it was gritty and full of twists and turns that kept me turning the pages and wanting more. A solid 5 star read.

I enjoyed Ruth Ware's previous novels and was not disappointed with her latest one. The story is about the secret that four friends at boarding school together shared in the past and now, many years later, they are each sent a text message that sees them returning to the Reach to unravel this secret. The plot is revealed gradually and slowly, and The Lying Game is certainly not a fast paced thriller, but is an absorbing story of friendship, guilt and deception and an enjoyable read.
Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

I always hesitate before giving a book 5 stars and this occasion is no exception. But there is something special about Ruth Ware's wonderful descriptive writing and it feels only right to give it the highest rating. The story is built round 4 women [ Kate, Fatima, Thea and Isa ] who re-unite 17 years after they spent a year at a remote school with the wonderful name of Salten. The name Salten is perfect for a school located amidst the remote marshes and tidal flows of Southern England. Kate has never left the area since her schooldays and it is to her home on the salty marshland that she summons her three close friends as she is facing a terrible crisis. A dog has found a human bone on the beach and this links to a death in which all four girls were involved back in their schooldays. In the mesmeric atmosphere of the rickety old Tide House, which is threatened by every tide and surrounded by damp gloomy marshlands, Ruth Ware draws us remorselessly into the real problems and doubts the situation creates for the four women. However, this grimness is counter-balanced by moments when the four experience pure bliss as well as there being some wonderfully comic situations. Writing any more risks revealing too much so, suffice to say, the grimly tragic ending brilliantly matches the terrible bleakness to which each of the characters has been exposed and ensures they can never forget what happened 17 years before. Nor will you. A 5 star read!

Gripping and compulsive, the plot propelled me through the pages faster than a hot knife through butter! I loved her first book, In a dark dark wood, but I reckon this is even better.
Four friends, now in their thirties, who drop everything when they received the text from one of their number with the stark message: 'I need you.'
The bond these women share is no ordinary one; they spent time together in a boarding school as teens, but there is a dark secret in their past that keeps them bound tighter than flesh-and-blood. That secret is about to surface now, and could blow the lives they have so carefully constructed completely apart...if they let it...

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read this book. I have not really been able to get into it, I don't know if it is down to the writing style or I am unable to give the story my full concentration...My husband died unexpectedly a few weeks ago, and i am grieving. I will probably try to read it again at some point in the future.

Four schoolgirls are a close knit clique aged 16. Seventeen years later when one calls they all still go running - something still holds them together.

In order to enjoy this book you need to accept that these girls had a friendship which meant dropping everything to help each other out - I mean everything. I am not sure that many people have such an intense friendship but it is central to this book. Once you have accepted that then the book is excellent.
There are four girls at boarding school - Kate whose Father is the art teacher, Thea whose family have money but don't seem to care, Fatima whose parents have gone on a year's voluntary assignment overseas and Isa whose Mother is seriously ill. They create the lying game which is a cruel game of lying to their peers, staff and strangers. It does get rather out of hand and the girls end up in an isolated clique. Seventeen years later the consequences come back to haunt them.
The girls' characters are very well written and the girls are very believable. I am not sure that I liked them much - certainly not when they were 16 - but I did feel for them. Their childhoods were damaged in many ways and adulthood doesn't come easily. None of the girls have really moved on with their lives though they have sought ways to hide who they were in their teenage years.
The setting for this book is on quite isolated marshes. The descriptions are excellent - the isolation, the sinking mill, the little village which may as well have tumbleweed rolling down the main street. I also loved the reactions that the four friends get from other people.
I very much enjoyed this book. I got caught up in the tension as the story progressed and struggled to put it down. I would like to congratulate the author on including the problems around care for Isa's 6 month old baby. Too often you read in books of characters families but there are always convenient babysitters at the drop of a hat or no childcare is mentioned at all!
I would certainly read another book by this author and would be happy to look out for them.
I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

