Give the gift of reading this holiday season!J.T. Ellison’s pulse-pounding new psychological thriller examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to in order to protect their secrets.Goode girls don’t lie… Goode School is a prestigious prep school known as a Silent Ivy. The boarding school of choice for daughters of the rich and influential, it accepts only the best and the brightest. Its elite status, long-held traditions and honor code are ideal for preparing exceptional young women for brilliant futures at Ivy League universities and beyond.
But a stranger has come to Goode, and this ivy has turned poisonous.
In a world where appearances are everything, as long as students pretend to follow the rules, no one questions the cruelties of the secret societies or the dubious behavior of the privileged young women who expect to get away with murder.
When a popular student is found dead, the truth cannot be ignored. Rumors suggest she was struggling with a secret that drove her to suicide.
But look closely…because there are truths and there are lies, and then there is everything that really happened.
Don’t miss this fast-paced suspense story from New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison!
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Oh. My. Gosh!!! What a juicy and compelling read!! I had trouble putting it down until I could see how it all planned out.
Take one very small, female-only, very elite prep school. Fill it with rich, young, entitled women on the fast-track to the Ivy League college of their choice, add a Dean who has issues of her own and a couple of girls with serious mental health issues and you’ve got a recipe for disaster! And disaster finds the Goode school in small-town Marchburg, Virginia, again and again and again.
This book is one that fully earns its inclusion in the psychological suspense genre. Twists and turns, abundant secrets and duplicity, creepy factor, Ellison plays us well with this one! Add it to your TBR pile. This gets a 4-star review from me!
Many thanks to NetGalley and MIRA publishers for allowing me to read an ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. All opinions expressed here are my own.
Good Girls Lie is a book full of plot twists that will keep you up reading well into the night.
The book takes place at a private girls school in Virginia (that alone leads to many side stories).
Ash has come from Oxford to enroll in this prestigious school after suffering a great personal loss. Or was it ?
Nothing is as it seems to be: who is innocent, who is guilty.
The Goode School for Girls has so many secrets both past and present.
I thought I had the ending figured out but I didn’t.
Well worth the read. So much is offered in Good Girls Lie.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harelquin MIRA (US and Canada) for the opportunity to get lost in the dorms and halls of The Goode School for Girls.
J.T. Ellison captivates from the first sentence to the very last with her eloquent writing and dubious plot twists. The story line has this mesmerizing discord that is wrought with suspicion. Its gothic underpinning is upheld well with the old, private school setting, secret societies, and folk lore. While the main character is predominantly developed, Ellison offers diversity to her tertiary cast that embodies this whole narrative. Fantastic read. 5 stars.
Thank you to #NetGalley and #Harlequin for this ARC of #GoodGirlsLie
Good Girls Lie is a twisty, thriller that was much darker than is usually found in young adult books, and I loved every bit of that.
The story takes place in an elite, all-girls, private boarding school, a school that comes with an interesting history to say the least. The school’s honor code is the most important covenant to the school community, and to break it is virtually unheard of. But there are exceptions… the secret societies that are a barely hidden secret.
The atmosphere of the book is very gothic, giving the story a deliciously creepy feeling. The old buildings of the school, the iron gates, the sometimes dark history of the school. And that atmosphere really underscored the dark aspects of the story. From the very beginning, there is the overwhelming realization that things are not what they appear in the school and with some of the girls. There are secrets at every turn.
Perhaps even more than the atmosphere, the characters drove the story. The Goode girls, by and large, came from wealthy, powerful families. They are smart, driven, used to getting their own way. And the education they get at Goode is at a much higher level than one might expect, as most of the girls are Ivy League-bound.
This is a twisted tale of manipulation, secrets, broken trusts, and revenge!
I think by default I have a certain love for a book when it is set at a boarding school or similar academic setting, so I had a good feeling going in that I would enjoy this book. It was every bit as twisted and unexpected as I wanted it to be, and had the morally ambiguous characters that I love to read. My feelings towards the characters shifted in every chapter, and even at the end I was still left feeling like I wasn’t fully sure who was good or evil, who was lying or telling the truth.
