The Last Time I lied by Riley Sager: My Review
The Last Time I lied by Riley Sager: My Review
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Last Time I Lied
By Riley Sager
SYNOPSIS
Two Truths and a Lie. The girls played it all the time in their cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis, the youngest of the group. But the games ended the night Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out of the cabin into the darkness. The last she--or anyone--saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips.
Now a rising star in the New York art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings--massive canvases filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches that cover ghostly shapes in white dresses. When the paintings catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale, she implores Emma to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor. Seeing an opportunity to find out what really happened to her friends all those years ago, Emma agrees.
Familiar faces, unchanged cabins, and the same dark lake haunt Nightingale, even though the camp is opening its doors for the first time since the disappearances. Emma is even assigned to the same cabin she slept in as a teenager, but soon discovers a security camera--the only one on the property--pointed directly at its door. Then cryptic clues that Vivian left behind about the camp's twisted origins begin surfacing. As she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past while facing mysterious threats in the present. And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale and what really happened to those girls, the more she realizes that closure could come at a deadly price.
MY REVIEW
My Rating: 5 Stars
I have read a lot of thrillers this year, but few have pulled me in as The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager. I loved the summer camp creepiness of this novel, as well as the multifaceted messages it imparts to the reader. There are tales here of young love, sisterhood, trauma, and trust rolled into this beautifully worded 400 page stand-alone.
I personally loved the descriptions of the main character Emma Davies and her paintings whereby she hides the three girls who went missing in her youth beneath the very textured layers of paint which make her works noticeable. I loved her relationship with Theo, and I loved the flashbacks to her youth, which really evoked memories of my own teen years. The strength of pubescent love, the confusion of teenage desire and the very first experience of heartbreak were so clearly summoned by the author it was as though I was back in that same mindset, where love and betrayal are so acute, so blindingly intense, that the experience can feel like both the best and worst thing in the world.
The climax of this novel, where we learn of the true fate suffered by Natalie and Alison, as well as the conclusion to Vivian’s own story left me breathless long after I turned the last page. I was extremely surprised by the direction the ending took, and also grateful that the author seemed to recognize that both Emma and Theo were not simply able to ride off into the sunset together. This book not only dissects trauma, and pain, and friendship, but gives them due respect as well. Highly recommended, and definitely a thriller I would re-read, which for me is nothing short of rare.
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