An exceptionally well constructed psychological thriller. Out of all Ms Ware's books this is by far my favour ite. Brimming with intrigue and dark secrets, the storyline is pacy and superbly gripping. Loved that I sorted of guessed the twist in the tail but could not totally foresee the finale. Highly recommend this wonderful read.

Isa Wilde receives a text from her long-time friend Kate. 'I need you', and immediately rushes down to the coast to meet Kate and her other close friends. The four of them had been at boarding school together but a series of scandals had led to them being asked to leave. When a body is discovered in the Reach, a local tidal inlet, the past comes back to haunt the friends. They had always promised to be true to each other but Isa becomes more and more convinced that there is more to the events that summer than Kate is willing to admit. If the truth comes out Isa stands to lose her comfortable London life and her baby.

At its best this is a cracking read. Ware certainly knows how to twist a tale and her plotting is pacy. Although I found all the protagonists deeply unlikable people I did enjoy the story and twist was great. I did feel the ending was a little contrived but am willing to forgive that. This is a book written to appeal to the masses and it appears ready for the beach read season - it's a more intelligent option in this genre!

Isa's school days were hardly covered in glory and she's moved on and has recently become a mother when she receives a text message from her old school friend reading "I need you". Isa and her two friends, Thea and Fatima instantly drop everything to return back to the home of their old boarding school and remaining member of their quartet, Kate. As teenagers, the four devised a game called The Lying Game where they were dared to see how far they could take a lie. As all small lies grow into large monsters way out of control, the four find themselves facing the ghosts of the past and some uncomfortable truths.

The book treads well worn territory but thats not to say it isn't an interesting read. There's much to enjoy here, I liked how Isa brought her baby daughter along when it would have been a lot easier for the author to have her leave her with her husband, her anxiety over her daughter giving a real gravitas to the consequences of her actions years previously. There's also the awkwardness of being confronted as an adult with the childish things the group did as teenagers, being reminded of a silly lie Isa told years previously suddenly becomes very embarrassing. The setting of the old dilapidated mill by the seaside is inspiring too as you feel like everything, including the building, is falling apart around Kate. The characters as adults were well rounded and very well written too, each woman having her own definite voice.

There's a few flaws though. The book focuses more on the present than the past which means that the reader doesn't really get a sense of how intense the girls friendship was as teenagers and it seems slightly unrealistic that they would have kept in touch for so long after such a short period of time together. I'm not sure that all of the procedural events ring true, but then since when has that ever got in the way of a good story!

If you're wanting a thrilling beach read with plenty of twists and turns then this book is perfect. I was genuinely left guessing right up until the end and as melodramatic as the ending was, it was certainly a page turner. A good thriller, perfect for the summer.

I received a ARC from Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.

I first knew of Ruth Ware when I spotted 'The Woman in Cabin 10' at the local library. A book that I am eager to read soon, especially as I do a fair amount of cruising. This is the first book that I have read by this author and am impressed.

I will admit that when I first started to read 'The Lying Game' I wasn't sure whether this book was going to hold my attention. It wasn't long before the story grabbed me and i just had to keep turning the pages to find out what happened next. The ending was totally different to what i had been expecting and was one that came close to pulling at my heart strings. I prefer not to say what a story is about as i would only be repeating what others have said, but i do highly recommend this novel.

My thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers. This is my honest review.

Reviews can be seen on Goodreads and Amazon.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Vintage who invited me to read The Lying Game, a stand alone novel about the lies of youth coming back to haunt the present.

Isa, Thea, Kate and Fatima meet as 15 year olds at Salten boarding school where they form a close bond to the exclusion of everyone else but Kate's father who lives close to the school and hosts their wild weekends away from school. The girls are out of control, smoking, drinking and playing the Lying Game which involves trying to fool anyone they can with outrageous lies. They are only together for a year but the lies they told that year bind them together forever and now 17 years later Kate needs them so they return to Salten.

I found The Lying Game to be an extremely strange novel and it demanded too much of a leap of faith from me to find it even remotely plausible. To be fair I struggle with all the 'lies" books as I'm not interested in why people feel the need to lie in the ways that drive these novels. In this case the big secret in the novel can be put down to teenage solidarity but it beggars belief that all four could have kept the secret through their boozy teens and early 20s when the consequences were not as severe to them as they would be now. I also find it hard to believe that 3 women with responsibilities would drop everything to answer the call of a friend they haven't seen for 15 years. Once the novel finally reaches its conclusion it's a cop out with no consequences for the women but more lies.

