The Lying Game
On a cool June morning, a woman is walking her dog in the idyllic coastal village of Salten along a tidal estuary known as the Reach. Before she can stop him, the dog charges into the water to retrieve what first appears to be a wayward stick, but to her horror, turns out to be something much more sinister... The next morning, three women in and around London—Fatima, Thea, and Isabel—receive the text they had always hoped would NEVER come, from the fourth in their formerly inseparable clique, Kate, that says only, “I need you.” The four girls were best friends at Salten, a second rate boarding school set near the cliffs of the English Channel. Each different in their own way, the four became inseparable and were notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn to both fellow boarders and faculty, with varying states of serious and flippant nature that were disturbing enough to ensure that everyone steered clear of them. The myriad and complicated rules of the game are strict: no lying to each other—ever. Bail on the lie when it becomes clear it is about to be found out. But their little game had consequences, and the girls were all expelled in their final year
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Also by Ruth Ware
What you might want to know about The Lying Game
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Seventeen years after their final term at Salten House, illustrator Isa Wilde gets a three-word text from her old school friend Kate. A child has dragged a bone out of the salt marsh near the old school, and the four friends have to come back and decide what to do about a secret from 1999.
No. The Lying Game is a standalone Ruth Ware thriller. Ware has written several other standalones including The Woman in Cabin 10 and One by One.
No. The Lying Game by Ruth Ware (2017) is unrelated to Sara Shepard's YA Lying Game series, despite the title overlap.
The Lying Game was written by Ruth Ware, published in 2017 by Pocket Books.
The Lying Game is 440 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Lying Game takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
The Lying Game is a standalone novel by Ruth Ware, not part of a series.
The Lying Game is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
