Those who follow my blog know that I’m always on the lookout for a good thriller. I love reads that are filled with suspense and intrigue and that keep me guessing from start to finish. I had never read one of J.T. Ellison’s thrillers and was primarily drawn to Good Girls Lie because it’s set in my home state of Virginia, but after flying through the pages of this novel, I can say without hesitation that J.T. Ellison has joined the ranks of Ruth Ware, Riley Sager, and the legendary Agatha Christie as one of my favorite thriller authors.

It’s always hard to talk about a thriller without giving away spoilers, so I just want to touch on a few highlights that made this read such a win for me.

If you enjoy reads that are set in boarding schools, Good Girls Lie is your book. It’s set in an elite all girls’ boarding school called Goode Academy nestled in the hills of Central Virginia, and I just loved how atmospheric this setting is. The school itself has an illustrious past – a student was murdered there years ago and rumors abound that the school grounds are haunted. Supernatural elements aside, the school also has secret societies with bizarre initiation rituals, as well as its fair share of mean girls and hazing. The girls at this school are destined for the Ivy Leagues and greatness, if they can survive their time at Goode Academy.

I love a story that captivates my attention from the very first page and Good Girls Lie definitely fits the bill. The opening scene of the novel features a dead student hanging from the school’s front gates, which of course immediately caught my attention and started an internal barrage of questions: Who is she? How did she get up there? Is it suicide or something more sinister? If she was murdered, who would do such a thing and why? Death is tragic enough, but when it’s the death of a young person, a promising life cut short, it just pulls at my heartstrings all the more. I was completely engaged from this opening scene because I just had to know what happened to lead up to such a devastating moment.

I’m always drawn to characters who are flawed and complicated and J.T. Ellison has a cast of them in this book, my favorite of which is Ash Carlisle, a new student at the school who is struggling to find her place and fit in. She has come to Virginia from England and we soon learn that both of Ash’s parents recently died unexpectedly and that she has no other family. It’s easy to feel sympathetic toward Ash because she’s all alone in the world and trying to find herself while maintaining some semblance of privacy. Ash becomes an even more interesting character, however, as we realize that not everything is as it seems.

“Not everything is as it seems” is actually a recurring theme with Good Girls Lie and it’s what really kept the suspense ramped up and had me turning pages well into the night because I wanted answers and kept getting more and more twists and turns instead. Everyone in this book seems to have something they’re hiding and it was just such an entertaining read to watch the story unfold and all of their secrets unravel.
I will say that I ultimately wasn’t too surprised by the novel’s final reveal. Even though the reveal itself didn’t have huge shock value, the journey to get to it was well worth it. I loved how intricately plotted the entire story was and how each piece gradually slipped into place to lead to the reveal. Ellison’s ability to weave together the many tangled threads of this story and its characters into a cohesive and engaging read is on point.

If you’re looking for a dark and twisty mystery to keep you on the edge of your seat, J.T. Ellison’s Good Girls Lie is a must read. Be sure to check it out when it hits bookshelves on December 30th!

This book was everything I was hoping for and a little more than I had bargained for. It was creepy and had the sort of Gothic vibe to the boarding school that I was hoping for. However I got very tired of the cattiness between all the girls very early on and found it tiresome midway through the book. I also felt that some of the story lines weren't really necessary that the book could have been more focused on the students, instead of telling me all about the head mistresses life and desires. I can see how it was used as a plot device but I didn't enjoy those parts. Overall though this was a good thriller, it wasn't too gruesome but it definitely had some more graphic descriptions than I was expecting.

I fell so hard into the lives at the Goode School and for Ash and Becca. But, I was torn about my feelings for Ash throughout the book, trying to reason with what I was reading in the alternating chapters with the girl I was becoming to know in the other chapters. Needless to say, I didn't catch on and didn't see this one coming. That just added to the suspense for me, though, and I truly felt for Ash as she was thrust into the crazy world where everyone around her is dying.

