Wow!! What a read!! The writing was exceptional and created such a feeling of impending doom. So atmospheric and chilling.

I don't want to give too much away but that epilogue was brilliant. A truly great thriller.

Engrossing and suspenseful, Good Girls Lie will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

Synopsis:
Perched atop a hill in the tiny town of Marchburg, Virginia, The Goode School is a prestigious prep school known as a Silent Ivy. The boarding school of choice for daughters of the rich and influential, it accepts only the best and the brightest. Its elite status, long-held traditions and honor code are ideal for preparing exceptional young women for brilliant futures at Ivy League universities and beyond.

But a stranger has come to Goode, and this ivy has turned poisonous.

This book felt like it dragged... and while it was kind of interesting and creepy I wasn’t shocked or blown away by any twists.

It's been a while since I read this book and unfortunately, it's not one that sticks out in my mind. Definitely not ranked as one of my best of reads for the year. Boarding school stories are typically hit or miss with me and this one was a miss.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. It had a great plot, characters and enough suspense for me to keep me interested. I will be recommending this to my family and friends.

I absolutely love a thriller with twists that I don’t see coming! I loved the boarding school setting and all of the morally gray characters in this story!

J.T. Ellison is an amazing thriller writer. This was filled with twists and turns and the perfect girls school setting. The characters were on point and the ending was unexpected and satisfying. Highly recommend her reads.

A dark, spooky and twisty thriller set in a girl's boarding school. What could be better? The story is well-written and highly engaging!

I am sorry for not reviewing fully but I don’t have the time to read this at the moment. I believe that it wouldn't benefit you as a publisher or your book if I only skimmed it and wrote a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for not fully reviewing!

If you are looking for a thriller with lots of twists and turns, this is the one for you. The characters are intriguing and the mystery is an element all of its own but blends in with the character's lives. True we have had stories of prep school girls getting into trouble but not like this. I'm not sure anyone will be able to put this one down once they start.

This book was so good! I am obsessed with secret society books, and it's hard to find a good one that isn't cliche. While there were some parts that seemed a bit cliche in this book, most of its was quite clever and original.

DNF - Did not read. I decided not to keep reading this book up for review. I love thrillers but this one was not for me. Thank you bookishfirst and publisher for the chance to read it!

I loved the characters and the storyline development of this book. It was absolutely one of my favorites so far and I can't wait to delve in to the next one that this author writes. The storyline was simple, enjoyable, and entertaining.

As a fan of Gossip Girl, this book reminded me of that show with all the secrets, lies, scheming, etc. it was a quick, easy read, but wasn’t anything particularly remarkable. I don’t see myself recommending it to others.

This book fell in the middle range for me. While most thrillers/suspense genre's are hit or miss for me, this one landed smack dab in the middle.

It was an easy read that did not require to much attention, so I was able to multi task all the while solving the who done it aspect.

The author did an amazing job setting the atmosphere so it was easy to fall into the boarding school setting and you could find yourself looking over your shoulder for the villain.

Overall I was not over whelmed or underwhelmed with this book, while there was nothing that stood out for me. This was a nice laid back mystery that left me completely satisfied like a cup of cocoa on a cold day.

This one just didn't do it for me. It was far too Gossip Girl-ish, and that show was just nonsense. Everyone lies, everyone has secrets, and no one wants to see those lies or secrets exposed. Such a cliche and it has been done much better.

I tried hard with this one but I didn't get far and I've been trying to read it for 4 months. It's likely not the book but me so I can't give it a fair review.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2021 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2021/02/2021-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

One of my favorite elements in a book is a well-written unreliable narrator. In Good Girls Lie, everyone has secrets, and those secrets are beginning to put lives in danger. I'd been a little apprehensive about reading a thriller set in a prep school, but I found this book to be appealing even for those like myself who are over the age of thirty. There is some prep school drama to be sure, but it is on a more sinister level than you would expect.

Wow! This story will definitely keep you on the edge of your seat! With major Gossip Girl vibes, Good Girls Lie is a dark story of betrayal, family secrets and lies. The dialogue was a bit confusing at times and I had to keep flipping back to make sure I knew who was speaking. Overall, it was just okay.

I had never read anything by JT Ellison, mostly because I’m not a huge fan of psychological thrillers. But I had heard a lot of good things about Ellison’s writing, so when I was offered a review copy of Good Girls Lie by the publisher, I gave it a try. What I found was a tightly written book that kept me reading late into the night.

Good Girls Lie is set in an elite all-girls college prep school in a small town in Virginia. It’s exclusive, with only fifty students admitted each year, hand-picked by the Dean, and presumably destined for great things - or at least for Ivy League colleges. The setting is appropriately gothic with gorgeous but slightly spooky old buildings, secret tunnels, rumors of past deaths, and secret societies. But it turns out that privilege doesn’t change basic human behavior, and in the pressure cooker of the Goode School, people start turning up dead.

Ellison tells her story from a number of different viewpoints, including that of an unknown narrator, which makes things a little bit confusing at times. I suspect this is intentional, however, since the confusion definitely adds to the suspense of not knowing what’s going on or what’s going to happen next. Our heroine (or is she?) is Ash Carlyle, who has come all the way from England to the Goode School, after the death of her parents. She’s on full scholarship, which may make things awkward with her well-off classmates, and has some secrets in her past. And although the beginning felt a bit slow to me, partway in, Ellison takes all of these elements and mixes them into a compelling mystery with an ending that feels just right.

All-in-all, Good Girls Lie is an extremely well-written book, and if psychological thrillers are your thing, I highly recommend it. It will keep you thinking you know what's going on, then finding out you don't, and then finding out you don't all over again. It did, however, confirm for me that I’m just not that fond personally of this type of book. It may be a little pedestrian of me, but I like to empathize with at least some of the characters, and I had trouble finding any of the characters that I liked enough for empathy. I don’t give many five star ratings, maybe one in thirty or forty books that I read, and Good Girls Lie isn’t quite at that level (and wouldn’t have been, even if I did like its genre). But I’m giving it a very solid four-star rating, and I would have given it four-and-a-half stars if I could. Just make sure you like this kind of book before you start!

And my thanks to Harlequin/MIRA and NetGalley for the review copy!