📚BOOK REVIEW📚
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This psychological thriller is the definition of unputdownable! The first night I read until my husband woke and nicely suggested I turn off my light and get some sleep, whoops! First time ever, lol. The second night I decided to quit at a reasonable (kind of) time. There wasn’t much left by the third night.

When I heard Annie Ward had another book coming out I flew to NG. Then I saw the cover and fell in love! Colorado as a setting was a bonus. Because I was wild over “Beautiful Bad”, I was ecstatic to get my hands on this ARC! I would like to thank Kim at Harlequin Books for recommending BB. You opened many doors in the book-reviewing community and I will be forever grateful!

A private school, wealthy parents, entitled students, and jealousy are the perfect storm! It is scandalous, clever, and viciously satisfying, attempting to expose the liars and lies.

The students are hiding something. Or are they protecting someone? The women? These catty ladies are great at investigating and presuming. How about the committed coach? He devotes considerable amounts of time to his students. Apart from training them, he’s a confidant and advisor in personal matters.

Thank you to Park Row Books / HTP Books for providing this complimentary copy through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

#thelyingclub #annieward #bookstagrammer #htpbooks #parkrowbooks #marchreads #cantputdown #justfinishedreading #htpinfluencer #bookaholic #booknerd #psychologicalthriller #booklove #bookrecommendations #mysteryandthrills #readallnight #thrillerafterthriller #bethrillingbookclub #thrillerfiction #lovereading #readwithme #bookaddict #thrillersofinstagram

#TheLyingClub:

I hadn’t heard of this until Tonya and KC put this on my radar. When I got the opportunity to listen to it thanks to Harper audio, I triple checked to make sure I requested it correctly because I needed it. This book did not disappoint, and I loved how juicy the drama was.

I loved the different lies, half truths, wild accusations that were in this book! I didn’t know who to trust or what was real. Page by page, we got the truth and it showed just how complex the “perfect/affluent” life really was. I really enjoyed Asha and Natalie’s storyline the most. They were great characters that had me at the edge of my seat.

Let’s talk audio. Teri Schnaubelt did a great job and really kept my interest. I felt like I was listening to three separate characters, and it helped me not get confused. Highly recommend the audio!

I loved the ending. It was so sneaky and fun and that kind of open ending smirk is what I live for! The detective work in the end and the revelation was mind blowing to me and I loved it. The sinister, sneaky, dark explanation was everything.

Thank you so much @parkrow and @harperaudio for the gifted copy! The Lying Club is out now!

** thank you NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for giving me an early copy in exchange for my honest review **

This book starts out really good, with the description of the crime scene and one of the characters wondering what had happened. Then it goes back to months before and it slows down. It gives us different perspectives and there are 3 main characters, however, you grab the concept real quick of who is who. Also, it took a while to get to the meat of the story but the drama between the moms was really good, it got me thinking that maybe the dead body was one of the moms. This was one of those thrillers that you don't know its a thriller until the last chapters because you see drama developing but don't know where it's all going except for the certainty that there will be two dead bodies at the end. Then, as the story keeps unfolding you see who the villain is and that's when you start experiencing the gut-wrenching feeling that all good thrillers give you. If you are into slow-paced thrillers this is for you, it doesn't have you at the edge of your seat the whole time but the drama is enough stimulation to keep you going until the climax of the story. By the end, you think you know everything and it gives you one final twist that is jaw-dropping.

“Here’s to, getting away with it”

One of my favorite tropes is dark academia, and it’s even better when it’s an exclusive school for rich kids, but also how their parents aren’t always the most upstanding citizens either despite their wealth.

Two soccer moms with BFF daughter’s with a prestigious soccer coach has told both they could have a chance of playing Div 1 soccer if they partake in extra private training with him. Money isn’t an issue and these moms will do anything if it helps their daughters get into college. However, the girls become distant to each other and it becomes aware that they both been lying and hiding things from them.

The middle aged moms have their typical cattiness and cheating husbands/cheating friends. Not to mention a school secretary who seems to be everywhere.

This was a rump shaker of a great ballsy takedown of a read, but who will get taken down and why?
That is the part that is ultimately appalling. I highly recommend this one.

