The last time I lied
by Riley Sager
"Two truths and a lie. The girls played it all the time in their cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis, the youngest of the group. But the games ended the night Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out of the cabin into the darkness. 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. When the paintings catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale, she implores Emma to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor. Seeing an opportunity to find out what really happened to her friends all those years ago, Emma agrees. Familiar faces, unchanged cabins, and the same dark lake haunt Nightingale, even though the camp is opening its doors for the first time since the disappearances. Emma is even assigned to the same cabin she slept in as a teenager, but soon discovers a security camera--the only one on the property--pointed directly at its door. Then cryptic clues that Vivian left behind about the camp's twisted origins begin surfacing. As she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past while facing mysterious threats in the present. And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale and what really happened to those girls, the more she realizes that closure could come at a deadly price"--
The review
This was such a good late-summer thriller.
The easiest way to describe the vibe is camp thriller with a horror edge. If you like movies like The Final Girls or Lake Mungo and want that same eerie-lake energy translated into a fast, readable mystery, The Last Time I Lied really works.
Sager knows how to weaponize setting, and the summer-camp backdrop gives this one a built-in sense of nostalgia and danger. It feels haunted by memory even before the twists start landing.
What sold me was how entertaining it is. I loved the twists, including the final one, and the book never lost that page-turning momentum. It is one of those thrillers where the atmosphere is strong but the plot still absolutely moves.
This is a five-star read for me. If you want a summery mystery that still feels sinister, this is exactly the kind of book to throw into a weekend reading stack.
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