These characters were so well put together and so likeable. It would be hard not to give this 5 stars. Everything about the Goode School and the ways in which it operated was so well thought out and described that I honestly feel like I can see the school, as if I were there. The secret tunnels, cabins, and secret societies were so cool. I loved this book so much and wish I could have more of the girls.

I want to know what happened after it all settled down. This book definitely left me wanting more and I can't wait to read more by J.T. Ellison in the future!

Good Girls Lie, by J.T. Ellison, was a very quick read for me. It definitely captured my attention and kept me wanting to read. This was a story about a girl who gets accepted to an elite, all-girls, boarding school, shortly before her parents' double suicide. After moving to the school, she's grappling with trying to fit in, while dealing with her complicated past. Ellison did a wonderful job portraying what life was like within the boarding school, and made me feel like I was a part of it. I was invested in most of the characters, particularly Dean Westhaven, and I loved the insight we got into their different perspectives. While I enjoyed parts of this book, I would have liked to see a few more unexpected twists and turns. I feel like before the surprising twists, there was always some sort of clue or heads up to help you guess what was coming. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a light thriller who is interested in boarding school culture.

I LOVE J.T. Ellison books and this one did not disappoint! I already can’t wait to read her next book! The story kept my attention and I couldn't wait to finish reading it. It's one of those books you're going to recommend to everyone and think about way after you're done reading it! Thank you netgalley for the opportunity to read this!

5 Stars for Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison! Being a fan of J.T. Ellison, I've been looking forward to reading this one since I caught wind that it was coming out months and months ago. Knowing the release date was 12/30, I wanted to make sure I could fit it in as one of my last books of the year and J.T. Ellison didn't disappoint!

Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I could easily see the imagery and understood the pros and cons of attending Goode School. Landlocked, tucked away, sheltered, trapped...all characteristics of the school as well as the main characters. Ellison uses her skill to build one mystery after another, making Good Girls Lie impossible to put down.

Goode School is elite, private, and the girls who graduate from there are the cream of the crop, on a path to any Ivy League School of their choice. Traditions and alliances run deep and a lot rides on being tapped and belonging. Ellison lays a foundation with the setting, the hormones, and peer pressure. Ghost stories, rumors, and secrets are part of the mortar that Ellison uses as she throws in one twist after another. When a student is found dead, the scramble begins to find out if she committed suicide or if she was pushed. One mystery builds upon another in a race to save the school's reputation, and to get to the bottom of multiple suspenseful and shocking elements, all tied to one student.

Whether you are looking for a quick read to end 2019 with, or your first read of 2020, Good Girls Lie needs to be added to your TBR list. Also, kudos to J.T. Ellison, providing the Suicide Prevention Lifeline number at the end of her book and telling readers they aren't alone. Since I didn't have a cover with this egalley, I thought that would be the best "cover," to share.

Thank you to @netgalley and @harlequinbooks for providing this book in exchange for an honest review. @thrillerchick, this was worth the wait and anticipation. I loved it! #thriller #GoodGirlsLie #NetGalley #tbrlist #booksof2019 #booksof2020 #bookworm #booknerd #sendmebooks #bookreview #readnext #ivyleague #allgirlsschool #suspense #readgoodbooks #5stars

Good Girls Lie


A psychological thriller about the extreme some girls will go to to get what they want.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

SUMMARY

Goode girls don’t lie. Or do they? The Goode School is a prestigious prep school in Marchburg, Virginia. It’s the top choice for boarding schools of daughters of the rich and influential. The school only accepts the best and the brightest. It’s elite status and Honor Code is ideal for preparing young women for brilliant futures at Ivy League universities and beyond.

Students at Goode pretend to follow the rules. The honor code requires absolute honesty in both their work and personal relationships. But no one really questions the cruelties of the secret societies, or the dubious behavior of the privileged young women who expect to get away with murder. When a popular student is found dead the truth cannot be ignored. Rumors suggest she was struggling with a secret that drove her to suicide.