TW: drug abuse and misuse, sexual trauma, child trauma and pornography

Thank you @htpbooks and @netgalley for my gifted copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Annie Ward's new novel The Lying Club opens with Natalie waking up from a blacked-out state clutching a man's necktie and seeing a dead body lying in a puddle of blood on the school gym floor. What did she do now? What did she do now- how can you resist reading on to find out? (And what did she do before?)

Natalie is a young woman working as an adminstrative assistant at a tony private school in Colorado. She helps to care for her brother who is recovering from an injury, and spends her free time selling her art on Etsy and showing up at open houses for homes she can't afford to check out the expensive art in them.

Asha is the realtor at the open houses, and her teenage daughter Mia and younger son Oliver attend the private school where Natalie works. Mia is a talented lacrosse player, and is often pitted against Sloane, another excellent lacrosse player. Sloane's mother Brooke is one of those moms who believes her daughter is headed to a Division 1 lacrosse scholarship and will make sure nothing or no one gets in the way of that.

Popular and charismatic lacrosse coach Nick McIntyre has connections with college coaches and he believes he can help both girls get into the best schools, but that will require dedication and hours of private coaching that cost lots of money. Brooke is totally onboard, Asha wants that if Mia truly wants it. Mia's father does not believe Mia wants to do it.

The book moves back and forth between a police interrogation and the events leading up to the dead body on the gym floor. The reader will recognize the character types in this propulsive story- the young woman who wants what she sees the wealthy women have, the moms with too much free time on their hands, too much money and are too invested in their children's identities as a reflection of themselves, the coach who lords his power over a community who value sports too highly.

Parents of teenagers will cringe at some of the dangerous things these teenagers do, unable to realize the consequences of their actions. The rivalry between parents is also something many people may recognize, perhaps unfortunately in themselves.

Reading The Lying Club will appeal to people who enjoy putting together the pieces of a puzzle. Annie Ward turns up the tension with each turn of the page until the explosive conclusion. Fans of Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies have found themselves a new author.

Thanks to Harlequin for putting me on their Winter Reads 2022 Blog Tours.

I really wanted to like this book based on the premise. It sounded like such an intense ride. Unfortunately I had a hard time connecting with the characters which caused it to be somewhat lacking in enjoyment. Still a solid read if you like mysteries.

Favorite Quotes:

Reade was an undeniably handsome seventeen-year-old. He played lacrosse in the spring, wrestled in the winter, and was the captain of the soccer team in the fall. To Natalie, he looked like the sort of boy who would go on to pledge a good fraternity, major in economics with a minor in sexual assault, and eventually become a businessman like his dad. Had his circumstances been less affluent, she assumed he would have been just fine because of his looks alone. There was always Chippendales, reality television, and porn.

Everyone had problems with everyone. The whole bunch. Every single last one of them had a reason to hate the other. Sometimes it felt like I was trying to do my job in a shark tank.

My Review:

There was a lot to unpack with this tautly written tale, which featured a plethora of itchy elements that kept me on edge and debating the motivations and veracity of the entire cast of characters. And there was quite an oddly compelling and uniquely vile assortment to sift through.

The storylines were uncomfortably realistic, edgy, and disquieting. I had full-on cold prickles and was so immersed in her characters’ narratives I often found myself flinching during perusal. This was my second time falling into a well-contrived Annie Ward enclave of ghastly humans, torrid secrets, and twisty intrigue, and while I’m looking forward to many more, I need a spa day to release a boatload of tension and knots in my neck.

In a world that is overcrowded with domestic “thrillers” this book stands out as one of the best. I oftentimes will start a domestic mystery/suspense/thriller and quickly DNF because I don’t connect with the characters and I could care less what happens to them. With The Lying Club, Annie Ward created a world full of engrossing and compelling characters. I apprehensively started this book thinking I might not connect with it and was happily surprised that I had consumed a third of it in one sitting and I just wanted to know what was going to happen next.

