Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Riley Sager
Genres: Mystery, Thriller
Pub date: July 2018 (read Aug. 2018)

I didn’t read Riley Sager’s first book, Final Girls, because it sounds too disturbing for me, but The Last Time I Lied takes place at a creepy summer camp where campers start to go missing, and I love everything to do with the outdoors (even creepy mystery thrillers), so I was like, “sign me up!”

This book wasn’t as scary as I was anticipating, it has a creepy ambiance through most of the story, but I didn’t think the tension really started to build until the last 30%. But I was still totally into the mystery of the story and I was dying to know what our narrator, Emma, wasn’t telling us.

Emma was just 13 the first (and only) time she attends Camp Nightingale, a summer camp for wealthy young girls just outside of New York. Emma shows up to camp late and ends up being put in a cabin with 3 older girls – Natalie, Allison, and the enigmatic Vivian. Emma is enamoured with Vivian and quickly becomes caught up in the older girl’s drama. Vivian acts like a big sister to Emma, but as Emma discovers some of Vivian’s secrets, their friendship starts to splinter. Then, one night, Vivian, Natalie, and Allison disappear into the night, never to be seen again, forever imprinted upon Emma’s memory.

Flash forward 15 years, wealthy camp owner, Frannie, has decided to re-open the camp and invites Emma to be the camp’s art instructor. Emma decides to return to Camp Nightingale to try and find our what happened to Vivian so that she can finally move on with her life. But she quickly realizes upon arrival that everything is not as it seems at Camp Nightingale.

I was convinced I knew who had made the girls disappear, so I was thrilled when I was totally off the mark. The last 30% of this book is a wild ride and I loved the whole “person vs. nature” element on top of the character conflicts. The ending was a little too coincidental, but the last little twist Sager throws in at the very end f the novel totally blew my mind! The book also has an interesting psychological element where Emma keeps seeing things and you’re not sure what is and is not real.

Overall a solid mystery/thriller book. I’ll still probably take a pass on Final Girls, but I’m interested to see what Riley Sager writes in the future.