After reading and thoroughly enjoying in a dark dark wood and also enjoying woman in cabin 10, but not asmuch as Ms Wares first I had high expectations for this book. It was a good, fast paced read but I didn't devour it like the first. I would really call this a psychological thriller. Drama/Mystery more so.

I was very excited to dig into this mystery and was hoping for lots of twists and turns with such a promising title and premise. Meh...it ended up being just okay. It was a fast read and held my interest but the characters were one dimensional and the story wasn't as dark and twisty as I had hoped. Mystery lovers with expectations in check may want to give it a try.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a complimentary digital review copy of this book.

When Kate texts "I need you," Isa, Fatima, and Thea know they must drop everything and rush back to the small seaside town they left in disgrace all those years before. Tied together by a dangerous secret and a vow to never lie to each other, they fear the past is washing back up on shore, a past that may ruin their presents. As Isa remembers her brief time at the private school she is exiled to and the events leading to their biggest lie, the women are threatened by an unknown player who could ruin everything.

Not quite as thrillings her previous two novels, still a fine and quick summer read. I wish more time was spent exploring some of the other characters besides the four main girls or if the reader was given another POV besides Isa's. I did feel the depictions of Isa's new motherhood and the fear/love she has for her six-month-old daughter were very accurate, especially the complete and utter lack of personal space new nursing mother's have. Ware captured that claustrophobia and sense of pride very well.

I'm a huge Ruth Ware fan so I was prepared to enjoy this book and of course I did! I'm also a sucker for books that take place at a school so the backstory of Salten was fascinating as well. Four friends, separated for seventeen years, reconvene when the mysterious text, "I need you" reaches them all. Bound by secrets and lies, the four women must puzzle out their next moves as the past threatens to destroy the lives they have created for themselves (and of course, hidden from their families). Even though you may figure out The Secret before the end, it is Ware's trademark to keep you guessing everything. A very satisfying read!

This book doesn't quite live up to its potential. All the ingredients are there for a good suspense/murder mystery, but characters are not fleshed out enough and the past story is given too little time and attention. Not as good as The Woman in Cabin 10 or In a Dark Dark Wood

4 young girls in boarding school made a pact to be friends forever. The basis of their friendship was tying to their teachers, friends and family but never to each other. When Isa gets a text from Kate that says I need you she drops everything and packs up her new baby and heads to help her. Thea and Fatima are also on their way. How could 1 lie in their past lead to this point. The women must confront their guilt and the role they played in this thriller. I think this is Ruth Ware's best book so far. The characters are well defined and very real.

Isa, Fatima, Thea, and Kate have been best friends since they first met at boarding school. For a time, they were inseparable- sharing new experiences, secrets, and the game of lies- where anyone besides their close quartet was fair game for deception.
Eventually, though, the game ends with a lie so big that it tears them apart even while it binds their loyalty. Expelled and taken away from each other, time passes and the girls try to bury the lie and build lives for themselves- until years later when Kate calls her friends to warn them that the truth is threatening to come to light.
Fans of Ware's thrillers will not be disappointed with her latest novel, which ekes out the truth through past and present timelines. Many characters will come under suspicion, clues will be examined, and shocking secrets will be revealed, all while the reader enjoys every page.

While I enjoyed this book, I found it to be a little over dramatic. The author tends to focus on one thing in her books, but it is not something that is important to me. In her last book, it was the identity of the missing girl, which seemed very over dramatic and blown out of proportion (she just met the girl, who cares who she is?!). In this one, the mystery did end up being flushed out better than her last book, but it was still misleading as to why the three other girls, who had not spoken to Kate in YEARS, would care if she needed help. The book did seem to drag on and repeat itself, but I did enjoy the mystery and the ending wasn't what I was expecting.

Lies are nothing but trouble, but are they sometimes necessary as a means of protection? Perhaps. This wasn't necessarily a thriller, but a well told story of friendship, loyalty and searching out the truth.

This is the third novel of Ruth Ware that I've read. I picked her first up from the shelf at the library based on the cover and book flap. I devoured it. It reminded me a lot of books that I enjoyed reading growing up. Her sophomore attempt wasn't my favorite, but I still read it quickly.

It's hard not to compare this book to her first two.. because it's not so much of a "thriller" as it is a feeling of cold dread. Four friends gather at one's request.. and things are not what they seem. These girls were involved in something in their past, and Ruth Ware does a great job of teasing what happened.

This book moved slowly, especially through the first half. But it was necessary to establish the characters and their relationships to one another. This may bother some readers, because here Ware departs from her previous two books.

