The Lying Game

The Lying Game is an awesome read. Isa Wilde comes back to Salten in southern England when she gets a text message- "I need you"- from her old friend Kate. Her and Kate, along with Thea and Fatima, were inseparable when they attended school just outside the village, at a boarding school that was in some ways a last chance destination for some. The girls forged lifelong friendships with each other at the school, and played the Lying Game- a game with five rules that they used to make other people's lives miserable and to protect themselves.

The point of the game was to strike back at mean girls and teachers, anyone who would have looked down on the group or targeted them. And frankly they did it for fun too- they felt stronger together, and watched each other's back. One of the rules is to never lie to each other, and that is put to the test when they come together, all these years later, when the other three women receive that text from Kate. Something happened all those years ago, the girls were expelled from the school and between that and a mysterious death it's obvious the women are hiding something.

They've all changed of course, married and had kids or advanced in their careers, become religiously observant- they're all so different but they are still there for each other. And when they find out what has happened, why Kate has called them back, it looks like their lives may be in turmoil going forward. A bone has been found in the marsh, and that mysterious death all of a sudden is coming back to haunt everyone. There's a lot of secrets, between themselves and in the fishing village that they once called home, and who knows who's lying?

Ruth Ware seems to be getting better as an author with each book. I really liked The woman in Cabin 10 and when I saw this one I knew I had to read it. I wasn't disappointed. The book took right off and I felt for Isa as she navigates her old friendships, the old secrets, while trying (and failing) to not lie to her husband. In many ways she feels like her whole life is built on lies, but at the same time she can't help but be there for her friends. We all know how tight the bonds are from the teenage years, our formative time, and imagine now that those bonds involve possible crimes that you've spent twenty years hoping no one finds out about. And then someone does...

I thought that each of the four were drawn well and developed nicely, although there was one I was a little unsure of. As interesting as the mystery was, it was the relationships between the four women here that really drove the story for me. Isa is afraid her role in what happened will cost her the child she loves, and her marriage too, and I could feel her terror come through. The village has secrets of its own, and when the women go back to the school for an alumnae dinner it was nice to see them interact with friends- and enemies- from the past. I had a pretty good idea who was lying and what happened, but there's a twist at the end that upends things just a bit. There's a lot of atmosphere to this story too, due to the marshy setting and the tension that Ware ratchets up, and this is one of the better mysteries I've read of late. A very solid read.