A complex multi-layered story that shifts from present to past seamlessly as we uncover the mystery surrounding Camp Nightingale.
Emma is a painter of some success. She is surprised when she is asked to spend the summer at Camp Nightingale teaching painting to the girls staying there. She is surprised because last time she was there, fifteen years earlier, three girls disappeared and Emma was one of the last to see them.
Shifting time scale means we’re never certain who’s hiding what, or what piece of information has been left out. Slowly getting to know the girls was an intriguing process.
Using a derivative plot for the present makes perfect sense once we know what’s happening.
Personally I’d have liked to know a little more about exactly what prompted certain actions but the story was well-executed and I was never certain how much our narrator was to be trusted.
Thank you NetGalley for providing access to this. A great read.

Many thanks to Netgalley, publisher and author for a copy of this book.

I've been keeping this on my list for days when I'm doing nothing and I can just. After Riley's last book, I've been so looking forward to the next one and it really didn't disappoint.

15 years ago 3 girls in summer camp went missing and the last person to see them was Em, the 4th younger girl staying in their cabin. In the present day Em is a successful artist but she can only paint the missing girls..............what happened all those years ago?

With twists and turns and an ending you don't expect this is a fab summer read and I highly recommend it!

Another mystery masterpiece from Riley Sager, I read Final Girls last year and gave it 5 stars but I actually think this one was even better. Despite never having been to a summer camp I am a sucker for it being used as a horror setting. There's something so unnerving about being away from home with a load of strangers..
The main character Emma attended camp 15 years ago and tragedy happened when her 3 bunkmates vanished and never returned. She has never gotten over it and is now an artist who hides the 3 girls in all her paintings. She then gets invited to return to the camp to become an art teacher and despite being hesitant at first she decides to go and see if she can solve the mystery behind the vanishings.
Of course there are a ton of twists and turns in this novel that I didn't see coming and after 2 great books I am already making Riley Sager an auto-read author.

Spread across the present times and flashbacks to 15 years prior when three girls disappear from a summer camp, the story tells of Emma who shared a cabin with the missing girls and is still haunted by their disappearance.

The camp which closed after the disappearance reopens and Emma is invited to return as a instructor for the opening season. She returns to lay the ghosts of her past to rest and is determined to solve the mystery of the girls disappearance.

A host of secrets are exposed throughout the story each seeming to lead to the solving of the mystery but the story that keeps you guessing until the final words on the last page.

Great story, highly recommended reading.

A slow-burner, but gripping. Unreliable narrator & all around her make for a compelling story with the focus firmly on the damage people can do to each other through different types of honesty.

I love the ambiguity of the title too

Wow-ee! I have literally just finished it as I type, and that ending has sent shivers down my spine. Riley Sager you are a genius, I raced through it and loved how it has a whole R.L.Stine ‘goosebumps’ feel to it, but for adults, obviously.

I loved the whole back and forth, who did what, guessing game… and every time I thought the pieces had fallen into place, Riley changes tact and blows it all up again. The creative characters make this an incredibly easy read, and the flow of the storyline is perfect with the way we weave in and out of each time zone, from present day to fifteen-years-ago, which zests things up a bit and makes it fun.

I loved Emma and her artistic abilities. She uses said art to help her anxiety and deal with the past, but when the opportunity arises for her to return to the ‘scene of the crime’, although a little reluctant, she does jump at the chance to finally find out what happened and give those three girls, the justice they deserve.

What actually happened though will Blow. Your. Mind. … and I loved the use of an insane asylum, one of my favourite grizzly topics.

As for the whole Summer Camp vibe, it is the perfect setting for what Riley is trying to achieve with the story. What teenager wouldn’t want to leave their home and parents for six weeks partaking in fun activities? When I was a kid, I used to dream of being American and attending such a place… but probably not this one… lets name it Nightmare Camp, really, but why? Is it the place, or the people inside, that give us the spooks?

There is a whole ‘mean girls’ aspect to it, you know, the rich and the spoilt kind, which I really enjoyed. Those girls added some flavour to the story, and the characterisation is done realistic and really well.

It all becomes a modern day nightmare for Emma as the past starts to chase her, and events appear to happen all over again… it is fast-paced reading towards the end, whilst the beginning builds slowly on creating atmosphere.

Thank you to Ebury Publishing for my copy via Netgalley, in return for an honest review. Put it this way, I devoured it in a day.

Last Time I Lied isn’t out until mid-July, but it is worth the wait!

A 13year old Emma gets women up to be told she is of to summer camp that she had longed to go to for a while, but not all we long for matches our expectations but that's called life. She arrives very late and there is no room for her in a chalet with girls her age so she had to share with some of the older girls but she holds her own as you hopefully will see. However all changes on the morning of the fifth of July when there are no other girls in the chalet or anywhere to be found.
So after 15 years the camp is reopen and Emma is invited to come and help teach the campers to paint, and that's where i have to stop so you can discover what happens next there's plenty to discover and twists that will keep you hooked if your like me that is.
I have been given a free copy of this book from NetGalley in return for a honest review, and i honestly hope you love it as much as me.

