I as very intrigued by this book after reading sager's Final Girls and this lived up to my expectations. It keeps you guessing right up until the end and has some incredibly evocative and descriptive sections which would work fantastically in film, I will definitely be recommending this book to fellow mystery enthusiasts.

Actual rating: 3.75 stars.

I enjoyed Riley Sager's debut, Final Girls, so I was looking forward to Last Time I Lied. Although it started a little slowly for me, I ended up enjoying it as much as its predecessor.

The story follows our protagonist, Emma, as she comes back to work at the summer camp where years before three of her friends disappeared without a trace. She feels guilty about their fates and hopes to find out what happened to them. As she comes closer to the truth, strange things start happening and she realizes her own life might be in danger. The present storyline alternates with the past, as we also learn what happened before the three girls' disappearance.

As I said, the plot takes a while to get interesting. The first part was alright: I enjoyed the parts set in the past, but I wasn't that invested in the present. Emma's investigation was not that exciting at first, and only when more serious things started happening I got hooked. Then the first part ended with a twist, maybe not overly shocking but one I really hadn't seen coming, and after that I could not put the book down. The second part was much better, fast paced and engrossing: as I noted before in Final Girls, Riley Sager's really knows how to write finales.

I was also happy with the solution of the mystery. I won't go into details because of spoilers, but it was satisfying and unexpected.

I will definitely continue to follow this author.

Riley Sager shows that his pacey debut, The Final Girls, was no fluke with this excellent, and in many ways superior, follow up.
Sager, who is a pseudonym of mystery writer Todd Ritter, has a real page turner on his hands, with a sharply written mystery/thriller and an engaging and interesting cast of characters.
Set in a lakeside summer camp, and told over two time periods fifteen years apart, it tells of the disappearance of three girls and the lingering effects the mystery has on its protagonist and other players.
The weaving of the two time periods works well and the setting, think Camp Crystal Lake meets Heathers, is an interesting one.
After an impressive build up, the flurry of reveals and false endings don't quite work as well as expected but the final twist when it comes is a doozy.

A fabulous read! The plot is intriguing and I didn't guess the ending. Really well written with believable characters. I could definitely see this book being adapted onto the big screen.

This is a truly good book. The storyline is original and compulsive. The ending also has not one but two surprises and that is always welcome. The setting is well constructed and there are enough potential baddies to keep you guessing. I recommend this wholeheartedly.

Was very interested to read this one since the authors previous book was one of my favourites of the year. I was not disappointed. Twisty and kept me guessing all the way through. Already looking forward to more books written by this author.

I completely fell in love with Riley Sager's last book - Final Girls because it was a little bit different but felt topical. This books is similarly about lies and deception but completely different.

The Last Time I Lied focuses on the goings on at a summer camp, known by many as camp rich bitch. Emma never thought she would get to attend, then when she suddenly gets the opportunity its not the summer shes always dreamed of.  Emma stands out as a late arrival and ends up bunking with girls older than her, after an awkward start she manages to become one of them,  a little sister to their leader - Vivian. One night her new friends disappear and Emmas world is turned upside down. 

Fast forward to the present day and the events at the camp still haunt Emma, so when shes invited back to the camp when it reopens to help teach the kids art she takes the opportunity to get closure.  Ending up back in the same cabin as last time, with a group of young girls will Emma figure out the mystery that was left behind or will she regret dredging up old memories? 

As a character I found Emma easy to read, innocent and troubled, in a reader friendly way, which made following her story simple and easy to get lost in.

Emma is sent off to Summer Camp by her parents and as the last to arrive she is placed in a cabin with three other, older girls. As the youngest in the group she is anxious to fit in. Then one night, the three girls disappear, never to be found again. Fast forward 15 years. Emma is now a successful artist and is attending an exhibition of her work at a gallery. Enter, the owner of the summer camp who not only buys one of Emma’s large pieces of artwork but then goes on to invite her to join her at the newly opened Summer Camp as an Art teacher. However, each of Emma’s paintings contains a secret. These huge images of a forest conceal three girls dressed in white – the images that haunt Emma the missing girl.

