Even though I have only read 2 books from Riley Sager (since that's all he has), he is quickly becoming one of my all time favorite authors. His books always have shocking conclusions and The Last Time I Lied was no exception.

The Last Time I Lied focuses on Emma Davis who is 13 at the time when her 3 cabinmates Vivian, Natalie, and Allison go missing from their cabin at Camp Nightingale. Fast forward 15 years later and Emma has become an accomplished painter in the New York City art scene; painting these missing girls and covering them up in all her pictures. The camp's owner Franny ends up buying one of Emma's pieces and also invites her back to Camp Nightingale one last time as a painting instructor. Emma sees this as the perfect time to try and figure out what happened to the 3 girls all those years before.

Just a slight rundown of the plot, but you get the idea. Mystery and suspicion abound while Emma is back at camp and she is also quite the unreliable narrator. I really had no idea what was going on and I wasn't expecting the ending even a little bit. There are many twists and turns to the plot, and even though I thought the book started out a little slow, it definitely picked up as it went on. I also enjoyed the camp setting for the novel, and it made me want to go to camp myself!

The Last Time I Lied switches between present and 15 years ago when Emma is at camp the first time, which was something I really enjoyed. I thought it gave the book a nice pace and made it more interesting. Plus it was nice to get background to what happened that first time with Emma and the other girls in her cabin.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I actually liked the ending of Final Girls better than the ending of this book.... The revelations were just more shocking to me for some reason. Don't get me wrong, the ending of this book is fantastic and cray cray and everything you would expect from Sager, but it just didn't hit me the same way. It actually made me move up my review from 4 to 5 for Final Girls too. But what do I know!

Final Thought: If you think the book starts out slow, just hold on because you are in for a crazy ride as it gets going. The pace definitely picks up, and I think a lot of people will enjoy the camp setting. Even if you didn't enjoy Final Girls you should still check out this book. It is pretty different in not just the setting, but everything else as well. Plus Sager's writing is so good, how can you not? Highly recommend and can't wait to see what the next book brings.

As someone who enjoyed The Final Girls, I was really anxious to see what Riley Sager would do next. The Last Time I Lied didn’t disappoint but it also wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

The first part of the book started off really slow, which took me the longest to get through. But once I got to the end of part 1, I couldn’t stop turning the pages. Until I got to the last 15%, which I will touch on at the end of this review. I really enjoyed getting to know the girls, both past and present but I felt like there was a huge gap in the plot that I was missing.

I loved the setting of this entire book. It was my favorite thing about this entire book. The creepy and eerie summer camp feel was enough to keep me on the edge of my seat. I loved the tone that the author was setting up and Riley’s writing is one of the few male writing that I enjoy. His writing seemed to match the campy feel of the book and I really liked that.

The twist(s) were just okay in my opinion. They weren’t shocking, but they were really out there. Almost unrealistic. Very unbelievable. I had a hard time grasping all of that was actually happening. I know that I can’t be alone in that, right?

The book as a whole gets a three-star rating because the last 15% of the book was just too much for me. It was almost annoying the way things were playing out between the characters. The Last Time I Lied was definitely a campy and semi-thrilling read. Once you push past the first part, it’s all smooth sailing, I think that you will have a hard time wanting to stop or put the book down.

I really liked the summer camp setting for this one. The switching back and forth between the past and present aided the storyline and kept it moving and interesting. Keeping track of all the characters was a little bit of a challenge in the beginning but it didn't take long to come together.

This thriller starts out a bit slow, so I almost gave up on it, but I'm so glad I didn't. Once the story really gained momentum, I had to know what really happened before I put the book down.

Fifteen years ago, Emma's cabin-mates at Camp Nightingale disappeared in the middle of the night. Although Emma doesn't know exactly what happened, she knows more than what she told the police and the camp staff, and the guilt has been haunting her ever since. When the camp owner decides to re-open the camp and invites Emma to teach art, she returns to the scene of the disappearance, perhaps seeking closure, or perhaps to solve the mystery.

Sager does an excellent job revealing information about the past little by little while dropping clues that may or may not be relevant to the truth. She creates a wonderfully tension-filled relationship between Emma and the camp owner's son, Theo, who she accused of being involved with the girls' disappearance when they were both just teenagers. Now adults, neither Emma nor Theo (nor the reader) know who to trust.

The camp setting makes this book a perfect summer read. Sager leaves the reader guessing until the very last page.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed 'Final Girls' by Riley Sager, so I was thrilled when I was approved for his latest book. Like his first book, 'The Last Time I Lied' is a gripping, immersive read. I couldn't put it down until I got to the bottom of what actually happened at Camp Nightingale so many years ago. And it was not at all what I expected!