But look closely, because there is the truth and there are lies, and then there is everything that really happened.


REVIEW
GOOD GIRLS LIE is a psychological thriller about the extreme and desperate lengths some girls will go to get what they want. It is full of teenage angst and well as sex, drugs and death. Within days of Ash Carlisle arriving at Goode, the beloved piano teacher is dead. Within weeks after her arrival a student commits suicide. Could Ash be responsible for these deaths? Will she stop at nothing to get what she wants.

It’s really hard to like or even trust Ash. It’s impossible to tell when she is telling the truth and when she is lying. But then, everyone seems to be lying at Goode, from the headmistress, Ford Westhaven to the head girl, Becca Curtis to Ash, the newest member of the sophomore class.

J. T. ELLISON’s story is clever with a slow build to the reveal. There is a continuous flow of staccato suspense on every page. My main concern is that the story is a little to incredible to be believed. This book would probably be enjoyed most by a young adult audience.

J. T. Ellison has written twenty novels and is an award winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. She lives in Nashville. Thanks to Netgalley, J. T. Ellison and MIRA for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher Harlequin-MIRA
Published December 30, 2019
Review www.bluestockingreviews.com

The Goode School will be the perfect place to leave her old life behind. Ash Carlisle has just lost both her parents and is now happy to flee to Marchburg, Virginia, to concentrate on school and forget what happened in Oxford. However, her fellow schoolmates do not like secrets and eye her suspiciously, it is obvious that the newcomer has some interesting things to tell them and this exclusive all-girls school has its own rules that have to be followed. When Ash is exposed and her roommate found dead, her carefully set up facade is threatened to crumble and reveal the real person she so hard tried to hide.

J.T. Ellison has chosen the perfect setting for a mysterious story where everybody has some well-hidden secrets: the old buildings of the élite private school provide the characters with tunnels and undisclosed rooms, a history of secret societies with old passed down hazings and rules that bind the girls, rumours about suspicious deaths and a headmistress with her very own agenda. It all adds up to a thrilling atmosphere where the protagonist herself offers only shady bits and pieces of her own story so that you are well alert not to trust any of them.

I really adored J.T. Ellison’s style of writing, the author brilliantly creates suspense by only hinting at what happened back in England and by insinuating that there is much more to know about Ash. It only takes a couple of pages to dive into the atmosphere of this elite school and its very own rules that seem to have a long history and make the girls bond immediately.

Admittedly, there were some aspects I found not totally convincing, e.g. 16-year-olds acting and plotting like adults, the detective providing the girls with core information about one of the deceased, another detective investigating such a delicate case even though she has been suspended or the headmistress’s behaviour which equals much more the girls’ than would be considered adequate for her position. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the read and the mystery surrounding the characters.

An interesting start to this book! This is my first book I read by this author. It’s different than the thrillers I typically read.

(Also posted on my GR account!)

5 solid stars, whoa what a ride!

Good Girls Lie opened with a new school semester and ended with a suitable whimper. But the kind of whimper that left you satisfied with the built up.

Ash left her home in England to pursue a diploma in Goode School, a prestigious boarding school with the likes of equally prestigious daughters of senators, ambassadors, etc. She had to navigate her new life and tried as she might to avoid trouble, lest her secrets came out.

I can't say much about the book other than it took me A WHILE to finish it, not because I don't like it or it wasn't engaging but more because of my real life. Good Girls Lie feels suffocating and liberating at once. Try and read it yourself.

3.5 stars
The opening of this book is definitely interesting—a teenage girls is found hanging from the boarding school’s tall iron gates in an apparent suicide.

Then, the story backs up from there to show how that came about, beginning with Ash Carlisle’s trip to The Goode School from England to Virginia, USA.

I thought the very beginning was very slow, but then after finishing the book, I went back and reread the beginning and it made more sense to me.

After the somewhat slow start, this story picked up and I enjoyed the boarding school tale of secret societies, honor codes and even murder. It felt a little too long and wordy in places, though. It felt like there was a lot of build-up just to get to the twist that we all know is coming.

