The Last Time I Lied is the first I have read from Riley Sager, but it’s his second published novel. This thriller is told in alternating perspectives of when teenage Emma stays at a camp for the first time and present day adult Emma returning the same camp 15 years later trying to figure out an unsolved investigation of the three girls who disappeared from her cabin years ago. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised how good this thriller was. Sager does an excellent job exuding the mean girl drama among the characters. There are definitely quite a few twists and turns that kept me on my toes. All the characters are well formulated and each to his/her own. I was impressed how well he was able to write well from a female perspective. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who loves reading dark psychological thrillers.

I loved Riley Sager's first book, Final Girls. I felt it was fast-paced, compelling and captivating. The Last Time I Lied, however, was not. I realize that I am completely in the minority here, but I just didn't love this book. For me it dragged and felt repetitive. I was eager to find out the mystery and how the story culminated, but I struggled to get there. For some reason, I didn’t connect with the characters and therefore I did not particularly care about them. Essentially, there was no hook for me to draw me in and and compel me to keep reading. Towards the end the plot and pace did pick up and I found it much more interesting, though a bit far-fetched, and the conclusion was surprising and satisfying, I know that others have immensely enjoyed it, but, unfortunately, for me, it was not a favorite.

What a page turner. Even up until the last page I did not anticipate all that unfolded happening. People who love suspenseful thrillers are really going to love this one. I look forward to reading more of Sager’s books.

Wow!! Riley has outdone himself once again!!! This book had me from the very first page!!! The whole time reading I was back and forth with what would happen next and then that ending blew me away!!! Way to go!!!!

I received a copy of this novel from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Summer camp was where I spent many of my own summer days so I couldn’t wait to read Sager’s latest novel, “The Last Time I Lied,” and dive into this twisted thriller about the disappearance of three girls from a summer camp.

Emma is now a successful artist who has made her fame on selling paintings of the three girls who disappeared from her cabin fifteen years ago at a summer camp for girls. She is haunted by her cabinmates disappearance so when the camp’s founder reaches out to see if she will be involved in the camp’s reopening, she just can’t stay away. While there, she is hoping to uncover more clues about the mysterious disappearances and figure out who could have been involved and taken these girls from the camp.

Ironically, she finds herself in the same cabin and begins to sense that she is being watched. As clues begin to unfold and Emma grows closer to the answers, the girls in her own cabin go missing again and she is the number one suspect.

It is hard to craft an ending that I can’t guess, after reading so many thrillers, but Sager’s plot twists are smart and kept me guessing until those final pages. I couldn’t have enjoyed this thriller more and recommend it if you are looking for a well-written mystery!

I have a thing for mysteries peppered with campy horror movie feels. Which means I absolutely loved Final Girls by Riley Sager, so when I heard his second book was coming out, I couldn't wait to read it. Emma, the main character in The Last Time I Lied, is a bit of an It Girl in the art world. But behind each piece she paints is a dark secret she's been trying to simultaneously decode and cover up for the past fifteen years. The secret happens to involve a teenage Emma being the last person to see her three bunkmates at summer camp alive before poof, they disappeared. Their bodies have never been found and now, the camp is about to reopen.

Emma's been invited to teach art at the said summer camp of horror and because she's looking for closure, she agrees. The Last Time I Lied is deliciously creepy and the s-l-o-w build kept me guessing. I truly didn't see the end coming. It was complex, much like what I'd imagine a very modern Agatha Christy novel might be. Not bad for a sophomore effort. I'll gladly pick up the next novel by Mr. Sager.

A must read!! I absolutely loved this book. Her writing style and choice of words...not to mention the plot. It was only at the end of the book that I realized she is also the author of The Final Girls. I have been trying to decide if I wanted to read it or not...once I finished this book, I bought it right away. Phenomenal author and book. I thought multiple times I had the story figured out and every time I was wrong. That is huge for me because I can usually figure books out half way through and then I am bored. I can't really give you any more information without spoiling the book so all I will say is READ THIS if you love psychological thrillers or murder mysteries!!

This campy camp thriller was over the top and filled with twists, and it made for a very fun summer read. I read it while on vacation at a cabin in the woods, which made it all the more enjoyable.