With its summer camp setting by the lake in the woods, this is the perfect summer read. You won't know who to trust, or whose story to believe--least of all Emma, the very unreliable narrator.

Sager does a terrific job with the setting of the book, and he slowly amps up the tension and suspense so that I was practically on the edge of my seat as I flipped the pages as fast as I could.

Having finished the book, I am certain of three things: this will be a summer hit; it won't be long before it is made into a thrilling movie; I will be waiting not-so-patiently for Sager's next book to come out.

Emma returns to her former summer camp, a place she hasn't been since her 3 bunkmates mysteriously disappeared one night 15 years ago. Now she's back, recruited as a counselor by the mysterious billonairess owner of the camp who hopes to use Emma for some good publicity while Emma uses the opportunity to finally figuring out what happened to the missing girls that night.

I enjoyed Riley Sager's previous novel, FINAL GIRLS, but didn't love it. This book I loved; it's a haunted house mystery full of red herrings, juicy drama and fun devious characters. The writing was suspenseful until the end and the payoff of the mystery was interesting and unexpected without feeling unearned. The use of flashbacks was much more effective this time versus FINAL GIRLS and you can see the growth in Sager's writing. I'm excited to read what he writes next.

I read this less than a month after finishing Final Girls. I enjoyed this one but made some inevitable comparisons to Final Girls, which I liked more. This is a solid read on its own but Final Girls packed more punch.

Free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Last Time I Lied was just so good!! The mystery, the characters, the setting were all fantastic! This story is told in present day and 15 years ago. This novel was excellent, it has elements of mystery, thriller, and well-developed characters. I was completely captivated by the story, the author did an excellent job with the imagery and is a masterful storyteller. Camp Nightingale, Dogwood, Lake Midnight and its visitors will stay with me for a long time.

This twisted and turned all over the place and the author did an amazing job at taking you in another direction when you thought you had it all figured out. I love a book that continues to keep me guessing and this was one of those books. This book isn't short but it read so fast and that is something that attracts me to a thriller.

Seriously, I did NOT see that ending coming!!

I spent a lot of years at summer camp. I thought Riley described it perfectly!! I was on this ride with him from beginning to end. I loved Emma and I thought he did an amazing job with her past and present. The timelines were smooth and perfect.

The Last Time I Lied was an unpredictable mystery.  I could not figure out who did it.  The main character, Emma Davis, is an artist.  She was the last person to see the girls that went missing and had been their friend.  When the summer camp re-opens, she is asked to be the art teacher.  She goes back to the camp 15 years later to try to figure out what happened to them.  Someone puts birds in her room and she knows someone is spying on her, but she doesn't who.  It's very creepy with a lot of twists and turns.

It was told in alternating narratives from 15 years ago (when the girls went missing) to now.  The pacing was very fast paced.

I am generally hesitant about picking up a psychological thriller. They depend so heavily on them managing to surprise you, and I find that so few of them do. I am happy to announce this is not the case with The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager.

One of the biggest reason this book works is that you start off knowing hardly anything about what happened to Vivian, Natalie, and Alissa. They just vanished in to the night. Were they murdered? Abducted? Was it just a tragic accident? It’s hard to say for sure when no bodies were ever discovered. As a result, as a reader I did not even know what clues to be on the look out for. And neither, for that matter, does our narrator. The book presents so many different angles and possible explanations that, like Emma herself, you can never quite tell which threads are worth following and which are just distractions.

I cannot decide for sure how I feel about the ending. Not in a was it a good ending or not kind of way, but how I actually feel about the decisions characters made and how things play out. As the ending of a book, it’s phenomenal, and I cannot articulate enough just how rare it is for me to say that about a thriller. It’s the kind of ending that makes you sit in a bit of a daze afterwards wondering what you would have done.

I will admit that at first I was not 100% sure I was going to like the fact that it goes back and forth between past and present, but it is actually done very well. The reveals are well paced and always leave you with more questions than answers. In most thrillers I find that I hit a point in the book where the author puts in too big of a reveal too early and I can confidently say “oh that’s what happened,” and then I spend the rest of the book only half interested, waiting to get to the part where the main character figures out what I’ve know for 150 pages. With this book, on the other hand, Emma regularly has more information than we do, because she knows everything that happened 15 years ago leading up to the girls’ disappearance, whereas we have to wait for all those secrets she’s keeping to slowly be revealed. I had a number of theories throughout the book, but I was never so confident about any of them that the need to keep reading faded. I won’t tell you whether or not any of them turned out to be true–I’ll let you go on that journey for yourself.

