Book Review: The Lying Game by Ruth Ware

Book: The Lying Game

Author: Ruth Ware

Pages: 372

Read on: Kindle 

Read in: 4-5 hours

Publisher: Vintage

Plot Summary: The text message arrives in the small hours of the night. It’s just three words: I need you. Isa drops everything, takes her baby daughter and heads straight to Salten. She spent the most significant days of her life at boarding school on the marshes there, days which still cast their shadow over her.

At school Isa and her three best friends used to play the Lying Game. They competed to convince people of the most outrageous stories. Now, after seventeen years of secrets, something terrible has been found on the beach. Something which will force Isa to confront her past, together with the three women she hasn't seen for years, but has never forgotten. 

Theirs is no cosy reunion: Salten isn't a safe place for them, not after what they did. It’s time for the women to get their story straight. 

Things I Liked: 

• The premise seemed interesting. There is just something about school best friends and secrets that, I am pretty sure, all of us can relate to! Best friends, who made a sport out of fibbing to people around them, harbouring a secret that was on the verge of being exposed just seemed so interesting. 

• The characters are interesting and fairly well developed. Isa and Fatima- the new girls, who befriended Kate and Thea on the first day of school, thereby joining the 'lying game'. The two new girls, who somehow still stay on the outside and are somewhat objective about the whole 'incident' that happened 17 years ago. Thea is still a wreck and, clearly, has issues that have not been discussed in the book. Kate is difficult to fathom or read up until the last few chapters. I liked how the author has kept her motivations secret till pretty much the end. 

• The friendship between the four girls- their fifteenth year in school together, rules broken, secrets shared, lies told- is fairly well depicted. You get pulled into their world of being in "semi-posh" school in a costal village in England, running wild and free, telling little and big lies, first loves and so on. The author has done a good job of world building. 

• Isa is the narrator of the book and we see the story unfold from her perspective. She and Fatima have the clearest heads in the book and they are the only ones who, finally, figure out what happened all those years ago. I liked both these characters, but I wish there was a little bit more about each girl. 

Things I Didn't Like:

• This book is based on the friendship of four girls and we don't get to learn much about three of them. For instance, I would've loved to learn a little bit more about Thea. The author has teased about her having some kind of an eating disorder, plus she also seems to be a cutter, but we get to know next to nothing about her or why she cuts or what her backstory is, which is such a missed opportunity! 

• There is also next to nothing about their school. The school is supposed to be where the girls met and where their "lying game" played out, but you hardly get to see their school life! 

• Also, for a book titled The Lying Game, there is not much of the game that we get to see as readers at all. They explain the rules of the game but there aren't enough instances shown of the game and its impact. The actual game or the lies that the girls told in that one year in Salten was not shown at all. And oh, btw, the "crime" has nothing to do with their lying game at all! 

• It is pretty easy to guess which "event" the girls are alluding to in the book. And because you can guess what must have happened all those years ago, it also narrows down the playing field quite a bit when it comes to who the killer could've been. This ruins the fun of the book quite a bit. I would've preferred if there were less obvious suspects of the "crime" and a few red herrings thrown in for good measure. 

• The book is missing on the menace factor. The blurb makes it seem like the villagers have it for the girls and there is something sinister at play, but there is nothing remotely of the sort. The only incident that the girls get into trouble with the villagers over their lies is just lame! I felt like there are so many lost opportunities in this book! Ugh! 

Rating: 3/5 

This is not a bad book but I just wish there was a bit more in terms of character development and just a better mystery overall.