Bless the library. Riley Sager is another author that I will go to in the stacks to see if there are any books I haven’t read yet. At my most recent visit, The Last Time I Lied was wonderfully available.

The Story

Two Truths and a Lie. The girls played it all the time in their tiny cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis, the youngest of the group. The games ended when Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out of the cabin in the dead of night. 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. The paintings catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale. When Francesca implores her to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor, Emma sees an opportunity to try to find out what really happened to her friends.

Yet it’s immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by memories from fifteen years ago, Emma discovers a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian left behind about the camp’s twisted origins. As she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past while facing threats from both man and nature in the present. And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale, the more she realizes it may come at a deadly price.

In the new novel from the bestselling author of Final Girls, The Last Time I Lied follows a young woman as she returns to her childhood summer camp to uncover the truth about a tragedy that happened there fifteen years ago.

My Thoughts

Based on the reviews attached to the book itself, I believe The Last Time I Lied was one of Riley Sager’s earlier novels. (It was his second, after Final Girls.) It is one of my favorites of his!

It was a fun mixture of past and present, living through Emma’s return to Camp Nightingale and her original story that started it all. Plus, when you get to that part in the middle… WHAT A HOOK. Do not skip ahead. I repeat: DO NOT SKIP AHEAD. I didn’t (yay, me! I’m working on it.), and it made it so much better.

Unfortunately, this is another book that utilized a character’s mental illness as grounds for conflict. A note to all authors in the world: Can we please stop that? Someone’s past and/or current mental illness they are working on is not a plot device. Just think of how that is perceived in the world. (I understand this next statement is not the same, but it’s a solid comparison.) It’s like when men ask women if they’re on their periods if they get upset or fired up about something. NOT OKAY.

Unrelated, I’ve tried to figure out the title of the book and why it was chosen. After you read it and the more you think about it, you unearth so many more layers to its meaning.

Overall, The Last Time I Lied had a good feel. It was like going back to summer camp…if the summer camp you went to was super twisted and weird. It would make a great quick read for anyone that needed to get back into reading or wanted something entertaining.

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