The novel is well written with some good descriptions of Salten and the coast. The pacing is fair with revelations coming in dribs and drabs but only one of the characters, Isa, is well drawn as it is told from her point of view. I think the novel might have been more interesting if we had more than one reaction to events.

This books reads very differently from the previous novel by Ruth Ware "The Woman in Cabin 10". It begins with Isa receiving a text saying "I need you" and that is enough for her to take off back to Salten where her old boarding school was.

We then have some flashbacks to how Isa met her three friends Kate, Fatima and Thea on the way to Boarding school and who basically became a version of mean girls, with their little clique and their "lying game". This aspect of the novel turned me off and I wasn't comfortable with some of the antics they got up to. Did I really want to read about a pack of spoilt brats.

However the book comes back to the present day and Isa now has a 6 month old baby Freya who I feared for whilst reading the book - she really has a few harrowing experiences as well as being hawked around on various trains and all manner of people looking after her.

The tension of the book for me began to build when the friends realise that they may lose their careers over what happened 17 years ago and most of all that Isa could lose Freya. Coupled with the house they are staying in basically being swallowed slowly by the sea and sounding like something out of the Hounds of the Baskervilles with all the dark marshes around them.

Unfortunately because of the "lying game" I didn't have much sympathy for any of the characters and the book was beginning to drag on. Then suddenly there was a game changer for me and I actually needed to find out who did what and why. The book unexpectedly exploded with unspoken deeds from the past that began to shape a different path than the one I originally thought the book was taking.

I'm giving this book 4 out of 5 stars and my thanks go to Netgalley for a copy of the book for review.

Four friends share only one idyllic summer while at boarding school. Isa, Kate, Fatima and Freya become a clique at school bonded by their ‘lying game’. The game is to lie to others but never to each other. Is that possible when a lie is needed by one of the girls not only to protect her closest friends but someone else she deeply loves?

The book begins 17 years after the girls have left school when a body is found near Kate’s home. It is at this home where they spent many blissful idyllic weekends with Kate’s wonderfully loving, free spirited and generous father, an artist and their teacher at the school.

When the identity of the body is made known, the friends cannot keep their promise to each other until the last moment in this riveting excellent crime, mystery novel.

BonnieK

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

I have loved every one of Ruth Ware's books and this one was no different. She manages to an ordinary setting and cast a menacing shadow over it! This book was Mallory Towers gone bad. It was a very atmospheric read which painted a very vivid picture of each setting in my head. The next book can't come quick enough!

Astonishingly this is the first of Ruth Ware's books I have read, it definitely won't be my last!

The opening pages immediately piqued my interest whilst the early use of time shifts set the scene perfectly. Ware's characterisation and sense of place are outstanding. The Mill House is at times foreboding and sinister yet also feels like an old friend welcoming you in.
The subtle tension ebbs and flows throughout the book, like the waters of The Reach, it draws you in and then holds you within it's depths before the terrifying conclusion crashes down upon you.

Thank you so much to the Publisher and to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Highly recommended.

Four teenage girls at boarding school enjoy telling tall tales and compete to try and make people believe the most unlikely stories. They call it the Lying Game and even have set rules to follow.
But when a tragedy happens and they are all caught up in covering it up, the deceit becomes too real. Lying becomes not only a game but a habit and a necessity to the point that they no longer know what the truth is.
Years pass and they get on with their individual lives, until one day a body is found buried on the beach and their most serious lies are finally threatened with exposure. Eventually they discover the real truth behind the tragedy but they have to consider how much of it to reveal and what the consequences could be for each of them.
This is an absorbing tale of friendship, guilt and deception. For those who enjoyed her earlier book The Woman in Cabin 10, this is another psychological crime thriller that will not disappoint.

I think I was expecting this book to be a take on the Four Marys from the Bunty comic in the 60s/70s, all jolly hockey sticks with scones for tea.
In a way it is. Four friends who would never have met if not for boarding school; each there for very different reasons. The daughter of the art teacher, the posh 'last chance', the sad girl with a dying mum and the 'foreign' girl whose parents are working abroad.
Move on seventeen years. Try to remember not so much what you did but why. Why would any sane person do that?
Fifteen year olds are not sane people - purely because they are fifteen. Adult brains that think more logically are still a few years away.
Ruth Ware can remember being fifteen. Adults either have selective memories of their teens or they remember every horrible, embarrassing moment. She remembers and has the talent to take her, probably harmless, memories and twist up the OMG level.
The denouement is tragic but necessary.
A great book.

Great book. Brilliant plot and main characters. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. Very enjoyable.

