#ATBR2019 Review: Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison @harlequinbooks @jessmapreviews
Good Girls Lie
by J.T. Ellison
Publish Date: December 31, 2019
Paperback
464 Pages
Standalone
Genres: Contemporary, Thriller, Mystery
Perched atop a hill in the tiny town of Marchburg, Virginia, The 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. But 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.
J.T. Ellison’s pulse-pounding new novel examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to to protect their secrets.
My Review:
My fourth Ellison book and let me tell y'all. I just love her. Her wicked mind, the crazy stories she comes up with and the ease in which it is to read her writing. Take all those things and add it in with a boarding school/secret society-esque type story and I am here for it for every page.
I'm completely torn with this read. I was intrigued enough to continue page after page but it wasn't until around the 300 page mark that it really captured my interest. The pages leading up to this gave me no clue to what was actually going on. There are different POVs throughout the read and sometimes it's difficult to determine whose mind you're in with each chapter.... when I got toward the end, I understood why. However, it still was a bit eyebrow pinching.
Once a couple reveals came about, I unfortunately wasn't exactly wowed. It wasn't quite what I was expecting yet wasn't really a surprise either. There is one part in the epilogue that did make me smirk and I was pretty happy with it. I dunno you guys.
Was I entertained? Yes, I was. I think had it not taken 300 pages to fully capture my attention, I may have liked this one more. Ellison is a favorite author of mine. So far Lie to Me is my favorite of hers but each book I've read has made my thriller heart happy. This is still a fantastic thriller read and I appreciate where Ellison was taking us readers. I just wish I had bonded with this story earlier than I did.
★★★
Jessica's Review:
J.T. Ellison quickly became an auto-buy author for me and that certainly hasn’t changed! GOOD GIRLS LIE is my fourth book by Ellison and I’m reminded every time why I love her thrillers. The dark and twisty stories she weaves for us are always ones that grab my attention.
As the title suggests, there are plenty of lies and that brings tons of drama with it. Who doesn’t love drama in an all-girls prep school? Ellison gives us the dark and complicated sides to any teenage girl friendship, secret societies within the prep school, hazing, and plenty to keep you on your toes and flipping those pages. I will say that this one was a little slower moving than her previous reads, but if you go into this knowing that then I think you’ll enjoy it a lot more!
It took me a little bit to really get invested in the story, but I think that’s more of a me thing because I’ve seen plenty of reviews that disagree with that. Once I got hooked I couldn’t stop. We get to see through the eyes of multiple characters, something I will continue to enjoy in the thriller genre, and this helps build the never-ending tension.
Overall, not my favorite from Ellison but one I would still highly recommend! I only took it down a little from a 4 star read because it took me a little longer to get invested than her previous books. If you want a drama-filled, psychological thriller, then this is the one for you
3.5 stars
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