In the action that follows we witness Emma full of doubts and worries, hallucinating and attempting to unearth the mystery of the three missing girls until history repeats itself. Slowly it becomes apparent that Emma herself has something to hide, something to feel guilty about.

I relished the idea of reading Riley Sager’s new book as I had enjoyed Final Girls so much. It did not disappoint but I preferred the first book, but that is not to downgrade this one No particular reason but perhaps it is just the idea of a Summer Camp being so far from my world that it held no resonance for me. That said, it is well-written and the characters held true and it was impossible to work out who was to be believed and who was the liar. Disappearing girls, creepy staff, wealthy owners, privileged girls, a flooded valley and an asylum. To top it all off, literally, the dark, spooky lake. Oh, let’s not forget the flourish at the end. Or, perhaps I lie.

If all this is your bag, read this. You will not be disappointed.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for providing an ARC via my Kindle in return for an honest review.

Last year brought us Riley Sager's debut novel The Final Girls which was a brilliant read. So does Last Time I Lied live up to its predecessor? Most definitely!

The novel changes between what is unfolding in the present, and then back to 15 years ago when Emma first stayed at Camp Nightingale. This switching timeframes meant that the undeniable tension that Sager created from pretty much the outset, was enough to keep me hooked right until the end. Emma was, understandably, a flawed character - made vulnerable from the disappearances of her three bunkmates on her first summer camp. She was likeable of course, but the questioning over her mental health could make her a slightly unreliable narrator - at times it is easy to question just how much you trust her and how innocent she is. This is made ever more questionable with the disappearance of her three new bunkmates/charges, when the weaving in and out of the present timeframe brings with it some quite obvious parallels.

The other characters are as well defined as Emma, even though some of them are merely only supporting ones and aren't as well developed, I still have quite a clear picture of them built up in my mind. Their interactions with Emma were almost like a trail of breadcrumbs which lead me down various paths of thoughts and suspicions. Needless to say most of these paths ended up in a dead-end! For, to be clear, there are plenty of twists and turns to keep most of us guessing just what fate had, or has, in store for the girls.

And then there is Camp Nightingale itself. And where Riley Sager excels in character creation, he matches it in the descriptions of the setting. I got a real sense of the remoteness of the Camp, and of its beauty, though I was especially intrigued by the campfire stories of its past and its creation. The "ghost stories" alluded to, add an air of not only mystery, but an underlying danger which pervades throughout Camp Nightingale and its acres of surrounding woodland. It is quite creepy at times, particularly the bird scene which was almost Hitchcock-esque in its painting, and left me feeling decidedly disturbed. The quest to find Emma's new friends, along with the slow, steady unravelling of the mysterious disappearance of the girls 15 years-ago, is thrilling and oh so perfectly executed.

I really thoroughly enjoyed Last Time I Lied; it's another corker of a book

Thank you to Netgalley, Riley Sagar and Ebury Publishing for my ARC of Last Time I Lied.

Summary

After 15 years Emma still hasn't got over the disappearance of her three friends at Camp Nightingale. Now, she's been asked to return. A semi successful artist these days, Emma is surprised when the camp's owner Franny turns up at one of her gallery showings and invites her to come back to the newly reopened camp as a painting teacher. Emma is at first understandably reluctant, but encouraged by her friend Marc to get 'closure', she agrees to return. But lies have a way of coming back to bite you and Emma is about to find that out...

Review

I read Riley's first book Final Girls last year and really enjoyed it (review here: https://lifehasafunnywayofsneakinguponyou.wordpress.com/2017/07/30/final-girls-by-riley-sager-review/) so I was excited for Last Time I Lied and my excitement was justified!

Last Time I Lied was even better than Final Girls, Emma is such a flawed character, a past full of lies and secrets, an obsession with the missing girls and a tendency to hallucinate, she is so far from being a reliable narrator and yet something makes you believe what she says.