And the twist...really? It fell flat for me. Major eye roll and unbelievable for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin-Mira for a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

A good thriller, gripping and entertaining.
I liked the atmospheric setting, the well thought cast of characters and the mystery that kept me on the edge till the last page.
It's the first book I read by this author and won't surely be the last.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

‘I thought lies had power until I saw what silence could do’

Ash Carr is a woman with a secret, moved to the US to escape her past in an elite all-girls boarding school. Navigating the new school is hard enough, with its hierarchies, pecking orders and secret societies but when a girl is found dead, the stakes may be higher than first anticipated…

Good Girls Lie is an interesting thriller where you are left guessing at every turn. It seems like everyone has something to hide – whether that’s the seemingly straight-laced dean, the handyman, Ash’s classmates or even Ash herself. Without giving any spoilers I thought the slight unreliable narrator aspect of the book worked nicely and the small hints given towards the end of chapters kept you on the back foot and questioning everything you had been told. I liked the setting of the school; the old-style building and the sense of tradition really help build a well-rounded and interesting backdrop to the story. It was unsurprising to see in the authors notes that it had been based from a real place as it did feel very grounded in reality.

There were however a couple of things that didn’t quite make sense but seemed to have been added for the convenience of the plot. There’s no way, for example, to record a Skype conversation without both parties being heavily informed that that is what is happening – you can’t just accidently leave a setting on and have it record everything. Some bits also felt a little unrealistic in terms of character motivations or actions which led to you needing to suspend your disbelief a bit to enjoy it. The epilogue was great but I felt the twist was a bit of a let down and way too predictable.

Overall Good Girls Lie is a twisty thriller with a great setting – it just felt a little unrealistic in places. Thank you to NetGalley & Harlequin Mira for a chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

FULL REVIEW: https://wordsunfilteredbys.com/2019/12/24/good-girls-lie/

when i first read what this book was about, i just knew i had to read it.

an all-girls boarding school? a murder? a mystery? secrets and lies? count me the f*** in.

from the very first chapter, i was completely hooked

Linda's Book Obsession Reviews "Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison, Mira, December 31, 2019

J.T.Ellison, author of "Good Girls Lie" has written an intense, intriguing, captivating, suspenseful and chilling novel. The Genres for this novel are Psychological Thriller, Thriller, Mystery and Suspense, and Fiction. The timeline for this story is in the present and goes to the past when it pertains to the characters or events. The author describes her characters as complex, complicated, dysfunctional, and pathological. There are betrayals, lies, deep, dark secrets, bullying,  and murder. The story takes place mostly in an elite private boarding school.

Goode Private Boarding School is an elite and prestigious boarding school for girls. The grounds and buildings have provided stories of heinous crimes in the past. There are tunnels and many floors in the school where the rooms are mostly modernized. The seniors have the most power, and there are secret clubs or sororities. Some of these clubs have horrible rituals. There is troublesome bullying that goes on.

Ash, is a new student coming from England to the United States to attend Goode School.  Ash has lost both of her parents in tragic circumstances and wants to start fresh at school. Her goals include going on to Harvard. Not all that seems to meet the eye is a true picture of what is going on. Ash has many secrets, and she seems so have a way of irritating people. As a matter of fact, since Ash is at the school there seems to be some trouble.

There are strange things that are going on at the school, and different groups of girls seem to have a way of overlooking the honor and rules of the elite institution. Ash meets Becca, one of the seniors that are very powerful at the school. Ash tries to keep a low profile, but it is difficult when murder becomes involved.

I would recommend this chilling thrilling novel to those readers who enjoy a horrifying and thought-provoking read.

I am unsure exactly how I felt about this book. It took me way too long to read because it took over halfway through to get with the flow of the story. By that point, I had totally figured out what was going on and I was right. However, there's an excellent twist at some point in the story (not going to tell you where so I don't spoil it) that definitely elevated this book to the "decent thriller" level. I've read most of Ellison's previous psychological suspense novels, and this one is on par with most of them except for Lie to Me which I loved.
It's definitely worth reading, I liked the boarding school setting and the secrets everyone was hiding from each other.