Having read and enjoyed this author's previous books, I was quite eager to read this, her latest offering. It's a story that, although set mainly in the present, has strong links to the past and revolves around a group of friends bound by secrets. Isa's life is ticking on nicely, she has a solid relationship, good job and a new baby but then she receives a three word text from an old friend and, taking her daughter with her, rushes to the source of the text, her old school friend Kate, knowing that their other two friends, Thea and Fatima, won't be far behind her. Arriving at the mill, home of Kate and setting for most of their time together when they were students as nearby Saltern school, Kate has some devastating news, news that will shock their foundations as the outing of which will no doubt lead to questions being asked around something that happened when they were teenagers, something that lead to their expulsion. Something that they have been successfully lying about for years. Each with so much more to lose now, is it the time to tell the truth or will they continue The Lying Game, a game they started when at school and, more importantly, is their truth the real truth or has someone been lying out of turn...?
Well, I raced through this book in only a couple of sittings. It gripped me right from the start with the claustrophobic nature of the writing which was definitely enhanced by the setting of the dilapidated old mill where Kate still resides and the scene of many a childhood shenanigan! It is obvious that Kate hasn't moved on at all from what happened, Fatima has built a good life but has turned to religion to atone for her part, Isa has got things pretty much on track but the past is never far from her thoughts but Clea is more affected by what happened and this is reflected in her current life and behaviour throughout. I found all four to be very well drawn and credible characters, well, in the context of the story as it unfolded. The way that what happened had changed them all in very different ways was quite observational and well balanced and fitted with their personalities perfectly. Bit part players also played their parts well. I would love to single one or two out here but I thing including them here would be a bit spoilery so I will leave it there.
I've already mentioned that the book was claustrophobic and that this is mostly due to the setting. The Mill is run down and this descent into wrack and ruin reflects well with Kate's own life and we see why this is as the story progresses. I loved the fact that it is also slightly inaccessible, the taxi has to stop short due to the flooding, the description of the characters traversing the Reach to get to the town or the school added much to the tone of the book and also reflected the narrative well.
The forays into the past, as told in flashback, were perfectly placed to add enough to the present to complement the story but not too much to give it away too soon.
It's a story of secrets and lies but it is also a story of friendship, sisterhood if you like, of motherhood, of bonds that are tighter than blood that bind four lives together forever. It's also a really good character study of cause and effect and how the same cause evokes quite different effects in four very different people that came together as friends mostly due to circumstance rather than obvious choice.
The ending when it came was all encompassing and I really didn't see it all coming as it did. I thought all along that there was something niggling at me but when it came, in all its glory and at a pace of knots, I was pretty gobsmacked to tell the truth. But, that said, there was nothing that came out of left field. It all followed along as it should. I do have a couple of niggles but they are minor and easily forgiven.
All in all, a good solid read that left me mostly satisfied. I'm looking forward to see what the author serves up next time.

My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I was very pleasantly surprised with this book. Four friends are called back together 15 years after they were at boarding school together by a cry for help from one of them. The four bonded whist at boarding school where they played a game to see who could get away with the biggest lies (but never to each other). They all left school in mysterious circumstances and share a major secret. A very well written book with lots of twists and well developed characters A slow burner which builds up to a surprise conclusion.

This is the third Ruth Ware novel I have read. I preferred The Woman In Cabin 10 and In A Dark Dark Wood. The story is still very good and worth reading. Four friends have a secret which they have kept for the last 15 years. If this secret gets out it will have a great impact on their lives. The story is a bit far fetched in places. The secret is way above and beyond what any friend should be asked or expected to do. But if you accept everything that happens it is a very good read with twists in the plot right up to the end.

Four high school friends now in their thirties reunite after a terrible shared secret threatens to emerge and shatter their peaceful lives. But what they thought was a shared secret turns out to be a lie - one of them isn’t telling the truth.

I really enjoyed Ruth Ware’s debut novel, In a Dark, Dark Wood, and was disappointed with the poor follow-up, last year’s The Woman in Cabin 10, so I hoped The Lying Game would be a return to form; it’s not. The Lying Game is awful - looks like Ruth Ware is a one-hit wonder!

This non-thriller horribly takes its time, ambling towards the reveal of the mystery at the novel’s core, along the way introducing us to its cast of uninteresting nobodies in a small, dreary coastal town. The “dark secret” is underwhelming to say the least, particularly as it’s built up to be something utterly shocking. I guess what they did is morally questionable but I thought it was going to be much, much worse than it was.

Things don’t improve in the second half of the book. Ware wastes more time on the impossibly mundane life of Isa, our narrator, who has boring quarrels with her husband - this, like too many passages clogging the narrative (what did having a baby add exactly?), has NOTHING to do with ANYTHING, I just kept thinking GET THE FUCK ON WITH IT! - as the pathetic “plot” shuffles towards a dull final twist that I couldn’t have cared less about at that point, and then the whole disaster is wrapped up.

It’s never really clear what exactly the point was. The four friends gather and talk about what they did but don’t really do anything further - it’s not just a lack of any character’s discernible motivation, it’s a total absence of direction which only accentuates the turgid pacing of the book. A menacing figure, Luc, is introduced but other than wondering whether or not he killed a sheep (another go-nowhere subplot), it’s not clear at all what his purpose is - his presence only makes sense with the final twist so up til then he feels like another superfluous addition to this overlong novel.

The mystery itself is flimsy at best. It was only a mystery to us because the details are slowly parcelled out - if it was revealed at once you’d be able to poke holes in its flawed construction, as the main character does once she begins to think about it. But why wouldn’t she have thought about it at the time or at any time in the 16 or so years since it happened!? It’s such contrived drivel.