Also, yet another superb twist. Well in fact, not one, but two. I had absolutely no clue what was going on I'll be honest. It was all so exciting making me turn the pages faster and faster as the story progressed. There's always that fine line between a shocking twist and the unbelievable and I think Riley got it just right with this ending. An absolute heart racing ride of a novel. I loved it!

Having been one of the first and (arguably) the biggest fan of “Final Girls”, it playing into my love of horror movies so very well, I was both excited and a little concerned to get hold of “Last Time I Lied” because you know, sometimes these author types can only really pull it off the once….Hmm.

NOT so with Riley Sager who has, with Last Time I Lied, written a right old proper page turner, with a brilliantly engaging unreliable narrator in Emma and a creepy, underlying menace to the prose which really digs deep. We have a group of enigmatic girls, a mysterious disappearance, a haunting lake and quite a few nefariously creepy goings on to throw into the mix, with a cleverly obfuscated plot that, in its final moments, managed to actually surprise me. Huge points for that one…

It is also beautifully written, on the literary side of psychological thrillers with great character depth and the ability to evoke an emotional response on quite a few levels, which appeals to me always – even if that emotional response creates a tendency to check under the bed before I get in it.

As history appears to be repeating itself for poor old Emma, it is compelling and downright riveting – we see past and present mixing up in her mind and in ours, as she returns to the scene of the “crime” determined to find closure. I liked the art angle, I could see the Emma’s paintings in my head so well described were they, weaving in and out of the wider plot to great effect.

Think Hanging Rock and shades of Camp Crystal Lake, with added literary flare and you’ll come close to the feel of “Last Time I Lied” – Riley Sager proving that the psychological thriller is far from dead, as long as it is in the right hands. These were the right hands.

One of my favourites so far this year.

Highly Recommended.

A great 2nd book by this author, a gripping story seamlessly told between years. Very cleverly written and will keep you gripped to the very last page.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4 stars

This is a great book, cleverly written, keeps you guessing and towards the end I was racing through to finish.

You never really know who’s the bad guy or girl, you think you know, but you don’t. Then you wonder if Emma is going slowly mad, or are there ghosts or...well that’s the point, you just don’t know.

It may start a little slow but stick with it, it’s just setting the scene for the wider story.

I absolutely adored this book. It was a fresh, inventive and thrilling take on the summer camp story that kept me engaged from page 1.. With two amazing books, Riley Sager has become one of my favorite writers. They know the dangers and familiar traps with these stories and turn them on their head. I'm still buzzing from the final chapter and can't wait to read it again.

As most readers know,when you start reading the second book by a author who's debut book totally blew you away,there is always that fear at the back of your mind that their second book won't be as good.Well I thought Last Time I Lied was just as jaw droppingly brilliant,gripping and intense as Final Girls.

Have you ever played two truths and a lie?


Emma has. Her first summer away from home, she learned how to play the game. And she learned how to lie.

Then three of her new friends went into the woods and never returned . . .

Now, years later, Emma has been asked to go back to the newly re-opened Camp Nightingale. She thinks she’s laying old ghosts to rest but really she’s returning to the scene of a crime.

Because Emma’s innocence might be the biggest lie of all

This gripping mystery flips back and forth between Emma`s first stay at Camp Nightingale,fifteen years ago when she was thirteen and her return in the present day.Emma was a wonderful,fleshed out character who carried around a lot of guilt over events that happened in the past.She was feisty but also had a vulnerable side to her character.It was hard not to rout for her even though at times due to the authors wonderful storytelling you were made to question Emma`s innocence and the reliability of her narrative.I loved the descriptions of the Adirondack forest that surrounded Camp Nightingale,how dark and sinister trees can seem at night and the breath taking descriptions of the stunningly,gorgeous,tranquil but also very deadly Lake Midnight.

I absolutely loved this unputdownable,gripping,at times very intense mystery,packed full of well thoughtout characters,red herrings,misdirections,and a couple of jaw dropping,omg twists.Even my all time favourite fictional detective Nancy Drew gets a mention.I enjoyed Last Time I Lied just as much as I enjoyed Final Girls,this is worth far more than five stars and is definitely going to be one of my favourite books of this year.