Ward cleverly starts the book out with a scene that is both intriguing and thrilling and then shifts the story backwards six months. Which is where it gets its comparison to Big Little Lies, which is another book that kept me glued to the pages with its fascinating story and characters. I loved how strong but flawed our main characters are. Ward does a brilliant job walking the tightrope of having likable characters but also leaving the reader guessing what they did or are capable of doing.

Another surprising element of this book was the actual story. I had no idea where it was going and I could never have guessed what it led up to. Interspersed throughout the story were short segments of the police interview of one of are main narrators, Natalie. The way the interview was weaved into the story kept the level of suspense high since it kept adding different layers to the story. And while I was blown away about how artfully Ward built the story, I was a little let down by the resolution of some of the tendrils of story. However, I usually can’t stand when a novel ends with an epilogue, but this one had a brilliant one.

I hope I have left you interested in reading this one, which you should definitely do if you love multi perspective suspense stories. There are trigger warnings for sexual assault, drugs, disordered eating, and self harm. With the weather warming up, this will be the perfect book to pick up after spending some time outside gardening or hiking or insert any other outdoor activity, to relax with a cold drink.

The Lying Club is an outrageously intense murder/mystery which takes place at a prestigious high school which caters to the wealthy families in Colorado.

First, we have Natalie. She is an office assistant in the principal’s office. She is the eyes and ears of the school. Although she is friendly with some of the mothers, she keeps her distance. She is dating the handsome Nick who coaches and trains the soccer team. That someone like her would even be on his radar is incredible! Although art is her passion, she has put her real love on hold to make money. She came here to be closer to help her brother Jay who was in a serious accident. Prior to this she had had breakdown and had been abusing drugs and alcohol. She had been clean for a while, until she met Jay’s medicine cabinet. She wakes up in her car one morning parked in front of the school. Unable to remember the night before she walks into the gym and finds a body. She immediately turns around for fear of what she has done.

Brooke is the mother of Sloane a rising high school soccer star who she has high expectations of going to an elite college and playing soccer. Coming from old money, Brooke has everything she needs plus more. She sits on multiple boards and travels extensively. She will do and pay anything to help Sloane achieve her goal. She is separated from Sloane’s father after cheating on him…again. Brook has a bit of a crush on Nick, but she seems to have many men on her radar. Brooke begins to notice Sloane’s personality shifting but figures it’s probably the teen years kicking in and her new boyfriend.

Asha is a realtor who has the perfect life. She has a son and daughter and a loving husband. Her daughter Mia is another rising soccer star and may perhaps be vying for the same spot as Brooke’s daughter when it comes to going to college. But Brook and Asha have been sort of friends for a long time. She feels they will be able to weather the storm. Then Asha’s husband begins to act strangely, very standoffish and not as connected to the family, traveling much more than usual. She suspects he is cheating, and she now has something very important to tell him but is hesitant. Mia begins to become quiet and stays in her room much more than she ever has. No matter how hard Asha tries, she can’t get Mia to tell her what’s wrong. Is her family falling apart?

So, what do these women have in common? Secrets. And lies. Sometimes that’s enough to bond people for life. As the police begin to investigate the mystery behind the dead body in the gym, the reader will be taken back in time and shown what has led up to the present pivotal situation. But not everything is clear cut. And not every secret can ever be told.

Everyone lies, but some do it much better than others. That’s why there is a Lying Club.

This book is brilliantly written with abounding suspense and mystery and shocking twists you don’t even see coming.

Thank you #NetGalley #ParkRow #AnnieWard #TheLyingClub for the advanced copy.

Deceit. Lies. Secrets. Gaslighting. Manipulation.

Annie Ward returns from Beautiful Bad with a drama-filled, scandalous domestic thriller —THE LYING GAME. The haves and the have nots.

Meet the protagonist, Natalie Bellman, an administrative assistant at the elite Falcon Academy private school in the beautiful Colorado Mountains. She has a crush on Nick and would love to have the money and beauty of the moms whose girls attend the school. She has lots of problems.

Handsome Nick Maguire, the athletic director at the academy and the girl's soccer team coach, is at the center of all the trouble and attention. Is he as charming as he seems? Can he be trusted?

