THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of Survive the Night and Final Girls comes a tense and twisty thriller about a summer camp that’s impossible to forget—no matter how hard you try. Two Truths and a Lie. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and Emma played it all the time in their cabin at Camp Nightingale. But the games ended the night Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out into … the night Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out into the darkness. The last she—or anyone—saw of the teenagers was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips….
Fifteen years later, Emma is a rising star in the New York art scene, turning her past into paintings—massive canvases filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches over ghostly shapes in white dresses. When the paintings catch the attention of the wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale, she implores Emma to come back to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor.
Despite her guilt and anxiety—or maybe because of them—Emma agrees to revisit her past. Nightingale looks the same as it did all those years ago, haunted by a midnight-dark lake and familiar faces. Emma is even assigned to the same cabin she slept in as a teenager, although the security camera pointed at her door is a disturbing new addition.
As cryptic clues about the camp’s origins begin to surface, Emma attempts to find out what really happened to her friends. But her closure could come at a deadly price.
more
The Last TIme I lied. Two truths and a lie.
Fifteen years ago ,3 girls disappear from Camp Nightingale never to be found. Now there is a deceiving name for this camp.
Fifteen years later, Emma is back in the same cabin with 3 other girls but she herself is a painting instructor.
I wanted to tell her , don’t go are you crazy ?
Is she ?
Emma tries to resolve the past while dealing with the future that is not going much better for her this time around.
The book is part thriller , part mystery, its eerie and you will turn the pages quickly.
Treat yourself to this roller coaster of a ride
For Emma, her experiences at Camp Nightingale did not turn out to be part of her youth that she would remember fondly as she got older. Memories of roasting marshmallows, singing around a campfire, and making lifelong friends were not to be. Instead, Emma’s brief time there ended on the morning she awoke to find that her three roommates never returned from their nighttime excursion. Since that morning fifteen years ago, Emma has been haunted by not only their inexplicable disappearance and her resultant sorrow, but the role she may have played in it. Emma’s return to her life following the tragedy at Camp Nightingale was not without complications. But she eventually forged a career from, in part, the tragedy. Upon every blank canvas she places three small figures wearing white dresses before hiding them under layers of paint depicting tangled vines and dark woods. Only she knows that Vivian, Natalie, and Allison are entombed there.
When Frannie announces that she is reopening Camp Nightingale and asks Emma to return as an instructor, Emma is hesitant to accept, telling Frannie, “I’m not sure I can go back there again. Not after what happened.” But Frannie pushes her, suggesting that’s “precisely why you should go back.” Emma comes to see the invitation as an opportunity to reconcile the past by learning exactly what happened to her friends. She believes Frannie when she insists that she harbors no ill will toward Emma as a result of what happened — and the consequences, including quickly and quietly settled lawsuits filed by the girls’ grieving families. But Emma is no more prepared for the events she encounters at Camp Nightingale the second time than she was as a teenager.
Emma was younger than the other girls in her cabin because she arrived late and cabin assignments had already been made. Unlike the other campers, for whom Camp Nightingale was “the summer camp if you lived in Manhattan and had a bit of money,” Emma did not come from a wealthy, privileged background. She and her friends called it “Camp Rich Bitch,” but for just one summer her parents could afford to send her there. Natalie was the daughter of New York’s top orthopedic surgeon and Vivian’s mother was a celebrated Broadway actress. But it was Vivian who took Emma under her wing and was the leader in the group. The daughter of a senator, her older sister had drowned when, mistakenly believing the Central Park reservoir was frozen solid, she attempted to traverse it and fell through the broken ice. Emma looked up to and emulated the sophisticated Vivian, even as she found some of Vivian’s behavior startling. Vivian explained: “Everything is a game, Em. Whether you know it or not. Which means that sometimes a lie is more than just a lie. Sometimes it’s the only way to win.”
Incidents begin occurring that are, to Emma, suspicious, but are also susceptible of rationale explanation. Still, the discovery of the surveillance camera rattles her, especially when she learns that her hostess knows more about Emma’s past than she let on. Emma is tenacious and committed to learning her friends’ fate. But her quest for answers leads her on an increasingly dangerous foray into the past — the secrets Vivian was keeping, the true extent of the fall-out from the girls’ disappearance, and its impact upon not just Frannie and Emmy, but also upon Frannie’s adopted sons, Theo and Chet.