I didn’t like it as well as her other books. It was different. Unpredictable. But it kept my interest
A captivating thriller that takes place at an all female boarding school in Virginia. What happens behind the gates of the Goode School? The story starts with the end and then the story is backed up to work towards the end. Mystery tragedies, secret societies and a multiple point of view narration kept me moving through the story to find out the details.
Oh My God! This book is amazing! At first, it took me some time to get into it but after that, I couldn’t put it down! There were so many twists and turns that I didn’t know who was telling the truth and who was lying. Every time I thought I knew what was going to happen, who the killer was, I was wrong. It is so well-written, too. I am still shocked by that ending. This is by far one of the best books I’ve read in 2020!
Not all Goode girls are good. Mean, manipulative and murderous little darlings of the elite reign at this exclusive girls school nestled in the hills of Virginia. An exciting read.
I love J. T. Ellison’s books! This was totally different from all of her other books I have read and I loved the storyline, the characters and, especially the ending.
You can’t go wrong with Ellison…and this might be her best!
Creepy story of an all girls boarding school in western Virginia where at the beginning of the book, a girl is found dead, hanging from the gates.
The story then backtracks and alternates between the months before the start of the school year, and the months of the school term.
Most of the story revolves around Ash Carlisle, a sophomore from England who enrolled in the school after the death of her parents. However, Ash is hiding something, and she is terrified that someone will find out her secret.
This book is very creepy, with stories of extreme hazing, jealousy, cruelty, manipulation, and horror. There are lots of secrets at this school, and you have to figure out who is creating all of the destruction.
This book kept me interested and on edge. I did figure out the main plot, but not the entire connection. The ending has a small twist.
#GoodGirlsLie #JTEllison
Awesome!
Good book once you get into it.
Lots of twists and turns I didn’t expect. Strong unusual characters. Several villains who redeemed themselves later in the story.
One of my favorite suspense books so far this year. Would definitely reread and recommend to anyone!!
This is a page-turning fantastic thriller. Set at the Goode School, an elite boarding school where Goode girls don’t lie, the book is steeped in dark, spooky traditions and mystery! Super fast paced and suspenseful!
An interesting psychological thriller. The Goode School, a prestigious all girl boarding school in Marchburg, Virginia accepts only the “best and the brightest,” the daughters of the rich and influential. Built on tradition and the honor code, Goode is an elite school, nicknamed the Silent Ivy, which is ideal for preparing girls for the elite Ivy League colleges and beyond. When a stranger is accepted at Goode, things begin to spiral out of control as the lies and secrets start to pile up. What’s true and what’s lies? Will the mystery be solved, the truth brought to light? Find out in Good Girls Lie.
J. T. Ellison delivers a tense, fast-paced thriller set in an exclusive girls’ boarding school in rural Virginia. Like many a good mystery, Good Girls Lie opens with a murder. A girl’s body hangs from the iron gates at the school’s entrance. She’s wearing her graduation gown and her feet are mired in morning fog, enhancing the gruesomeness of the scene. Her face is “hidden behind a curtain of dirty, wet hair, dark from the rains. Even were her face visible, her identity would still be unknown because of the damage it has sustained. Beyond the iron gates, the school perches ominously in a foggy haze, full of legends, lore, deadly secrets, and, perhaps, a murderer.
Good Girls Lie is populated with complex, intriguing characters, with Ash Carlisle at the forefront of the story. She has come to Goode for a second chance following traumatic family events. “A new life. A new beginning. A new chapter for Ash. But can you ever escape your past?” She will be known as Ash Carr, sworn to secrecy about her past and assured privacy by the school’s headmistress, Dr. Ford Julianne Westhaven, who has offered Ash the second chance she desperately needs. Ford wants to be a novelist, but she was pressed into duty after a scandal brought her mother’s tenure as dean to an abrupt end. Her mother insisted that it was her duty to take over and run the school that has been helmed by her family since the early 1800s — resisting pressures to make the school coed. Now Ford feels trapped, despite the fact that the school is thriving under her leadership.
