Title: The Lying Game
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: December 7, 2010
Series/Standalone: Book 1 in The Lying Game series
Source: Purchased
Summary from book flap: I had a life anyone would kill for. Then someone did.
The worst part of being dead is that there’s nothing left to live for. No more kisses. No more secrets. No more gossip. It’s enough to kill a girl all over again. But I’m about to get something no one else does—an encore performance, thanks to Emma, the long-lost twin sister I never even got to meet.
Now Emma’s desperate to know what happened to me. And the only way to figure it out is to be me—to slip into my old life and piece it all together. But can she laugh at inside jokes with my best friends? Convince my boyfriend she’s the girl he fell in love with? Pretend to be a happy, carefree daughter when she hugs my parents good night? And can she keep up the charade, even after she realizes my murderer is watching her every move?
From Sara Shepard, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars books, comes a riveting new series about secrets, lies, and killer consequences.
Let the lying game begin.
My Review:
I really don't watch much TV (I'd much rather read books), but some of the new ABC Family shows look good, including the TV show based off of this series of books. I wanted to read The Lying Game before the first episode airs in a couple of weeks, though now that I've finished the book and have seen a couple of previews for the show, it looks like the book and the show will be very, very different.
The narration of this story really threw me off at first--in fact, I had to go back and read the first 20 pages again before continuing because I was so confused about who was speaking. Sutton's voice is in first person and Emma's is in third person, but the narration often quickly switched between paragraphs, making it very hard to understand who was speaking or thinking at first. Once I got used to the narration style, I was sucked into the mystery.
Like the author's Pretty Little Liars series, mystery is the core of the story. We find out in the first couple of pages that Sutton is dead, and the biggest mystery of all in this story is who killed Sutton.
Part of the book really spooked me, such as the various dangerous, life threatening and evil games that Sutton and her friends played, in addition to how easily Emma was able to replace Sutton in everyone's minds when she arrived in town and no one knew that Sutton was missing or dead.
There's a potential for a good romance to develop in the series between Emma and Ethan Landry, a brooding boy who I would consider to be Emma's only real friend in her life as Sutton, so I'm looking forward to seeing more of him in the next book.
Never Have I Ever, the second book of this series, just came out a few days ago, and I will be sure to pick it up sometime soon!
Rating: 8/10
I just picked up this book this week. I didn't realise it was the first in a series. Sounds interesting, though. Thanks for drawing my attention to the narration - hopefully it won't confuse me as much if I'm prepared for it!
ReplyDelete