Author Riley Sager pulls readers into a beautiful setting that is full of secrets, resentments, and danger. Camp Nightingale, an otherwise idyllic backdrop, is as much a character in The Last Time I Lied as any of the story’s human inhabitants. Emma is a sympathetic character who has spent fifteen years trying to come to terms with an enormous tragedy and her perception of her role in it. Traumatized by the disappearance of her friends, Emma has suffered emotionally but, like a true artist, channeled her pain into her paintings. Emma is also, because of those factors, an inherently unreliable narrator. Now, however, she is ready to learn and face the truth. Did she have something to do with the girls’ disappearance? What act did she commit that was so horrible she has maintained her secrecy in the ensuing years? Every other character in the book is also a suspect.
The Last Time I Lied is fast-paced and intriguing. Like the pieces of paper the girls drop as they hike into the woods, designed to provide a trail back the way they came, Sager drops clues to the mystery at deftly-timed intervals, making it impossible to stop reading. The dramatic tension mounts as does the danger in which Emma, and her young charges, find themselves, leading to a pulse-pounding final confrontation. And a jaw-dropping conclusion. The Last Time I Lied is designed to be an ideal summer read. At camp, perhaps?
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader’s Copy of the book.
Even though I have only read 2 books from Riley Sager (since that’s all he has), he is quickly becoming one of my all time favorite authors. His books always have shocking conclusions and The Last Time I Lied was no exception.
The Last Time I Lied focuses on Emma Davis who is 13 at the time when her 3 cabinmates Vivian, Natalie, and Allison go missing from their cabin at Camp Nightingale. Fast forward 15 years later and Emma has become an accomplished painter in the New York City art scene; painting these missing girls and covering them up in all her pictures. The camp’s owner Franny ends up buying one of Emma’s pieces and also invites her back to Camp Nightingale one last time as a painting instructor. Emma sees this as the perfect time to try and figure out what happened to the 3 girls all those years before.
Just a slight rundown of the plot, but you get the idea. Mystery and suspicion abound while Emma is back at camp and she is also quite the unreliable narrator. I really had no idea what was going on and I wasn’t expecting the ending even a little bit. There are many twists and turns to the plot, and even though I thought the book started out a little slow, it definitely picked up as it went on. I also enjoyed the camp setting for the novel, and it made me want to go to camp myself!
The Last Time I Lied switches between present and 15 years ago when Emma is at camp the first time, which was something I really enjoyed. I thought it gave the book a nice pace and made it more interesting. Plus it was nice to get background to what happened that first time with Emma and the other girls in her cabin.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I actually liked the ending of Final Girls better than the ending of this book…. The revelations were just more shocking to me for some reason. Don’t get me wrong, the ending of this book is fantastic and cray cray and everything you would expect from Sager, but it just didn’t hit me the same way. It actually made me move up my review from 4 to 5 for Final Girls too. But what do I know!
Final Thought: If you think the book starts out slow, just hold on because you are in for a crazy ride as it gets going. The pace definitely picks up, and I think a lot of people will enjoy the camp setting. Even if you didn’t enjoy Final Girls you should still check out this book. It is pretty different in not just the setting, but everything else as well. Plus Sager’s writing is so good, how can you not? Highly recommend and can’t wait to see what the next book brings.
This book hand me guessing until the end, and I had to read the last page twice to make sure I read it right! Amazing!
The Last time I lied by Riley Sager is the epitome of edge of your seat reading. Set in a summer camp for rich girls you see Emma return 15 years after three of her camp mates mysteriously disappeared from her room.
Haunted by their deaths and other issues related to this Emma reluctantly returns as a teacher 15 years later.
Lives have been lived but in the shadow of the disappearances and guilt has played havoc with health and well being.
So what if Emma decides to look and attempt to solve the mystery of the girls who haunt her life?
This is the creepiest story of just that. Everyone is a suspect and for a brit who doesn’t really get the whole summer camp business, this is a scary prospect.