Ellison relates the story through varying vantage points. Ash describes her experiences through a first-person narrative that quickly reveals disturbing details about her family’s past, including the recent deaths of her parents. She wants to fit in with the other girls, desperate to keep her true identity known so that she can be “just another Goode girl, accepted because of privilege, brains, and whatever inestimable quality Ford has seen in the application and interviews.”
But Goode is populated with students who are anything but good. They manipulate, compete for attention and popularity, and pull new students into long-held rituals carried out by secret societies. Faculty members are aware of the traditions, but strive to keep them from becoming deadly. Tales about a haunted arboretum, bell tower, and mysterious staircase leading into the institutions’ murky underbelly contrast starkly with the school’s seemingly peaceful existence in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains that surround the campus.
Ellison skillfully reveals the school’s secrets, along with those Ash is harboring, as the story progresses and the tension accelerates. Ash reveals early on that she is a liar — “I’ve never understood my compulsive desire to lie.” But with her mother’s encouragement, she came to Ash determined to change. But Ford becomes increasingly suspicious, even though she interviewed Ash via videoconference before admitting her to the school. Ash is a gifted pianist, but suddenly has no interest in pursuing her piano lessons. She has excelled in her computer course and Ford comes to believe that she is a skilled hacker. But if she truly wants to keep her past a secret, why would Ash draw attention to herself? Ellison keeps readers guessing to what extent Ash is succeeding at turning over a new leaf and, if not, the extent to which she has manufactured her past and, perhaps, very identity. Ash proves to be a deliciously unreliable narrator. And, as calamities befall Goode, the number of characters who are suspects multiplies as quickly as the number of dead students. As the dark, atmospheric mystery races to its shocking conclusion, Ellison injects surprising twists and revelations at deftly-timed intervals, making Good Girls Lie a compelling, absorbing thriller.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader’s Copy of the book.
***I received an ebook copy from the publisher at no cost***
If Gossip Girl and Cruel Intentions got together and had a child, Good Girls Lie would be it.
J.T. Ellison wastes no time putting readers on an emotional roller coaster with this book. I was fully invested by the time I finished the first chapter. There are so many twists and turns throughout the book, you never know what’s going to happen. That’s what I loved most about it: the author kept me guessing, right up to the very end.
Ash is the new girl at the Good School, a well-known and highly esteemed boarding school in New England. She’s transferred in from England, and it doesn’t take long for the school’s most elite girls to make her the target of their torment.
This book had all the aspects of the whole YA boarding school type book that I like. There are secret societies, which the dean turns her head the other way from and the girls all hope for an invitation to join. The school itself is older and a bit creepy, with different areas that are “off-limits” and have an eerie feeling to them. There are stories about awful things that took place years ago on the campus and in the town. The school had its share of bad publicity under the previous dean and the current one works hard to keep the girls in line and the scandals at bay.
Except Ash brings scandal with her. Someone has to keep the Dean busy though, right?
I want to keep this review spoiler-free, so there won’t be many plot details. I will say the plot itself is unique. I had no idea what was coming next while I was reading. I’d go back and think about what had happened up to that point, formulate a theory, and then boom, two pages later my theory was shot. The author nailed the mystery/suspense in this one for sure.
There were two things that made this a four versus five-star read for me. One, the characters were hard to relate to at times, which made it difficult to form a solid connection with them. Two, I had a tough time following the dialogue and who was who at times as well. However, neither of these ruined the book for me and I was still able to appreciate the author’s attention to detail and world building.
This book was an easy read. It’s vivid, so I felt like I was in the world alongside the characters. And as I mentioned before, the plot was unlike any story I’ve read. Ellison hooked me and kept me on the line for the duration of the book and, although I was completely surprised by how things ended, it felt like the perfect ending.
Four stars to this book!