I love Final Girls so I was really excited to dive into The Last Time I lied. I'm not going to lie though. While Final Girls grabbed me from the beginning, this took me a lot longer to get in to. Everything just seemed too perfectly aligned that it just didn't make it seem real. She goes back to the camp, to the same cabin, and the same counselors, and the same owners? Time changes and it felt like the camp was set up just too perfectly. Other than that, I liked the narrators voice and the flashbacks were well set up. They mystery itself was good and once I finally got into the book, I finished it fairly quickly. It was a good ending and I was satisfied once I was done.

Riley Sager has done it again!! Thrilling from beginning to end. This one kept me guessing until the final pages!

When Emma Davis first went to Camp Nightingale she was late; her parents doing. Subsequently, she got stuck in a cabin with girls much older than herself. Luckily, the pretty and popluar bunkmate, Vivian, quickly took Emma under her wing and she began to have a camp experience unlike anything the other girls her age were experiencing. Unfortunately, one night, on the 4th of July, her three cabinmates disappear, never to be seen again. That night continues to haunt Emma, even fifteen years later when we meet her. Now a successful painter living in NYC she continues to meld the haunting images of her camp experience into her work. Invited back to Camp Nightingale by the wealthy owner, Franny Harris-White, to be an art instructor, Emma begrudgingly accepts, thinking she can finally figure out what happened to her friends.

Once Emma returns to Camp she is reunited with many individuals who were also there her first time round; including the handsome Theo Harris-White, Emma's crush from THAT summer. This story is darkly atmospheric and filled with mystery and dread. For me, Sager's writing is so cinematic - as I am reading, the entire drama is unfolding in my mind with the perfect clarity of a movie - I felt the same way with Final Girls. His descriptions and feelings are so easy to follow and imagine and are definitely one of my favorite things about his writing.

As the story unfolds, there are multiple occasions where you think you know what happened all those years ago, but those thoughts are quickly dashed away by new information becoming available. The cast of characters was fantastic and past and present unfolded with such ease and excitement that it made this novel very fast-paced! I have absolutely nothing negative to say about this book - I loved it - would read it again and would recommend to any thriller or horror reader. I cannot wait to see what Sager comes up with next! You better believe I will be waiting for it and buying it on release.

Thank you so much to the publisher, Dutton, for providing me with a copy of this book to read and review. It was a highlight of my year for sure and I greatly appreciate the opportunity!

As someone who is guilty of what happened 15 years ago, Emma, the protagonist of the story, kept beating herself up. It became an obsession for her, to what happened to her camp-mates, It definitely ruled over her life. To find out that the camp Nightingale will be reopening, she sought the opportunity to play detective and figure out what happened to the girls.
She kept constantly bringing up the past. it was getting a bit irritated but then again that's what a guilty conscience would be feeling. There's just constant repetition to that. That was the only think the irked me.
The climax to the story was definitely a good buildup. Not so fast and not too slow. The pace to it was moderate and that I like. With so many suspects it made it look like anyone could be it and yet it blew me over of who was responsible. It was an immediate page turner for me once I discovered who it was. Not only that but that is one part of the mystery. It would leave your mind blown away to how this concluded.

This was one of the best books I have read this year. I believe this should be a must read for everyone this summer! That ending! Simply fantastic!

"Sometimes a lie is more than just a lie. Sometimes it's the only way to win."

I've recently recognized that a popular trend in the titling of thrillers has emerged amongst my reading list. It seems like every thriller with hopes of becoming the next best-seller has the word "lie" in their titles. Like many of the "girl" books that followed a similar trend after the success of Gone Girl, these "lie" books have had a pretty mixed result for me. Last year saw the breakout of author Riley Sager with his thriller Final Girls. Glowing reviews from many of my trusted blogging buddies and the fact that it had a "girl" title placed the novel on my TBR list. Alas, I never got around to reading it. When I got the chance to read Sager's latest novel The Last Time I Lied (see the word "lie" in the title?!), I eagerly jumped at the opportunity.

As I started reading, I wasn't making comparisons to some of the other "lie" books that I've read. Rather, I kept thinking back to The Broken Girls by Simone St. James. Like that novel, The Last Time I Lied focuses on a main character who is haunted by the events of her past at a community institution for young girls. Unlike St. James, Sager steers clear of the supernatural, writing a story that is even more horrifying in the dark details of its ruthless reality.

Emma has become renowned for her painting. Her series of dark forests on canvas have captured the imagination and renown of some of the art world's biggest names. Her admirers have no idea about the dark secrets that lie beneath the foliage of each painting. They have no idea about the secret that dates all the way back to her time as an attendee at Camp Nightengale. They have no idea that this secret is about to be brought out from behind the leaves and vines that Emma has desperately used to hide them.