This novel is a slow burner. Right from the start you know something dreadful happened in the past with the four girls. What you don't know is what happened. Kate, Fatima, Thea and Isa were at Boarding School together. This was what most intrigued me. It was so perfectly defined how different the relationships are between girls at a Boarding School compared to a state school. Being apart from parental supervision and normal family life they form a very close bond because they live in each other's pockets day and night. This particular clique of girls had a secret from their schooldays that had affected them all in different ways. Life had moved on for them all but the secret they share is unbearable. They learn that actions have consequences. The novel also gave an interesting insight into the minute-by-minute account of motherhood, although I admit I thought Freya was too good to be true! The ending was tense, sad but a very subtle one. Thank you for letting me read it. I shall post this review on Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook and my blog.

I have read both of Ruth Ware's other books (In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10) and in comparison, I just didn't care for The Lying Game. It's not a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. It's just not a book that I particularly enjoyed.

The story itself just didn't hold my interest. A group of friends, who as teens played The Lying Game, are reunited when a text comes through saying, "I need you." The three ladies not living in Salten basically drop everything and rush back for Kate.

I won't go into the "mystery" other than to say that I didn't find it that riveting. The story just couldn't hold my attention. In part I think this may be due to the fact that I really didn't like Isa, the main character and narrator of the story.

In the end, I would suggest reading the book if you are a fan of Ruth Ware's work. This may end up being something you enjoy. It just didn't happen that way for me.

Another first class thriller from Ruth Ware that is a dead certainty for the bestsellers list. The tension, fear and atmosphere in this book is wonderful. I found myself getting anxious. Four women are connected by a secret from their schooldays and to find the truth they must confront their past. Lovely plot twists and great characters. Stunning!!

I am reviewing this for NetGalley. It is essentially a murder mystery from many years before when four friends were briefly together at a boarding school. The start goes well with the reader anxious to discover what the mystery is as one of the four summons the others back because she needs help. After it becomes clear who has been murdered and,indeed,that it was a murder at all,the story slows up. Who did it is not really in doubt long before the end. The four lead women are well drawn as are the muddled circumstances of their initial meeting. A book for a relaxed holiday,maybe.

This is an atmospheric and eerie psychological thriller from Ruth Ware. Take four teenage schoolfriends who set up a group that vies to create the most outlandish lies that they can get others to believe, and what you have is a recipe for potentially horrifying outcomes. This is exactly what the author does, creating two time lines when something terrible happens that results in the four girls being expelled from their school, although this does not stop them from lying. Their one proviso is that they must tell the truth to one another, however, when you specialise in lying, that may be a bit of a tall order. In the present, the four friends have not seen each other in years. Isa is now a 32 year old lawyer, with a partner, Owen, and baby daughter, Freya, she is a woman with everything to lose. She gets a text from Kate saying that she needs her. The narrative is delivered from Isa's perspective, filling us in on their past and what is now happening in the present.

Isa rushes to Kate, and they are joined by Thea and Fatima, they are tense and disturbed at the possibility that the secret that they have kept for seventeen years is about to emerge. We are slowly taken back to their schooldays at Salten, a boarding school. We see their relationships build, and how their group was set up. Their Lying Game, which seemed so much fun at the time, creates divisions and isolates others, and the locals are none too happy either. Then the awful event occurs and they lie their way through that. Are their secrets from the past now set to emerge? This is a beautifully written novel with both suspense and twists. However, whilst we do get a clear idea of the characters of Kate and Isa, we are left more in the dark about Thea and Fatima, which is a shame. A great read that focuses on the issues of love, deception, trust and relationships. However, whilst I derived enjoyment from reading it, it did have too many strong echoes of her book, In a Dark Dark Wood. I hope the author does not keep repeating the same motifs in her future books and finds new territory to explore. Many thanks to Random House Vintage for an ARC.

I am afraid this book was a bit of a slog for me. It just too slow and convoluted not up to her usual standard and therefore a disappointment.

As a male reader, I found this book very hard to identify with. It all seemed just so implausible and I didn't take to any of the characters. Probably just a man thing.
I loved Ms Ware's previous books but this was average. For me it was too long and drawn out. Would have been much better as a short story. The last 10% or so was very dramatic but it was hard getting there.
The story is told in the present tense by one of the four leading woman. Why do so many female writers use the present tense? It really puts me off reading a number of books I would otherwise love to read.
All in all, not a bad book but not a great one. The worst of Ms Ware's books so far. If her next is written in the present tense I'll probably give it a miss.

Fantastic fast paced thriller. Clever twists and turns that keep you guessing throughout.

Teenage girls and their loyalty to one another is perfectly portrayed.

Another cracker from Ware!