The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager @riley_sager @DuttonBooks #bookreview #thriller #horror

Title: The Last Time I Lied

Author: Riley Sager

Publisher: Dutton

Publication Date: July 3, 2018

Page Count: 384

My rating:  5 stars

About the book:

In the latest thriller from the bestselling author of Final Girls, a young woman returns to her childhood summer camp to uncover the truth about a tragedy that happened there fifteen years ago.

Two Truths and a Lie. The girls played it all the time in their cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis, the youngest of the group. But the games ended the night Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out of the cabin into the darkness. The last she–or anyone–saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips.

Now a rising star in the New York art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings–massive canvases filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches that cover ghostly shapes in white dresses. When the paintings catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale, she implores Emma to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor. Seeing an opportunity to find out what really happened to her friends all those years ago, Emma agrees.

Familiar faces, unchanged cabins, and the same dark lake haunt Nightingale, even though the camp is opening its doors for the first time since the disappearances. Emma is even assigned to the same cabin she slept in as a teenager, but soon discovers a security camera–the only one on the property–pointed directly at its door. Then cryptic clues that Vivian left behind about the camp’s twisted origins begin surfacing. As she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past while facing mysterious threats in the present. And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale and what really happened to those girls, the more she realizes that closure could come at a deadly price.

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager is set in a location that will remind readers of tons of campy horror movies, a summer camp for young teens, Camp Nightingale. From the opening pages I had that distinct feeling of wanting to scream out to the main character “What are you thinking??? Don’t go back there!!”

You see Emma Davis had attended Camp Nightingale fifteen years before and the unthinkable happened during her summer at camp, her three bunk mates disappeared never to be found again. During the last fifteen years Emma has struggled to cope with the girls going missing somewhat blaming herself for what happened.

Now the camp is reopening and the owner has invited Emma back to come work with the next generation of campers. At first Emma is hesitant to return but when she thinks about it this will be the perfect opportunity for her to look into the disappearance of her friends all those years ago and get some closure on what had happened.

What a thrilling ride this one was! The story is told by switching past and present to blend in beautifully letting readers get to know what happened then as Emma investigates now. As the book goes on lines are blurred and the intensity goes up a notch giving readers two mysteries to solve and boy oh boy did the twists come to keep on on their toes. This was my first book by Mr. Sager but it certainly won’t be the last.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Find this book online: 

Goodreads  /   Amazon

About the author:

The Last Time I Lied is the second thriller from RILEY SAGER, a pseudonym for an author who has previously published under another name. Riley is a native of Pennsylvania, a writer, editor, and graphic designer who lives in Princeton, New Jersey.