The Lying Game Review

I had a life anyone would kill for. Then someone did. The worst part of being dead is that there’s nothing left to live for. No more kisses. No more secrets. No more gossip. It’s enough to kill a girl all over again. But I’m about to get something no one else does—an encore performance, thanks to Emma, the long-lost twin sister I never even got to meet.

Now Emma’s desperate to know what happened to me. And the only way to figure it out is to be me—to slip into my old life and piece it all together. But can she laugh at inside jokes with my best friends? Convince my boyfriend she’s the girl he fell in love with? Pretend to be a happy, carefree daughter when she hugs my parents good night? And can she keep up the charade, even after she realizes my murderer is watching her every move?
Taken from Goodreads.

In The Lying Game, Emma has lived her life in foster care, bouncing from home to home without any real family to depend on. Unbeknown to Emma, her twin sister Sutton is the opposite - popular, privileged, and has a reputation to kill for. Then someone did. Sutton is dead and has no choice but to watch as Emma slips into her shoes to find out what happened to the twin sister she never knew. Along the way, Emma discovers exactly how feared and awed Sutton was in life, and realizes there's a lot more to Sutton's disappearance than meets the eye. Can she find Sutton's killer...and can she find the killer without endangering her own life?

I have to admit, I wasn't expecting too much from The Lying Game, but I really enjoyed Pretty Little Liars, so I figured a new series by the same author would still be fun. I was right! The Lying Game is a great start to a brand new series filled with plot twists, turns, and a mystery that consistently kept me guessing throughout. Sara Shepard has done it again - she's created a perfectly put-together whodunit mystery that has the reader wanting more...and it delivers, but manages to remain a nail-biter throughout.

The only minor hiccup I had with The Lying Game was the prologue, to be honest. I hate prologues. Frankly, I think they're unnecessary 90% of the time and actually detract from the story. The prologue was quite unnecessary, as The Lying Game jumps right into the story from the get-go. The details in the prologue could have easily been established in the first chapter, as well. The greatest strength of The Lying Game, however, were the characters. Emma and Sutton were perfect polar opposites, and while the book is told from Sutton's POV as she watches Emma, Sara Shepard manages to keep the characters from becoming confused with one another by distinctly identifying them.

All in all, The Lying Game is a solid and entertaining start to the new series, and it's not so much like Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars series as I'd anticipated. I give it a very strong 4.5 out of 5, and I highly recommend this book to all YA fans, especially those who enjoy a good mystery and contemporary fiction.

I received this book free of charge from the publisher, HarperTeen, in exchange for an honest review. This, in no way, affected my opinion or review of this book.