A great read that speeds up considerably from about 40% in.
Read it if you dare.
I *just* finished reading The Last Time I Lied By Riley Sager. HolyMOLY. This is such a well done suspense novel. It’s a whodunnit that I didn’t unravel while reading. THEN, oh then, when you’re in that last stretch of a few remaining paragraphs your world is turned upside down. This is a book that catches you at the start and keeps you in its clutches until the last bit of punctuation.
Read this book! You will not be disappointed.
Emma is still haunted by the unsolved disappearance of her summer camp bunkmates 15 years ago. So when the camp’s director invites her back as a painting instructor, she seizes the opportunity to figure out what really happened to her friends…
I finished this book in two sittings. The setting is eerie, the characters are untrustworthy, and the final twist is one I never saw coming! Will keep you reading well into the night.
It was ok
The Last Time I Lied is the second release under Riley’s name, and based on what I read here, it’s no fluke he is the real deal. This book embodies incredible mystery thriller and horror elements I haven’t seen from another author in years. On the edge of your seat suspense, and atmospheric horror ala Friday the 13th and Picnic at Hanging Rock (which was the muse to write this book), Riley excels so with jump shots and scares that will have you holding your breath until the very last page.
Riley writes the female POV extremely well, especially when it concerns teenagers. We see this through flashbacks through the eyes of the heroine- Emma Davis, a rising star in the art world. She creates dark paintings with three girls- Vivian, Natalie and Allison, who all disappeared 15 years ago at summer camp when Emma was there as their bunk mates. Emma has never forgotten them because they haunt her. She knows something horrible happened to them but she can’t figure out why. But then she is given an offer to revisit the past. The woman who ran the camp wants to open it for the summer and wants Emma to come back to be their art teacher. Against her better judgement, Emma accepts, and it taken on an emotional journey to that summer 15 years ago where she lost her innocence and almost her mind.
The steps Riley takes here as he reveals what happened that summer when Emma was thirteen is so well done. Each layer is peeled away carefully leaving readers guessing what happened to the three girls, especially the ring leader Vivian, Emma admired so much. There are many twists and turns, including with Emma. Is she going slowly insane as she thinks she sees ghosts around her, especially of Vivian who is trying to get Emma to solve the mystery of her disappearance and the lies Emma told, or rather the lies Emma tricked herself into believing.
The Last Time I Lies is astounding, and a major step up from The Final Girls, which was my favorite book of 2017. This second release of Riley’s will be one of my favorites of 2018. It also reads like a screenplay, which means MAKE THIS INTO A MOVIE!!
The last 10 pages come out of nowhere and is a bit tongue and cheek, as well as jaw dropping in it’s reveal. MUST MUST READ.
3.5 stars
I am, by far, in the clear minority with my review of Last Time I Lied. Many people are claiming it is so much better than Final Girls, but to me it was about the same. A good thriller, with an original premise, but not knock my socks off good. Based on all of the 5 star reviews, I would recommend giving this book a go as it seems to be the IT thriller of the summer.
While I thought the plot was good and there are certainly no complaints about Sieger’s writing style, the first half of the book was just so slow. And I get it, the author was definitely trying to set the stage. But we kept hearing about the “Awful Thing That Happened” and how Emma “is a liar”, but it takes way too long for her involvement to come to fruition.
Not only that, but both Emma and Vivian could have used more character development and I would have liked to “feel” more of their connection. There is clearly a connection between them; we get snippets of Emma’s absentee parents and are told that Vivian is an afterthought to her political parents, but it would have been nice to delve a little deeper into what made them connect. Maybe if more chapters were dedicated to the past, we could have gotten that, but I felt that most of the “past” story was very choppy and glossed over.
The second half of the book definitely moved at a much quicker pace and I was furiously turning the pages, but honestly, I thought that there was way too much going on, especially as the story got closer to the end. Now, as far as the ending goes, it is certainly controversial. There are people who love it and some who hate. I didn’t mind it, I kind of liked it.
All in all, I would recommend this book because even though it was an average read for me, there are so many 5 star reviews that I believe most people will love this book.
Thank you to Penguin Publishing Group for my copy of this book via Edelweiss