The Broken Girls

This awful cover art almost turned me away from what was, really, a very good book. It was suspenseful and the way the story unfolded with two story-lines between 1950 and 2014, keeps the story engaging and at the end of your seat. I was really impressed with how the author kept a few pretty complex story-lines together without confusing readers and pulled all those loose threads together at the end, for a pretty compelling and chilling ending. Idlewild boarding school for young ladies is not a nice place. It's dark, foreboding, and many say it's haunted. In 1950 four roommates are convinced there is a ghost haunting them and the grounds. She goes by Mary Hand and you can't let her in. They're not alone, decades of girls before them have written about and passed on legends about the haunting of Mary. In 2014, a journalist is appalled to discover that the long vacant Idlewild boarding school has been bought and is being restored. In the nineties the journalist's sister was found found brutalized and murdered in the athletic field and the place has haunted her ever since. During construction, the crews find the body of a teenager in a well, but it's not new, it's decades old. She decides she has to research and write this story. There is too much tragedy at the boarding house to be a coincidence. Fast paced and impossible to put down!

The Lying Game

This author has gotten a lot of hype as thriller author with good twists (The Woman in Cabin 10) so I thought I would check her newest book out. While I wasn't head over in heels about it, the premise was good, the plot solid, and there were some good twists. While in boarding school Isa befriends three girls and they immediately become inseparable. Weekends are spent together, drinking, laughing, and playing the lying game. The goal is to say outrageous lies to people (strangers, peers, professors, etc.) and get them to believe you. Points are awarded on if they believe you, how tall the tale was, and if you could get one of the girls to crack and start laughing. The only rules are: stick to your story, never get caught, never lie to each other, and know when to stop lying. Their time at boarding school was cut short by a tragic accident (of which the reader won't find out until much later) and the girls haven't seen each other in well over a decade. However a chilling text from Kate (I need you) brings the four girls back together again. What they don't realize is that their biggest lie of all is going to come back and haunt them. For fans of suspense and plot twists.