Then there are the privileged moms and daughters of the school.
Brooke, the gorgeous heiress, mother, and cheater.
Asha, a helicopter mom overachiever, suspects her hubby is having an affair.

Everyone seems to want a piece of Nick.
Natalie and Brook want him.
Asha needs him to assist her daughter's future at UCLA.

There are lies, jealousy, infidelity, and now it looks like murder when two bodies are carried out of the school. Sloane (mom Brook) and Mia (mom Ash) are daughters and friends. They both play on the soccer team.

The first part of the book deals with the background and character development.
Natalie is completely crazy and makes terrible choices.
She thinks Nick likes her.
She self-medicates and stalks.
All the while trying to develop a relationship with the two moms who have hired Nick to give private soccer lessons to their daughters.

None of the characters are likable and toxic. Of course, these moms are privileged and wealthy. But they soon realize maybe Nick may not be what he appears to be.

Natalie wakes up in her car in the school's parking lot and sees footsteps in the snow leading to the gym and back to her car. She does not remember, but she sees the body lying in a pool of blood. Does all this sound a little crazy? It is.

A slow-burn, dark, and disturbing domestic thriller. However, the book speeds up about 70% when all the action starts. A school scandalized. An entire town obsessed with wealth, prestige, and winning has been an obsession.

Fans of Big Little Lies will enjoy this dark and twisty thriller of manipulation, backstabbing, entitlement, revenge, and murder. If you like a lot of drama, it has plenty.

Thank you to @parkrowbooks and @netgalley for an ARC to read, review and enjoy.

Blog Posted @ www.JudithDCollins.com
@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
Pub Date: March 22, 2022

The Lying Club opens with Natalie waking up in her car with her seatbelt on holding a man's tie. Her coat is wet and there are shapes in the snow indicating that she may have been outside and had fallen. There are also footprints so she follows them and, in the green emergency lights, spies a large puddle of blood on the school gym floor. Natalie is a young woman working as an administrative assistant at a fancy private school in Colorado. She is also an artist and also helps to care for her brother who has an injury. She sells her art and likes to look around open houses to see the art displayed on the walls inside. Asha is an estate agent and her teenage daughter, Mia and son, Oliver both attend the school, Falcon Academy, where Natalie works. Mia is a soccer player as is Sloane. Brooke, Sloane's mum is divorced and believes her daughter is the best soccer player. Coach, Nick McIntyre has connections and he believes he can help both girls get where they want to be.

With characters you will probably love to hate, this is an engrossing read. The pacing is steady as it moves between a police interrogation and the events leading up to the situation Natalie is in at the start of the novel. The novel is a family-style drama with themes of rivalry, manipulation, deceit, jealousy and revenge. Annie Ward ratchets up the tension at regular intervals until the explosive conclusion. Very highly recommended.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel at my request from Harlequin Trade Publishing, Park Row via NetGalley and this review is my unbiased opinion.

This was my first novel by Annie Ward and it won't be my last! The book opens with with a bang and we have 2 bodies found in the school's gymnasium. Obviously the big question is, who are the 2 bodies? Students? Parents? Teachers?

The novel then goes through a bit of a painful history, where we jump back a couple months to see what led to the big event. The history follows 3 women - 2 parents and the office administrator. I found this to be the most painful part of the novel because I didn't like any of the 3 characters. The parenting was very much lacking in the novel and there were times that the teenagers were better behaved than the parents.

Once I got to the 70% mark of the novel, I was hooked. I had some idea of what was going to happen but not how or why. I also enjoyed that there was a months after epilogue where we got to see some closure on the characters.

3 calculators out of a potential 5. A slow burn mystery that I eventually found myself not able to put down. Will be checking out Annie Ward's past and future novels!

Thank you to Netgallery and Harlequin Trade Publishing, Park Row for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Complex, suspenseful, so many lies, so much manipulation, thrilling twists - I loved it.

Set in an elite private school, the book focuses on two rich women whose daughters are trying to get accepted into the UCLA soccer program, an office assistant, and the handsome assistant athletic director who has a contact at UCLA. These mothers, Brooke and Asha, will do whatever it takes to get what they want and to advance the prospects of their children.