Emma Davis returns to summer sleepaway camp 15 years after her cabin mates went missing -- Their disappearance has haunted her ever since and she's hoping her return, this time as an instructor, will bring closure, as well as some answers. She soon learns that there was far more to her friends' mysterious vanishing than she had ever realized. *cue ominous music*

What I liked most about this book was that it played out like a guilty pleasure, made-for-tv teen suspense movie, with melodrama and unexpected developments at every turn. I read that it has been optioned as an Amazon series and that seems entirely appropriate -- It definitely has that Lifetime drama quality about it.

On the downside, if you like your thrillers to be somewhat believable, this is probably not the book for you. The plotline veered very far into the realm of impossible, particularly toward the end.

Read this book if you're looking for a light, fast-paced thriller and you're a sucker for a summer camp setting.

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

There is one thing I know for certain: Riley Sager knows how to write a good, page-turning thriller. I love his style for his books, too. If you liked Final Girls, I'm pretttttty sure you'll enjoy this one, as well. After all, the protagonist of this story, Emma Davis, is a final girl herself.

It comes down to this: 15 years ago at Camp Nightingale, Emma's three cabinmates disappeared into the night without a trace. Because of this, Camp Nightingale closed down. In the present day, Emma is a painter and being asked to come back to Camp Nightingale as an instructor for its grand reopening. While she's there, Emma decides to try to uncover the secrets behind the camp and the mysteries surrounding the other girl's disappearances.

Just like in Final Girls, the book interchanges between past in present in a very fun way. It definitely kept me reading and reading and reading until the end. Sager plans out his books very well, and everything comes together in a way that is electrifying. This book is dark and very psychological and the twists got me good! You can definitely rely on Sager to pull some tricks on you that leave your jaw on the floor. I read this during a readathon, so I read it in one sitting, and I truly feel like I would have wanted to read it in one sitting regardless. It was just so gripping.

The one thing I did not like at all: the ending. I didn't love it and certainly didn't love the epilogue. Some of the aspects of the ending were just WAY too dramatic for my liking. However, I wouldn't say it put a huge hindrance on my enjoyment of the book. Just a little bit! I didn't love this one as much as Final Girls, but I found this just as fun and entertaining. I'll absolutely keep reading books by Riley Sager!

In his second novel, Sager's (Final Girls) returns with a mysterious sense of unease. Readers follow along with Emma as she returns to a summer camp where her three roommates went missing fifteen years before. Emma decides that she is going to solve the mystery, but she ends up uncovering years of secrets and not many answers. Sager draws readers in from the very page, and keeps them guessing until the end. The twists and eerie nature of the novel are reminiscent of Final Girls, but this novel opens up a new level of suspense for readers.

I'm not generally a fan of books in which you know SOMETHING happened, but not WHAT that something is, and this book fell into that several times. I actually stopped and restarted this book several times before picking it up and reading it in its entirety in two sittings. I couldn't put it down! It has the perfect amount of suspense, mystery and drama, and even manages to successfully throw in a little romance, without being cheesy or distracting from the plot. Just when I thought I had it figured out-BAM- nope! A little surprise happens, also, in the last few pages, and without giving too much away, it made me enjoy the book THAT much more. I love the author's style- she's a gifted storyteller, indeed. If you are looking for a fast-paced book you can read over the course of a weekend, look no further than The Last Time I Lied. 4&1/2 stars.

This is a perfect thriller for summer reading. It takes the classic summer camp “don’t go in the woods” story and then raises the bar. The story centers around Emma, who attended a summer camp when she was thirteen. While she was there her three cabin mates disappeared, never to been heard from again. Now, fast-forward fifteen years, the camp is about to be reopened and Emma is invited to be one of the camp instructors.

Convincing herself that this will give her the opportunity to finally determine what happened to her fellow campers or, at the very least, help her put her own guilt to rest, Emma agrees to come back. Even Emma has secrets she has kept hidden for the last fifteen years.

Riley Sager has produced a well-plotted story about loss, guilt, uncertainty and mental anguish. His writing style and descriptions are stunning and the ending is both unexpected and very satisfying. This is a perfect summer read, even if you’ve never attended a summer camp. Now I’m looking forward to reading Mr Sager’s first book. I have a feeling I’ve found another new favorite author!