All in all, I think that this is the best book that Ruth Ware has written yet and I will pick up anything she writes from here on out.

*Thanks go to Netgalley for providing an ARC for me to read. I was not compensated for this review and all thoughts and ideas are my own.*

Ruth Ware does it again with thrilling suspense and a surprise ending.

The Lying Game, by Ruth Ware, kept me eagerly reading until I finished within a 24 hour time period. Her writing style resulted in descriptive characters, who were easy to become involved with. Thinking about my school days, I asked myself how much would I lie to protect my best friends, which is what Kate, Isa, Thea, and Fatima had to do......seventeen years after they were out of school, with lives and families of their own. At what point, after mysterious bones wash up on the shores of their old school grounds, do the girls face their pasts and decide if they can continue living with their secrets. This book is a great read, full of action and characters you care about. You will be kept guessing right up to the end.

Isa Wilde, a lawyer and new mother, has left her youthful, boarding school days behind her, but it only takes one text to bring the past into her present: I NEED YOU. That one text from Kate lures Isa back into the world of Salten and into the lying game.

The Lying Game feels less like a thriller and more like a standard mystery, a slow-to-start mystery at that. The sinister, creepy atmospheres I anticipate from Ware are diluted or missing. The descriptions and dialogue, while beautiful, feel stretched—like maybe they are pulled too far?

The boarding school flashbacks are clever—Ware really is a brilliant writer, but I don’t particularly like any of her characters. To be fair, I haven’t liked any of Ware’s protagonists. Ware is so talented at crafting flawed characters, characters I can simultaneously relate to and dislike.

Fans of Ware’s other novels will enjoy this this one, but perhaps not as much. I will definitely read her next novel even if I am a tad disappointed in The Lying Game. Props to the cover design--very appealing!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy.

Isa Wilde is happy, in a loving relationship with a new baby, finds her life turned upside down by a text message from a classmate whom she hasn't seen for 15 years--not since Isa and her 3 closest friends were expelled from their boarding school in the wake of a scandal. Now the body of the long missing father of one of the girls has been found and the friends carefully constructed version of the events surrounding the man's disappearance.

Ruth Ware has done it again. As soon as I see one of her books out I grab it up and read it in a day. This novel is about 4 young woman who met up as teenagers at a boarding school. Kate, Fatima, Thea and Isa were a very close group of girls in school harboring a great secret. I enjoyed the way the secret was slowly unraveled in layers to let us in. The relationships between the young women was very realistic. There were a number of twists and turns slowly developing among the plot to keep the reader in suspense. I would actually like Ruth Ware to write another novel with these 4 characters as I found myself very attached to them while reading the book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It had me either perplexed, or guessing the wrong outcome until the very end. A few character decisions (mostly those of Isa in relation to some situations she put her child in) seemed fairly unlikely to me, that is the only reason I would give this book 4 stars instead of 5.

Ruth Ware has done it again! If this is your first Ware book, you'll be excited and intrigued by Fatima, Kate, Thea, and Isa's high school days and their present-day lives. For fans who already love her, The Lying Game won't disappoint! When Kate's father, who doubled as their art teacher, commits suicide while they're still teenagers, the boarding school they attended made assumptions about their relationship with him in and out of school. Years later, when the four of them are living separate lives, Kate sends an ominous text that reunites them in her home (a character in its own right), and forces them to go back to the night in high school that changed their lives forever. For those who don't like gruesome mysteries or thrillers that disturb you for awhile, rest assured, this one will keep you reading but won't give you weeks of nightmares!

I guess Ware's books tend to be more of slow burns, but this one was a bit too slow for me. I think her first two were better. 2.5 stars.

This needed editing. If it were shorter and more tightly paced, I would have liked it better. As of now, it feels like a longer, more rambling version of In a Dark, Dark Wood (isolationist setting, clues in a written work, betrayal by a friend the protagonist hasn't seen in many years, and on and on). The mystery wasn't all that involving and unfolded far too slowly. I really like Ware's writing and the setting was great, but the inclusion of Isa's infant was distracting and ridiculous, and none of the characters, for as smart as they are, made any intelligent decisions. With about 50 fewer pages and about 3 fewer train rides, this wouldn't have felt as sluggish.

While this is not the big mystery that was The Girl in Cabin 10, The Lying Game was an easy read and would be perfect for a summer beach read. Isa, Fatima, Kate, and Thea are long-time school friends with a secret. If the secret gets out, their lives will be changed forever. The character development is not as rich as with Ware's previous novel. I didn't care for anyone in the novel, although narrator Isa seemed to be reliable.