The book grabbed me from the very beginning when Natalie wakes up in her car. She is in the school’s parking lot. She sees her own footsteps in the snow leading to the school’s gym…and then back to her car. She is groggy and does not remember what she saw and why she returned to her car. Now she goes back to the gym and sees a body lying in a pool of blood on the floor inside.

The story is a slow build, but I never lost interest in it. There is something juicy about eavesdropping into the lives of the privileged wealthy and observing their fall. Great characters, even if they are mostly unlikeable. They seemed real, and I loved their juicy secrets and lies.

I received an advance copy of the book. The opinions here are my own.

Not sure how the title actually comes into play, but overall I really enjoyed this twisty thriller.

This is the story of a private school filled with privileged wealthy students and their parents. The parents will stop at nothing to help their children succeed. It is told from three points of view:
Natalie, the office assistant who has a bit of a drug problem
Asha, realtor and mom of two, including Mia who plays soccer; married to Phil, who she thinks is cheating.
Brooke, mother of Sloane who also plays soccer, divorced and a serial cheater.
And Nick, the charming, handsome, dynamic soccer coach at the center of it all.

The book opens with Natalie waking up in her car and finding someone dead (possibly)on the gym floor. We spend the rest of the book looking backward and then forward at what led up to this event and what happens afterward.

There are serious Big Little Lies vibes here and if you loved that book you will definitely like this one. There are so many twists. So much manipulation, gaslighting, backstabbing, and entitlement. It's like a train wreck you can't pull your eyes away from because most of the characters are completely despicable, yet...somehow you root for their success in spite of it.

The Lying Club is a slow burn mystery loaded with secrets, lies, cutthroat mothers and their children, and a coach that seems to be the guy everybody wants. I think I saw where someone mentioned this being a lot about the haves and the have-nots, and that's pretty accurate because we do get a fair amount of that. I'll just say now that I didn't like a single character in this one, but I don't really think I was supposed to, and to be honest, part of the fun of this one was all the stuff happening between these characters. It's kind of like peeking through the curtains at the neighborhood - a really twisted neighborhood, but certainly entertaining. The story does get dark at times, and the characters are almost maddening to watch as they make one bad decision after another, particularly one certain character and her bad decisions. It all comes together eventually, and Annie Ward keeps things moving with a slowly building tension. I'll leave it at that, so I don't give anything away. What it all comes down to is this one makes a great way to while away a weekend.

“Three women. Two bodies. One big lie…”

This book started off kind of slow. To be honest I wasn’t sure what I thought about it until about half way through but I enjoyed seeing how everything played out.

Some parts of the book were extremely predictable, like I called out the “bad guy” in the first quarter of the book, but there were other parts I didn’t see coming at all.

These rich women and their first world problems made the characters unlikeable in the beginning but as we dive deeper, the author does a terrific job of fleshing them out and making them more three dimensional. And even though we still don’t love them, they’re a lot easier to understand.

Overall an interesting and refreshing read. However my one major gripe was the lack of trigger warnings before reading this book. (Trigger warnings listed below)

A big thank you to Netgalley and Park Row Publishing for allowing me to read and review this book.

TW: Child pornography; Child exploitation; Mentions of self harm; Drug abuse

What's it about (in a nutshell):
The Lying Club by Annie Ward is a dark and twisty look at the world of high school athletics and all the adults involved.

What I Enjoyed:
I loved the last 30% of the novel, which is full of twists, turns, and deceptions. I enjoyed the story's shocking direction and quickly forgot that the first 70% is more of a slow build of the events leading up to the opening scene dotted with the police's interview of the main character in the current timeline. This police interview successfully kept the suspense level high as I learned the details of the opening scene, which made the slow-build not feel so slow.
Most of the characters are so wealthy and entitled that it made the story occasionally annoying and deliciously dark at other times. The characters are flawed, and their flaws are in the spotlight. But, other than that part of them, I didn't learn any more about what makes them tick. There are four primary adults: Natalie, Asha, Nicholas, and Brooke, and the story fluctuates between focusing on those four, particularly the three females. With all of the many secrets they each hold, it would be challenging to develop them more without giving away too much, so I didn't mind that at all.
The story stays very focused, which is another way that the pace never seems terribly slow, especially in the first half. I do enjoy a tightly constructed thriller, and this one delivers. The writing style is very fluid and gives away just enough to keep you on your toes the entire time. And the third-person narration with fluctuating focus is ideally suited for achieving this.
But there is not much else I can say about the story without telling you too much and risking spoilers.

