THE LAST TIME I LIED
RILEY SAGER
****
The events of a trip to Camp Nightingale still haunt Emma 15 years later. When 3 girls in her cabin disappear never to be seen again she is left with no closure in what happened to them. So when she gets an invite to go back to camp as a teacher she leaps at the opportunity to solve the mystery once and for all – but at what cost?
Last Time I Lied is a twisty thriller told in the first person, with occasional second person passages. I thought Emma was a complex and well thought out character, with depth of feelings of guilt and paranoia as well as a touch of psychosis. The author was trying to instill a feeling of an unreliable narrator in her but I felt it was a little hit and miss in places. This may be because I’ve just read a book that did the same premise a lot better but I found the motivation behind her withholding information to be a little confusing. The foreboding sentences to end the chapters also became somewhat wearing over time.
The story itself alternates between the flashbacks of Emma 15 years ago and the present story of her now. This started to get nicely muddled as she entered the same setting when she was older which I liked as a mechanic. There are some nice twists and lots of red herrings which means you don’t really trust any of the other characters – at some point in the story you end up suspecting each of them. I did feel that although the ending was quite fast paced, a few places earlier in the story lost pace and started to drag.
Overall I enjoyed Last Time I Lied, it’s a twisty thriller in a great setting. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Ebury Press for a copy of the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Time-Lied-Riley-Sager-ebook/dp/B076C6F6GB/