When Sophomore Ash Carlisle arrives at the Goode School in Virginia, she has no idea of the deadly consequences her presence will cause…or does she? She is soon revealed by her fellow students to be Ashlyn Carr, the only child of a British Peer and his wife, both recently deceased. Her intelligence and quick wit catch the attention of Head Girl Becca Curtis, a self anointed leader of the Senior Class. After Becca befriends Ash, she enters the world of arcane societies, cruel hazing, mean girl cliques and ghostly happenings. Oh, and yes, there are several unexplained deaths.

There are noises at night, legends of murder and suicide and a mysterious chauffeur who wanders the grounds watching the girls. Ash is always in the middle, trying to understand, as the novel moves to its inevitable, shocking conclusion.

I thought I had solved the mystery behind Goode Girls Lie. I was wrong. J.T. Ellison has crafted an intense psychological thriller wrapped in a mystery. 5 stars from me. Don’t read it at night or you’ll be wondering what is behind the locked door across from Ash’s room!


Thanks to NetGalley, J.T. Ellison and Harlequin-Mira for this Advanced Reading Copy

JT Ellison writes books I do not want to miss.
The Goode School in VA only accepts good girls from elite families with plans to head to Ivy League schools. The school is shrouded in mystery already, but even more so when Ash Carlisle arrives from the UK to attend school. No one knows much about Ash. It seems like she's hiding something. Then, her roommate dies. Was it suicide or homicide? Ash doesn't feel safe, but no one feels safe. It seems there is more going on than just a mysterious new student from the UK. Could this have anything to do with a murder that occurred on campus years ago?
There are so many twists and turns that leave readers consistently on the edge of their seats!

I’ve read and/or listened to several of Ms. Ellison’s books and enjoyed her Taylor Jackson series and books written with Catherine Coulter.

This story was difficult to connect with especially when I read more of Ash’s thoughts versus dialogue. I don’t know if it was the format of the ARC e-copy but at times it was difficult to determine who was talking or thinking.

I enjoyed the description of the school and the surroundings with tunnels, warnings to stay out of certain areas, past murders, and the many decades of school history.

The girls were mostly mean and especially to the new student, Ash Carlisle. It was easy to sense that something other than the recent deaths of her parents in England and her move to the US for private school was going on. It was a little frightening that the secret societies and the hazing were so harsh and brutal. I got whiplash from some of the characters acting friendly to Ash, then so cruel and back again.

The story moved between the present and the past and I found this to be an interesting way to share Ash’s childhood and the present day.

I like a good thriller and this had merit but I felt like there were too many things going on and additional characters that didn’t seem to add up. The students seemed much older than most high school students and it’s difficult to believe that no one had a cell phone. The story seemed to be long and I kept checking the percentage. Still, there were times the story was intense with the twists and turns.

I love epilogues and this one was a great way to complete the story.

Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this new work.

This book had all the promise of a good mystery/thriller, but it fell so flat for so long. Good Girls Lie is a slow burn with an unreliable narrator and unreliable plot. Unfortunately, it just didn't pull together like a "Gone Girl" or "The Girl on The Train". I insist upon comparing books to those books when marketed similarly.

This faux thriller didn't intrigue me or mystify me, and I really disliked the characters. Perhaps it's my own bias against private prep schools, especially boarding schools, but I couldn't get into this book. It took me about 5 times as long to read this book as it takes me to read other books.

The detective and his niece were characters just thrown into the plot, with heavy-handed backstores shoved in at random.

Rumi was a ridiculous character. He's a chauffer, a barista, he's whatever the Dean needs! He gets around, but it seems like the author wants us to believe he's the lothario with the heart of gold.

The Dean was a complete idiot. She really couldn't figure it out?

Overall, this wasn't one of my favorites.