Many thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book for review.

*** E Arc provided by Netgalley for an honest review***


Holy shit.
I.... i... have no words. None.

I have never read a mystery so freaking mind blowing, riveting and fucked up. I literally had NO clue what happened, who did it, why?! None. Zero. I was sooo confused the whole time and sooo freaking interested!

These characters are so deep and mysterious you honestly have no idea if anything you’re reading is even true. You don’t know if Emma is even sane or innocent. You have no idea what’s going on


And the ending though. I screamed. Straight up! You go Riley Sagar you gooooo!!!
5/5 Stars! Hands down. One of the best mysteries I’ve ever read!!!

It has been fifteen years since the summer that changed Emma Davis's life. She was just thirteen years old when her cabinmates at Camp Nightingale disappeared in the middle of the night. Emma has kept the secrets of that night for the last fifteen years, but those girls haunt her every moment. She pours the emotions into her art and it is at her very first showing that she reconnects with Frannie, the owner of the camp. And Emma is even more shocked she Frannie contacts her with a proposition. She wants to reopen Camp Nightingale and wants Emma to come and work at the camp to teach art to the campers. Emma is reluctant at first and then realizes that this might be the opportunity she needs to exorcise the demons that have haunted her since that day. Almost immediately strange things start to happen. Birds mysteriously are in her cabin, the uneasy feeling she has that she is being watched, and then there is the graffiti that shows up on the outside of her cabin. But she nearly falls apart when the three girls she shares a cabin with go missing. There are a lot of accusations being thrown around, but more importantly, what happened to the girls then and now?


Riley Sager may be a pseudonym, but I am absolutely smitten with his writing style. The Last Time I Lied is just as dark and twisty as The Final Girls. I love the camp setting, it reminds me of the old horror movies from the 80's. Emma isn't the most reliable of narrators. You like her, she is easy to like. You are empathetic towards her, but she admits that she has lied before and she admits that she has a history of mental illness. She admits that she screwed up way back when, but you don't know to what degree until very late in the book. In that case, your own imagination is your worst enemy. The camp's history was completely creepy, but of course, that information is not willingly shared, Emma has to dig to find it. It also prompted her to make false accusations, yet again. That part really bugged me, but Emma's lack of reliability really kept the reader on their toes. I did not have it all figured out, but I was not really surprised by the big reveal. - CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS -

Bottom Line - If you are looking for a great thriller to take to the beach (or the cabin) then The Last Time I Lied needs to be at the top of your list. It will keep you on your toes! I promise!

Details:
The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
On Instagram
Pages: 384
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Publication Date: 7/3/18
Buy it Here!

For Emma, her experiences at Camp Nightingale did not turn out to be part of her youth that she would remember fondly as she got older. Memories of roasting marshmallows, singing around a campfire, and making lifelong friends were not to be. Instead, Emma's brief time there ended on the morning she awoke to find that her three roommates never returned from their nighttime excursion. Since that morning fifteen years ago, Emma has been haunted by not only their inexplicable disappearance and her resultant sorrow, but the role she may have played in it. Emma's return to her life following the tragedy at Camp Nightingale was not without complications. But she eventually forged a career from, in part, the tragedy. Upon every blank canvas she places three small figures wearing white dresses before hiding them under layers of paint depicting tangled vines and dark woods. Only she knows that Vivian, Natalie, and Allison are entombed there.

When Frannie announces that she is reopening Camp Nightingale and asks Emma to return as an instructor, Emma is hesitant to accept, telling Frannie, "I'm not sure I can go back there again. Not after what happened." But Frannie pushes her, suggesting that's "precisely why you should go back." Emma comes to see the invitation as an opportunity to reconcile the past by learning exactly what happened to her friends. She believes Frannie when she insists that she harbors no ill will toward Emma as a result of what happened -- and the consequences, including quickly and quietly settled lawsuits filed by the girls' grieving families. But Emma is no more prepared for the events she encounters at Camp Nightingale the second time than she was as a teenager.