Characters:
Natalie is a younger woman who works at the front desk of the local private school. She loves art and spends a lot of time helping her brother, who is in a wheelchair.
Brooke is a wealthy mother and is used to getting everything she wants. Her daughter is a freshman at the local private school and excels at soccer. Brooke is very competitive and does not take no for an answer.
Asha is a wealthy wife and mother who chooses to work as a real estate broker. She is married, and they have a daughter who is also a freshman at the local private school and a soccer star looking to play in college. Asha and Brooke are friendly but have not crossed the line into a true friendship.

What I Wish:
The slowness of the first 70% was not too bad, but if I had a wish to be granted, it would be less of the slow and more of the fast pace that only got 30% of the storytime.

To Read or Not to Read:
If you love domestic or psychological thrillers, you will want to pick up this dark and twisty read that is most scary because you could see it happening in real life.

We start out with a bang. An unreliable narrator that has no idea what is going on at the scene of a murder. As the book unfolds we are let into the lives of a rich community, the school, the staff and students at the school and the families of the students. As we watch it unfold, we get to see many who have reason to kill and are blind as to who was murdered.

I was thinking this would be just another rich kid story about privilege and them not appreciating things. But a lot of the story is told from Natalie’s pov. She is a young woman working in the office. While Natalie’s past trauma seemed a little out of place in the book, I kept reading because I needed to know who was murdered.

I liked the way the author brought in the interrogation and the reporter to help fill in some of the details. It made the story seem fresh. And while I was able to figure out a big part of the story, I was constantly changing my mind about who was in all that blood.

A world unlike those of the norm, where families have more money then they know what to do with and they make drama where they can so that they are entertained. When two bodies are taken out of the gym the secrets and rumors begin to fly.

Thank you to the publisher, Park Row, for providing me with an ARC of The Lying Club in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

The Gist
Well, where shall I start with this one? It’s been a heck of a week, which isn’t anything new. Yet, it still makes for a rather grumpy mood and I’m wondering if that has influenced my perception of The Lying Club.

Anyone, who has read at least a few reviews of mine, would know that I love murder mystery stories. Having to deal with a cold and being denied the pleasure of a good murder mystery may have significantly added to my bad mood.

The Details
What was going on with the characters in The Lying Club? They are all stock characters!

We have the “bored”, rich housewife who is constantly looking for something else to nip, tuck, stretch, tighten or gloss. There is the worried working mom. The character with a secret. And, of course, the one character who is so obvious I knew exactly their role in the story as soon as I saw their name and title.

So predictable! I found none of the characters likeable or interesting enough to make The Lying Club easier to get through.

At this point I should jump ahead and talk about the writing style before I can comment on the plot. I have to say the writing style was really very good.

The writing is easy to follow, has a great flow and is very relaxing.That’s what makes the next part so frustrating for me: there are too many abrupt changes in scenes. It’s ridiculous how quickly the setting changes from “the gym” to “later on that same night”.

I was in a sort of trance, reading this very relaxed style of storytelling when all of a sudden I find myself a handful of scenes later and I had to backtrack to find out where the jumps were.

I appreciate a good writing style and a writing style that allows me to take a breath and be taken on a journey. But not at the expense of being ripped out of it by severe jumps in time. Doesn’t work for me.

Having said that, the plot in The Lying Club appeared equally there but not really. It begins all so promising, only to be jolted this way and that. Throwing a whole bunch of tangents, red herrings and distractions in the mix, combined with a lot of unnecessary details makes for a very frustrating read.

The Verdict
Overall, I can’t say I enjoyed this. It started out very strong but quickly nosedived into a slow jumble of details and false pretences that makes The Lying Club a tedious read.

I can’t really recommend The Lying Club, it appears I’m in the minority with my unfavourable review.