If you want a book that will make you wonder about everything from start to finish then you should try The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager. Emma Davis is a young but up and coming artist with a tendency to paint beautiful forest scenes. What no one knows is the secret buried within each of those forests. The very first layers of paint depict three young girls, Vivian, Natalie, and Allison, who all disappeared from summer camp the year Emma was thirteen. When the camp director, Franny, comes to her art show and gives her an interesting proposition, return to the camp as a painting instructor for the first summer the camp reopens, Emma becomes determined to return and solve the mystery of what happened to her three cabinmates fifteen years before. Haunted by their specter, Emma is hopeful that solving the mystery will help her finally move on. Upon arriving at the camp though she realizes that will not be as easy as she thought with someone determined to reveal her lies, the real reason she accused the son of the camp director of being involved in the disappearance. The further she digs the more comes to light, both from her own past but also the past of the camp and the girls who had disappeared.
I knew this was going to be a bit of a thriller and have some good twists and turns but even I was not expecting what this novel would turn out to be. Really, I wasn’t. That being said, it ended up being a great read that really kept me on the edge of my seat wondering just what was going to happen next. The way the novel ended up playing out was not even close to what the opening hinted at but it did do a good job of foreshadowing for a lot of it once I look back over the earlier sections. It also did a great job of building tension with the gradual build up of events and reveals as Emma slowly starts putting the pieces together. This was greatly helped with the intermittent flashbacks to the events of that summer fifteen years ago. The dual perspective really helped highlight how the mystery actually played out and what Emma’s role in everything actually was. Her role was also not what I was necessarily expecting as it really amped up the guilt she was feeling in the earlier sections. Let’s just say that by the end of the story you will realize that nothing is what it seems and that you really can’t take anything for granted in this story, including the supposed events of fifteen years previous. It was a great read though and I thoroughly enjoyed it so it gets 4.5 out of 5 stars from me.
This was a great thriller so if that is what you like to read then you really should consider this one. It will definitely keep you wondering the whole time. There is some violence, more so towards the end, as well as some mild adult content. I would recommend that this book is probably best read by adults or older teens with no one younger than about fifteen or sixteen. It is worth the consideration despite that and I hope you will consider it. If you do feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.