Reviews with content warning for Eating disorder - The Lying Game

I have generally had a very positive experience of Ruth Ware and really enjoyed both The Turn of The Key and The Death of Mrs Westaway but unfortunately The Lying Game just didn't do it for me. This one is a slow burn but unlike the last book I read (The Glass House), this one drags. I found myself flicking forward through pages to see how much further I had to go and wondering when things would begin to pick up pace, which they didn't until quite a rushed conclusion.

My second gripe is that Isa as a main character is just not a likeable woman, she's obsessed with herself and her baby and cares about little to nothing else except for her toxic friendships. Having said that, even these still take a back seat to pages and pages on her holding and feeding her baby at various intervals. (I should caveat this point with the fact that I'm not a mother, so maybe this 'new mum' obsessive paranoia is supposed to act as an important facet of her character or a plot point of its own but it doesn't seem to come to much.)

She also takes no personal responsibility, getting incredibly angry at her boyfriend and the father of her child for accusing her of being distant and possibly having an affair when she disappears to the coast for a few days out of nowhere to visit friends she hasn't seen in 17 years and then is incredibly irritable and evasive on her return, even when she is then sent random roses by her childhood crush. It's capped by the fact that she does indeed end up having the affair he suspects her of with said childhood crush and feels no remorse for it whatsoever...

All in all, I really wanted to enjoy this book but unfortunately it didn't have the clever twists and dramatic reveals I'm so used to from Ruth Ware and instead felt like a long book about quite a short and simple story.

Content Warnings

loandbeholdx's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

waytoomanybooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I rarely read mysteries, but I am so glad I picked up this one! The emotions Isa and her three friends go through are palpable. And I greatly appreciate the fact that the women had goals, ambitions, fears, hopes, etc. that went beyond being wives and mothers, even though most of them are wives and mothers. They felt fully fleshed out, complex, and interesting. It's a great boarding school, dark academia story told from the perspective of an adult looking back on her harrowing teenage years.

I took off one star because the ending is a bit confusing and a little ambiguous considering the amount of detail that went in the rest of the novel.

Be mindful of the trigger warnings!

Content Warnings

rubybooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I read The Woman in Cabin 10 and The Death of Mrs Westaway earlier on this year, so I thought I'd try reading The Lying Game too. All these audiobooks are narrated by Imogen Church - I didn't have too much of a problem with the audiobooks but it does make them all blend together in my head. My opinions on these books have varied wildly - I really liked The Death of Mrs Westaway, The Woman in Cabin 10 was okay, and The Lying Game is my least favourite.

The Lying Game focuses on a group of four girls who met at boarding school as teenagers, where they played 'The Lying Game' and generally got into a lot of trouble. They were all expelled as teenagers after the death of the art teacher, Kate's father, but didn't see each other much after that. That all changes when Isa, Thea, and Fatima receive an SOS text from Kate after something is discovered in Salten. The book is told from Isa's point of view.

I found the relationships between all the women really interesting to read about. All of them are complicated and flawed, and I liked seeing the flashbacks of how their time at Salten shaped them. I wish we'd seen more of the flashbacks and I think it would have improved my experience reading it! Even though I liked seeing the characters interact, they did annoy me. Some of Isa's point of view was repetitive which got a bit annoying, and I just didn't like her character. She made some really odd decisions with her baby and I really didn't like the way she acted with Owen.

I kept expecting something more from this book - it took quite a while for the plot to get going (it's VERY much a slow burn) and I thought it would be more dramatic. I'm mainly interested because I thought the twists would go in a different direction. It was very underwhelming and since most of the big events happened in the past, it didn't feel like a thriller. I don't think the plot is that compelling because the story unfolds so slowly. Maybe if the plot twist and action at the end was a but more shocking, I may have enjoyed the book more, but that wasn't the case.

So overall, I didn't hate this book but I just felt apathetic about most of it and I was very underwhelmed by where the plot went. There are a lot of mixed reviews though, so don't let my review put you off. The book was short enough that I didn't have a problem finishing it, but it still took me longer than a thriller normally would because I wasn't that invested. Be aware of content including descriptions of parental death, drug use, eating disorders and alcoholism.

Content Warnings