ShayKay's Review of The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager

Synopsis from Book

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, gushing 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 shortly 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 being 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 her friends, the more she realizes that closure could come at a deadly price.

Thoughts Before Reading

I've been obsessed with Riley Sager and dying to read another book by him ever since I read Final Girls so this month I was able to pick up his second book, The Last Time I Lied! This one sounds so interesting and the only reason I have waited to pick it up until today is that I was in The Royal We bubble that i couldn't escape. Now I'm jumping back into Sager's world and I can't be more thrilled. This one in the beginning I think sounded the most interesting to me when I first started looking at Riley Sager books but I never picked it up. The fact that it starts at a cabin over the summer I think is perfect for the time of the year that it is now. I'm hoping for another can't put down the book, a new obsession, and I'm so thrilled! 

After Thoughts

So I started this book like forever ago but then I stopped after maybe 20 pages. I was in a reading slump and this just wasn't pulling me in. There's nothing against this book I just wasn't feeling it. There was nothing wrong with this book it was purely me, and even though this wasn't the first book I read this month I'm posting this before a couple other books because I started it first. I actually ended up really loving this book I gave it 5 out of 5 stars, and even though I loved it the book doesn't beat Final Girls for me. 

One of my favorite things that happened in this book was that it really had a duel perspective since it went between today Emma and teenager Emma. I loved seeing what she was thinking and how she experienced it. Reading Sager's books I've realized that thrillers really aren't for me but mysteries are right up my ally. I love how he writes these things and they pull me in completely. Which I kind of knew since my all-time favorite series is In Death which is mystery heavy. Shockingly my biggest complaint is that I wanted more romance a little bit. Now let me explain a little. The main book genres I read are kind of romance/contemporary/chick-lit and they are all really romance heavy. For Sager's books, at least this one, I really didn't need romance I mean I loved the book and gave it 5 out of 5 stars. But I've noticed that Sager throws in innuendos between a male and female character but doesn't really deliver. In the first book, I think it was done perfectly because yes I was wanting something to alleviate the tension however I feel like we got it with that twist! Now with this book, I feel like we had the same tension but we didn't have anything alleviating it. At the end of the book, we kind of got a glimpse of what happened to Emma after everything that happened and I was left really wanting to see more of her and Theo not necessarily romantic but just that freaking dinner they talked about! 

With The Last Time I Lied I did have a rough time getting into it, even when I was in a reading mood. So I actually started this book the second time with audiobook and I definitely recommend the audiobook it is really interesting and a really good experience. Once the story started going and we were past Emma building up the story (about 50 pages) I was fully hooked! I couldn't put it down and I loved it so much that I was even reading my physical copy and listening to it at home! So it was a rough beginning at least it was for me. I also think it was a bit slower-paced than how Final Girls was. I just think that story was just boom, boom, boom but Last Time had a really slow burn. I'm really hesitant to pick up the next one, Lock Every Door. Lock Every Door is definitely the book that I'm the least thrilled to read because the synopsis just doesn't sound good to me. But I'm definitely going to pick it up before I read Home Before Dark, so hopefully really soon!

P.S. I know I'm really sucking with Bookstagram posts I've just been super busy between work, school, and also my other blog so something had to give. However, I am working on something for it and I think it is going to come out really cool and something I've honestly should've done from the beginning of this year. I'm also working really hard to have a post every Sunday so in real-time I may have finished a book a little bit ago and the post comes out a couple days or weeks later. But I'll always have them all come out within the same month of me reading it if that makes any sense. That reading slump really just killed my momentum I had going but I love to read for fun and when I'm in a reading slump it just means that I'm not enjoying what I'm reading so I have to step aside for a little bit and come back to it which is what happened in July. However, August is looking like a very promising month and I've just so happened to be really busy as well. Any well see you next week with a new review.