The Lying Game book review

The Lying Game is a series I keep listening to more out of boredom than anything else. People say that life is too short to read bad books when there are so many good ones out there but I've had trouble finding any- good ones I mean. This series is okay. Which is more than I can say for most other YA books I've tried reading or listening to lately so this one stays. Which isn't to say it doesn't make me too nauseous to listen to while running though because it does, like totally bi-otch.

I've listened to the first four books and apparently there are two more. There is probably enough interesting stuff here for one book. I know other readers felt this way about Sara Shepard's other series- Pretty Little Liars, too but to me she throws in enough interesting side stories to make that series entertaining. Here, not so much, unless you find school dances, dates, and endless conversations with her friends about which one is the bi-otch-iest entertaining.

The series is about a foster teen named Emma who discovers she has a long lost twin- Sutton. She arranges to meet her, only to find out when she arrives in her sister's town that Sutton has been murdered and the killer has orchestrated for Emma to take over her life.

It is a jarring narrative experience. It is told in the third person through the eyes of Emma who inexplicably hands off to the ghost of Sutton who talks in the first person and doesn't remember anything about her life but can somehow read Emma's mind. There is no warning when this transition is about to happen and it can take a few paragraphs to sort out who is talking. Sutton is a total bore as a ghost, mostly just whining about how Emma judges her, and mooning over dreamy guys, and then conveniently remembering pieces of her life (but omitting the most important parts) when it is convenient to the plot.

Sutton's friends are very one dimensional- they are bi-otches, as they like to say every other page or so. Even though they get a little back story as the series goes on they are really hard to relate to or like any of them. Emma has a little more depth but the depiction of all foster parents through her eyes as negligent a-holes who just use their foster kids to get government checks was off putting to say the least. I'm sure some of them are insufferable but it is a really tough job being a foster parent and there are much easier ways to get money if that's all you're after. Why is it that Emma didn't even have one foster parent that was a decent human being?

Each book centers around one “suspect” that Emma is 100% positive killed Sutton until about ¾ of the way through when -oh my gosh! they didn't kill Sutton! What a surprise!

The books would be more interesting if they focused more on the murder mystery and less on what everyone is wearing.

I kept listening because I needed something to entertain me at work and it passes, barely. Something interesting finally happened at the end of the fourth book. As in, actually interesting and unexpected. This is the kind of twist that Pretty Little Liars is full of. Is it too late to save the series though? I guess I will check out the next two books, or the last one at least. Let's just hope they don't extend the series again!