No aspect of The Lying Game was interesting or worth reading. It was a supremely tedious, unremarkable and unsatisfying novel that’s put me off of picking up anything by Ruth Ware in the future. I highly recommend her only good novel, In a Dark, Dark Wood, which is exciting and fun, though I’d steer well clear of her other books.

Four friends at High School started a game called The Lying Game. They got points based on their lies and the more elaborate or more people believed, the more points they got. That was until tragedy struck and the four girls did something that night that they never thought they would and eventually they were kicked out of the school and for three of them, they never returned to Salten. Now fifteen years later, the four of them will reunite when they receive a text message reading "I need you." Isa, now a mum takes her baby to Salten, Thea arrives and Fatima. Their friend Kate has summoned them. A body part has washed ashore, and the part could be connected to Kate's dad who died those many years ago, and they hid his body in the water. Many people thought that he wouldn't just disappear and that the girls had something to do with his disappearance. What will happen though when all four starts to receive text messages, notes, and photos - with the message I know what you did. Read as the one lie that could ruin them forever starts to unravel and in the process ruin the lives that they have created when the lies start to affect the families. I didn't see the twist coming and was shocked at the real truth about what happened that fateful night. The stalker, I did guess that part pretty early on. If you are looking for a high school reunion, scandals and secrets from the past being uncovered, then check out UK author Ruth Ware's book "The Lying Game," a mystery that won't disappoint.

Once again this is an easy no brainer of a read. It is similar in style and theme to the other 2 books I have read by this author. A few things in this novel didn't add up for me and the plot was a bit weak.
Four old school friends meet up again after 15 years when one of them asks for their help. At school they played a game called The Lying Game and when they have to lie to cover up a crime it seem like all these years later they are about to be found out.

I was given an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest and independent review.
This is a slow burning book, with the author revealing the background and the storyline in tempting, little bits. Whilst for some readers this may be boring, for me, the strength of the characters and the style of writing, made it an exciting read. Four friends bound together by past lies coming together years later in a time of crisis. As the lies unfold, the intensity strengthens. An excellent plot.
I could not put it down. 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. I was drawn into it from the start and struggled to put it down. I didn't find the characters particularly likeable but it didn't stop me from enjoying the story. 4 out of 5 ****

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by how much I ended up enjoying The Lying Game despite a few things I wasn't happy about. What became clear very early on is that I was going to love the writing style. I was hooked right from the first chapter and even though the story itself isn't as fast-paced as I would have liked, it was the writing style that still made me thoroughly enjoy The Lying Game. I liked the mystery around what happened all those years ago and what the friends are hiding. I had my suspicions on the lies and secrets of the group, but I wasn't able to guess the full truth until the very end. What did bother me considerably were the characters. I wasn't able to connect to any of them and this made this more character driven story a lot more difficult to love. One of the characters stood out painfully for me: Isa. I actually despise her for how she treats both her baby daughter and husband and was starting to feel more and more frustrated as things went further. And it's clear that these feelings have influenced my experience negatively. I wasn't sure what to think of the ending either... I still quite enjoyed the ride though, mostly because the writing style had me seriously hooked.

My review as posted.

In A Dark Dark Wood is the last book I've read by Ruth Ware. An ok read for me. The Lying Game is infinitely better I thought.

Isa, Kate, Thea and Fatima are boarding school friends that are reunited have a seventeen year break. Kate is the one that has summoned them back to The Reach in Salten, her home by the coast which is not far from the school the girls attended. The Lying Game is just that, a game concocted by Thea and Kate. The better the lies, the higher the score. All seemingly innocuous and just harmless fun, but is it?

Mostly told from Isa's point of view this is a creepy pervading tale that exudes tension. I loved the setting and the whole friendship angle. It reminded me of childhood books about boarding schools that I read over and over with a wistful sigh and an imagining of what a lacrosse stick looked like. Admittedly those adventures were slightly more on the tame side!

The Lying Game is a tense, atmospheric, psychological thriller that was engrossing in a subtle way. You could almost picture the hazy, dappled settings with teenage limbs wrapping around each other keeping each other's secrets. An air of carefree abandon that is lost only too soon to then bring about suspicion and wariness as they start to size each other up. Do they really know each other?

The mystery itself is a slow reveal and a few times I switched back and forth with my suspects. At times certain aspects did niggle a little. Especially how Isa was able to move from place to place with seeming ease; pushchair, 6 month old in tow. If memory serves me right, if I went anywhere with child/children in tow, half the house jumped on my back with me. I certainly couldn't pack everything into one bag!! No, I never could pack light .... still can't!!

Anyhow, just a minor niggle there but overall it's a book I much enjoyed. More than I expected to if I'm honest ..... and that's always a good thing.

Good boarding school melodrama; Enid Blyton with eating disorders. Fantastically nutty ending, worthy of a Bronte at their most hysterical.