"On a cool June morning, a woman is walking her dog in the idyllic coastal village of Salten along a tidal estuary known as the Reach. Before she can stop him, the dog charges into the water to retrieve what first appears to be a wayward stick, but to her horror, turns out to be something much more sinister... The next morning, three women in and around London—Fatima, Thea, and Isabel—receive the text they had always hoped would NEVER come, from the fourth in their formerly inseparable clique, Kate, that says only, “I need you.” The four girls were best friends at Salten, a second rate boarding school set near the cliffs of the English Channel. Each different in their own way, the four became inseparable and were notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn to both fellow boarders and faculty, with varying states of serious and flippant nature that were disturbing enough to ensure that everyone steered clear of them. The myriad and complicated rules of the game are strict: no lying to each other—ever. Bail on the lie when it becomes clear it is about to be found out. But their little game had consequences, and the girls were all expelled in their final year of school under mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the school’s eccentric art teacher, Ambrose (who also happens to be Kate’s father)."
This was one of those reads that had a mix of elements that I liked and ones that I was disappointed by so it ends up overall as a bit underwhelming and just a 'fine' read. I would absolutely recommend this as a travel or vacation read because it does have an interesting enough plot, but it isn't so intriguing as to make you want to skip other plans to keep reading. A lot of my gripes with this read end up in the 'not for me' column instead of more substantial issues like plot holes so I could see someone else liking this. Also, a lot of my issues were with some plot reveals and character choices which I would consider spoilers if talked about in detail, so this review may seem a bit vague.
The one part of the read I didn't have any issue with is the friend group and the dynamic between these four women. We only get Isabel's POV, but the characterization is so strong with all 4 women that I still got a good feel for their personalities and opinions. The current plot takes place over a decade after these women met as girls at school but there are plot reasons why these women haven't kept in frequent contact in the recent years. I think Ware was able to capture the odd dynamic of having been friends through such formative experiences while also growing apart during the recent years. There was such a good mix of love and familiarity between all 4 women while we also got some great tension at times. I personally love a multi-POV story, especially when there seems to be so much being unsaid between these characters, but I think that having is be a single POV read was probably the less-messy option.
I liked the plot reveal when we finally found out what happened all those years ago at the school and how that impacted all of the characters. We get that reveal around the 50% mark, so I knew there was going to be more revealed later about something, but it wasn't clear what else was still up in the air. Because of this, I did find the plot to calm down after that reveal and it almost felt like the reveal was a 'that's it?' type of moment. I didn't find any plot-reason to keep reading really and I wanted that tension to be built up more. I wanted to walk away from that reveal feeling dread at what could happen next. Instead, it didn't feel like it had the weight for me that it obviously had on the characters. And we do get a number of times where the characters are saying 'this is a big deal because of X, Y, Z implications' and I just wasn't meeting them there.
The last 20% of the read really picked up the pacing, but I found myself having to re-read sections or flip back a few pages to re-read because we were getting just so much information so quickly. This is also the time where we were getting reveals that I felt didn't quite work with the information we already had. Now obviously, the whole point of a mystery read is that you find out reveals that you didn't already know. However, these reveals, in my opinion, should snap into place like a puzzle piece and make the overall picture more clear. In this case, these reveals weren't adding puzzle pieces, they were more like starting a whole new puzzle and having someone telling you that you should have been working on this puzzle all along. I love big twists and reveals in my mystery reads but only when they come with a side of fitting better than the theory that was originally posed. In this case, I don't feel like the actual reveal fit better than the theory.
Overall, this was a fine read with interesting character dynamics and plot reveals. There were details that didn't land for me or that I didn't quite believe the book's explanation of and these details took me out of the reading experience a bit.
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