Simon & Schuster, July 25, 2017.
Three Stars
Isa is a new mom in her early thirties with a
successful career as a lawyer, when she gets a text from a childhood friend
that brings her back to her boarding school days. The text is from her friend
Kate, who still lives in her crumbling childhood home on the marshes of Salten,
and it only consists of three words: “I need you.” Isa doesn’t hesitate when
she packs up baby Freya, tells her husband she is going to a high school
reunion, and jumps on a train to Salten.
Kate and Isa were also close to two other girls at
school, Thea and Fatima. As the novel alternates between the past and the
present, we learn about the complicated dynamic between the girls. They meet on
the first day of the school year and are quickly introduced to “the lying game,”
in which the girls award each other points for telling outlandish yet convincing
lies. There are only a few rules to the game, but the most important is that
the girls never lie to each other. They trust each other with their deepest
secrets, but how well do they really know each other?
Now, many years later, the friends are reunited in
Salten, where they town is desolate and decaying, and Kate’s family home is
falling slowly into the sea. Fatima and Thea received the cryptic text as well,
and when all the women arrive, Kate reveals why she has summoned them – a body
has washed up on the shores of the marsh, and it may be connected to the
secrets and lies of their boarding school days. The only way to keep their
secret is continuing to play the lying game.
This is a thriller, but it has a slower, darker pace –
until the tense atmosphere is escalated at the end. It is more complex than
some thrillers, and yet it is implausible in many ways. The urgency that brings
the girls back together seems especially contrived and unnecessary. I found Isa
to be melodramatic and immature, although all the main characters are
well-developed and distinct – in fact, I think it might have been better if the
narration alternated between all four of the girls. Although she narrated the
entire novel, Isa was actually the least interesting character – but maybe she
was also the most relatable because she was so generic. However, even with
these minor flaws, I found this novel to be very entertaining and
unpredictable, and I sped through it to find out the girls’ secrets, and the
consequences of the lying game.
I received this book from Simon & Schuster and
NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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