Emma was younger than the other girls in her cabin because she arrived late and cabin assignments had already been made. Unlike the other campers, for whom Camp Nightingale was "the summer camp if you lived in Manhattan and had a bit of money," Emma did not come from a wealthy, privileged background. She and her friends called it "Camp Rich Bitch," but for just one summer her parents could afford to send her there. Natalie was the daughter of New York's top orthopedic surgeon and Vivian's mother was a celebrated Broadway actress. But it was Vivian who took Emma under her wing and was the leader in the group. The daughter of a senator, her older sister had drowned when, mistakenly believing the Central Park reservoir was frozen solid, she attempted to traverse it and fell through the broken ice. Emma looked up to and emulated the sophisticated Vivian, even as she found some of Vivian's behavior startling. Vivian explained: "Everything is a game, Em. Whether you know it or not. Which means that sometimes a lie is more than just a lie. Sometimes it's the only way to win."

Incidents begin occurring that are, to Emma, suspicious, but are also susceptible of rationale explanation. Still, the discovery of the surveillance camera rattles her, especially when she learns that her hostess knows more about Emma's past than she let on. Emma is tenacious and committed to learning her friends' fate. But her quest for answers leads her on an increasingly dangerous foray into the past -- the secrets Vivian was keeping, the true extent of the fall-out from the girls' disappearance, and its impact upon not just Frannie and Emmy, but also upon Frannie's adopted sons, Theo and Chet.

Author Riley Sager pulls readers into a beautiful setting that is full of secrets, resentments, and danger. Camp Nightingale, an otherwise idyllic backdrop, is as much a character in The Last Time I Lied as any of the story's human inhabitants. Emma is a sympathetic character who has spent fifteen years trying to come to terms with an enormous tragedy and her perception of her role in it. Traumatized by the disappearance of her friends, Emma has suffered emotionally but, like a true artist, channeled her pain into her paintings. Emma is also, because of those factors, an inherently unreliable narrator. Now, however, she is ready to learn and face the truth. Did she have something to do with the girls' disappearance? What act did she commit that was so horrible she has maintained her secrecy in the ensuing years? Every other character in the book is also a suspect.

The Last Time I Lied is fast-paced and intriguing. Like the pieces of paper the girls drop as they hike into the woods, designed to provide a trail back the way they came, Sager drops clues to the mystery at deftly-timed intervals, making it impossible to stop reading. The dramatic tension mounts as does the danger in which Emma, and her young charges, find themselves, leading to a pulse-pounding final confrontation. And a jaw-dropping conclusion. The Last Time I Lied is designed to be an ideal summer read. At camp, perhaps?

I love this book. I loved the mystery and the way you are left with wanting more at the end of each chapter. You just need to know what has happened. I loved the plot and I loved the camp setting so much. I like the way its played out. Highly recommend this book!!!

I read Riley Sager's first book, Final Girls, and enjoyed it quite a bit. That being said, this one is definitely a better book! I am loving the feel of a 1970s-1990s horror movie in book format. The book discusses the disappearance of three girls from summer camp fifteen years ago and how it affects the surviving cabin member - Emma Davis. And fifteen years later she is going back to get some closure.

This book drags in some places - an understandable drag to give the feel of whether or not Emma is actually having a breakdown or if what she is going through is real. The twists and turns are small until the end which was massive up until the last word.

It's a good beach read if you are like me and don't prefer chick lit books all the time. Summer for me is for slasher movies and good mysteries - mysteries that don't have Girl in the title.

This book is a contender in the most recent releases of psychological thriller books! A story starting out with a murder yet, once you meet the characters you cannot imagine how it possibly got to that point.
A young couple in love, on their honeymoon, find a surprise out in the ocean. From there decisions must be made, find out how a wrong or right decision can leave you running for your life.

Excellent mystery thriller of a story! I enjoyed the build up of this book and couldn't get to the end fast enough. Not a complete 5 star as the end seemed to conclude a bit abruptly, yet I'm glad it wasn't dragged out. A good re-read for sure.

A fun fast read for the beach!

Riley Sager, I love you! Right when I thought that you couldn’t write a second book as stressful as Final Girls, you prove me wrong. You have outdone yourself.... it’s SO much better!! I honestly lost sleep because of it (and I have a newborn, so thank you for that haha)!!! The story had somewhat of a slow start for me, but when it unfurled... I just wasn’t able to put it down.

I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.* This was a perfect creepy and chilling read for summer with twists until the end.