To go into any more details about the plot itself would ruin the fun and suspense for anyone planning to read it. Suffice it to say that this is an edge-of-your-seat read that kept me thoroughly engaged and guessing until the very end. Sager shifts between the present and past to reveal details about the characters and mystery surrounding the camp, expertly leading the reader through a maze of absorbing history and misdirection. As a protagonist, Emma strikes the right balance of inner turmoil and outer resolve. She works just as hard to solve the mystery as she does to come to terms with her emotional state. Sager beautifully manifests this internal struggle in the physical imagery of Emma's art. Amongst its other "lie" titled peers, The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager stands out as a top-notch thriller that easily surpasses the generic confines of its promotionally driven name.

Well, there goes my sanity. Easily the best thriller I have read this year.

Sager's writing style blows my mind. There is something compulsive and twisted in his stories which drags you and makes it impossible to stop reading them.

Final Girls was such a fascinating book, but in this second book Sager completely surpasses himself. Darker than Final Girls, the horror, the suspense was more intense in this story.

Not giving any details about the story, not to spoil it for anybody but I urge all the mystery/suspense/ dark psychological thriller fans out there to read this book or if you are just looking for a fantastic read. You wont regret it.

Thank you Netgalley and Dutton for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I loved Riley’s debut last year and couldn’t wait to read this one, This one was much less bloody than Final Girls but still has that creep factor, Didn’t see the end coming and totally recommend

I think I preferred Final Girls to The Last Time I Lied but the it was a quick, easy read. The story kept moving and kept me interested to know what was going to happen. I did like the ending. I didn't see that coming!

Two Truths and A Lie. Let's play.

1. This is one of the best books I have read all year, with the last 10 pages so incredible I was literally crying with joy and satisfaction.

2. Riley Sager is a masterful writer who crafts eerily atmospheric settings with characters you both love to hate and hate to love.

3. I gave this book one star.

Any guesses to the lie there? Let me tell you, THE LAST TIME I LIED was a book I completely picked up on a whim and was so blown away by I'm pretty sure I'm in a different continent. I had no idea of the irresistible mystery, artful storytelling, and horrifying yet beautiful depictions of mental illness that were contained in these 300+ pages. I didn't even realize it wasn't my typical young adult novel until I was too far in to ever question why I requested an arc of it in the first place. Adult fiction tends to scare me off, but <b>this book is actually a perfect YA to adult mystery thriller crossover.</b> I feel so much braver now venturing into the lands of adult thrillers, just like the bravery reflected in Emma while confronting a traumatizing experience that literally led her to a mental breakdown.


THE LAST TIME I LIED stars an artist forever plagued with guilt over the fact that she is the last surviving girl in her cabin at her summer camp. The other three girls snuck out in the dead of night and never returned. Now Emma is withholding all her doubts and anxieties as she paints the girls over and over again, then covers them up, afraid to ever look her demons in the eye. That is, until the summer camp reopens fifteen years later and Emma is invited to return to teach the new generation art. There is where our story really takes off and I didn't stop flying through it until my Kindle died. It wasn't even worth it to sit by the charger and keep reading. I just used my Kindle app on my phone. Guys, it's just that good.

As I was reading along a few things stuck out that bothered me, such as the lack of physical descriptions of many of the characters, the fact that Emma is an unreliable narrator which is becoming so overused in mysteries these days (it's really more of a cop-out to add suspense), and how frustrating the characters were. I could not decide if I liked any of them or none of them. But those elements added so much charm to the story that looking back I can't believe I wanted to drop the rating for those factors. If they tempt someone to DNF, push them to keep reading. Sager is too talented to let those small details ruin a remarkable story.

The flashbacks to the incident 15 years prior were so well-written and perfectly captured thirteen-year-old Emma in every way. Comparing her to the present day Emma at 28 was one of my favorite parts, and would make for incredible television. Good thing that's a huge possibility!!! I loved Emma so much. Her time spent in rehab and recovering was incredibly empowering to someone to also struggles with mental illness and feels constantly defeated. I also couldn't get enough of the camp setting!! Every detail was mesmerizing, and makes me glad I'm not going camping anytime soon because it would actually give me nightmares.

To conclude my rambling, here is a Twitter thread from the seconds after finishing the book that perfectly capture my raw emotions: https://twitter.com/sydneys_books/status/1020133522189586433. I want to give an enormous THANK YOU to Dutton and Netgalley for providing me with the ARC. If you couldn't already tell, my thoughts and opinions are 100% genuine and my own.