Sunday, August 13, 2017

The Lying Game (Ruth Ware)

A few months ago, I sat down to read Ruth Ware's The Woman in Cabin 10 and finished it in a 24-hour time period.  As I said then in my review, that's very rare for me -- I usually prefer to take my time with a book to really savor it.  With that one though, I couldn't put it down.  Ware's The Lying Game didn't quite have that same effect on me, but it was still a good read.

Ware takes her own time to build up the suspense, so this is definitely a slow-burning novel.  After Isa receives a text message from her old friend Kate, she immediately packs up her baby daughter and heads to Salten to see what's wrong.  The other members of their group, Fatima and Thea, also come, and Kate tells them that a long-buried secret of what they had done as schoolgirls has returned.  These girls had once been known for playing "The Lying Game," and it seems now that they will pay the consequences as adults.

The overarching problem of The Lying Game is that none of the characters are particularly likable or even that interesting.  But since this is primarily a plot-driven novel, Ware is able to make up for this deficit with her atmospheric writing and suspenseful story.

MY RATING - 3