As I really enjoyed "Final Girls" by the same author I was interested to see what he came up with next. Sadly, "Last Time I Lied" did not live up to the promise of the previous novel. It tells the story of a holiday camp for teenage girls in two time sequences, fifteen years apart. In the earlier sequence three sixteen year olds disappear without trace, leaving behind a younger girl, who narrates the story. The second story is set fifteen years later after the camp has reopened, and the same girl (now an up and coming artist) is invited to return to heal old wounds. There begins a mystery over two time sequences, which may or not be connected. Expect unreliable narration, bitchy teenage girls and lots of very boring and moaning characters you're not going to care much about. It has a big 'reveal' about 70% into the novel and then kind of peters out with a 'Scoobie Doo' type ending. Whereas the previous novel had a great lead character, this book did not, and she seemed to sleepwalk through a book which struggled to rise above mediocre.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for an arc in exchange for an honest review.
This book captured my interest as soon as I read the synopsis, and it did not disappoint. This story was packed with intrigue and mystery. The plot unwinds like a tight knot of wool. With each little unpick you think you are winning, and then you reach another little knot to unpick, and then another and then another. By the time you get to the centre, you are so focused you are completely oblivious to your surroundings, you discover you are decidedly chilly and your nerves are more frayed than the wool!! The ending to this book is brilliant, and definitely not one I saw unravelling.

This is a really good thriller. I read Final Girls and loved it. It was a brilliant thriller. Last Time I Lied is really well put together with a lot put into the plot. The ending is brilliant. It was a total shock. It took me completely by surprise. I had thought up many endings as I was reading the book but not this one. I would definitely recommend this book and I hope there is another one soon.

If 'Final Girls' was THE book of last year, then I sincerely think that Riley Sager is going to do it all over again with 'Last Time I lied'.
Again he takes horror movie tropes-this time the summer camp by a lake which is possibly haunted-as a setting.
It whips back and forth between the original events of the narrator's childhood experience at Camp Midnight, and her return as a grownup.
The central plot is that Emma, the main character, is facing her demons by returning to the place where 3 of her bunkmates mysteriously vanished 15 years ago.
The twists and turns and liberties taken with the 'unreliable narrator; keep you reading right to the very end and I absolutely loved it as much, if not more than, 'Final Girls'.
Thank you so much Netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this amazing book.

There’s something really creepy about summer camps - maybe it;s the films I’ve seen and the novels I’ve read up to now, but this one really got me. Blimey! I’ve been to a few myself which is what really brought it home. Only one in the USA but probably just as well I didn’t go to the Ariondacks...

I enjoyed the first Riley Sager but this was something else. Is Emma telling the truth of what happened? What would you feel like if you found out your room mates missing? The empty dull slam of the wooden cabin doors and the claustrophobic forest rustle - there were some deliciously chilling details throughout which make me shudder.

Someone returning to the scene of the crime so to speak years later brings back all kinds of emotions in both the characters and reader and this was very well done. There’s a lot of character depth - as deep as that dark Lake in the middle of Camp Nightingale. What will you find at the murky depths? Brrrr

There’s a lot to love about this thriller. This book is like a forest with those twisty vines that trip you up at every turn, noises to make you jump and pages which rustle as loud as those trees. Then there’s that lake. That camp. Those lies.

There’s now a new meaning to the phrase Cabin fever!

This is a great book, easy to read, with some surprises along the way. There were a couple of oddities about it, that drew away from the realism of the book and meant that I couldn't wholly get in to it - such as the secret camera, misleads about the lodge and the finale. Worth reading, but only once.

Thanks Netgalley, Publisher and the Author. This is an absolutely brilliant and intense thriller and would highly recommend to other readers.

I was really looking forward to the new Riley Sager book after thoroughly enjoying ‘Final Girls’.

‘The Last Time I Lied’ definitely checked all the tick boxes as far as meeting the requirements of a great suspense thriller are concerned. I definitely admit to enjoying the suspense that was offered and being enthralled by the rollercoaster ride of twists and turns and an exceptionally brilliant ending to top it off.

*Spoiler* I just found that I couldn’t over look some of the plot flaws, as much as I tried. I know a big part of being swept up in a novel is to simply enjoy the journey, rather than question every nuance, but during this particular journey I just found it too difficult.
When the new girls went missing the first thing anyone would think of would be to check the camera, this definitely would not have been overlooked by every single person other than the culprit. Additionally, Emma had been missing with the kids for a full afternoon a day or two back, which at the time was addressed as a point of concern. Bearing that in mind there is no way no-one wouldn’t have brought up that little sojourn during initial interviews. Perhaps some justification for these oversights might have assisted, although perhaps even that wouldn’t have sufficed.

All in all this was a good read, but I just felt it could have been something greater.

I’d already read and enjoyed ‘Final Girls’, so I was really happy to be given the opportunity to read ‘The Last Time I Lied’.
The plot and writing are just as good this time round. It’s hard to describe, but these books make me feel nostalgic for the supernatural and horror books I read in my teens; they’re not truly frightening, but there’s something wonderfully creepy about explorations in the woods, people disappearing, families with skeletons in the closet and troubled heroines.
I can’t wait for the next one.

I devoured this book! It's like reading a grown up Nancy Drew. Loads of suspects, nefarious goings on in the middle of the night, a drowned village and a hunky camp leader, what more can a girl want? How about a cracking ending, yep got that too. Another winner from Riler Sager.

3,5 Stars

I loved Riley Sager's debut novel and had high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, my expectations weren't met completely. I really liked the general setup and the characters, but the story's resolution fell somewhat flat for me and I expected more.

An absolutely amazing book that had me hooked from the first page. Cunningly written I loved every page of this intense mystery along with its diverse characters. Thanks to a Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.