After The Woman in Cabin 10 and The Death of Mrs. Westaway, English author Ruth Ware returns with The Lying Game (Fleuve Éditions, March 4, 2021). A thriller rooted in the heroine’s adolescence that shows how lies can erode everything, like salt and sand…
While Isa is on maternity leave taking care of her daughter Freya, she receives a terse text from Kate, one of her childhood friends: Need you.
Like a signal, Isa, Thea, and Fatima join Kate at her childhood home, the Mill, which has hosted many moments during their year at Salten House, the village boarding school, when they were fifteen.
Today, they have built their lives on all the lies of yesterday, foundations far too fragile to withstand incessant questioning. What really happened that last night at Salten House? Who is guilty, and of what?
The quartet of the past reunites to try to save what can be saved.
Ruth Ware returns with strength in this gripping thriller that will only be possible to put down after the last pages are turned!
Isa returns to Salten House, to the Mill, for the first time in over fifteen years, the group of friends reforming with an impressive familiarity as only steadfast friendships forged in childhood or adolescence can do. Together, they are a rock. Yet, the rock will start to crack as mysteries are unveiled and lies discovered. And there are many lies. It was even their favorite game to brighten the dull days at the boarding school…
RULE NUMBER ONE
Tell a lie
RULE NUMBER TWO
Don’t change your story
RULE NUMBER THREE
Don’t get caught
RULE NUMBER FOUR
Never lie to each other
RULE NUMBER FIVE
Know when to stop lying
Ruth Ware wonderfully describes the powerful friendship that unites Thea, Isa, Kate, and Fatima, both back then and today. With her writing, she revives the carefree past of these young girls at Salten House, this clan that spent so much time at the Mill, an absolute refuge, between Kate’s father, Ambrose, an art teacher and painter, and Luc, Kate’s adoptive brother.
Then the author introduces drama into the lives of our young heroines, and the lies that were merely games become more serious, more grave. But it doesn’t matter, they know how to lie so well…
In this crime novel, the author alternates between two timelines: Isa’s memories of her arrival at Salten House and her meeting with Fatima, Thea, and Kate; and their reunion today.
With The Lying Game, Ruth Ware offers an intense psychological thriller about lies and their consequences, notably the implications in the lives of the liars, over the long term. This well-written page-turner will draw the reader alongside Isa and her friends into a game of deception and revelations.
