Title: The Lying Club
Author: Annie Ward
Publication: March 22, 2022
Publisher: Park Row
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 402
SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
At an elite private school nestled in the Colorado mountains, Natalie, an office assistant, dreams of having a life like the school moms she deals with every day. Women like Brooke—a gorgeous heiress, ferociously loving mother and serial cheater—and Asha, an overprotective mom who suspects her husband of having an affair. Their fates are bound by the handsome assistant athletic director Nicholas, whom Natalie loves, Brooke wants and Asha needs.
But when two bodies are carried out of the school one morning, it seems the tension between mothers and daughters, rival lovers, and the haves and have-nots has shattered the surface of this isolated, affluent town—where people stop at nothing to get what they want.
REVIEW:
**A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**
Rich, private school kids and their parents. It’s like this book was made for me. I was very much looking forward to reading The Lying Club by Annie Ward. It sounded like mystery and intrigue and scandal. Just what I like.
The story follows a few different families in an affluent neighborhood where no one’s perfect life is as good as it seems. I quite enjoyed that we got to see perspectives from both the teenagers and the parents and the struggles between the two. It was interesting to see how the things they were hiding from each other affected the story and led it along. Ward did a good job feeding one storyline into another to show how they connected as the story pieced together.
There was one thing about this book that bothered me. Some of the behaviors seemed a little bit over the top and more inappropriate than most individuals would deem normal. At times it was so over the top it didn’t feel very realistic, which made it harder for me to enjoy.
With that said, the flow of the story was good and one story fed into the other as the story built and I enjoyed how I knew what the story would do because of the initial reveal at the beginning of the book. Knowing the outcome, but not how it got there kept me flipping pages. The ending reveals were incredibly shocking and I was not expecting the ending at all. Lots of twists and turns to wrap this story up for a happy reader such as myself. I’m curious to see what comes next from Annie Ward and even though I had issues with The Lying Club, I definitely intend to check out more from her.