Good Girls Lie

Good Girls Lie starts off strong, with the opening scene featuring a gruesome murder at a posh all-girls' high school in Virginia. The story promises great intrigue and I liked the addition of secret societies, a strict honour code and a cool campus setting with a bit of an ominous feel.

Readers are introduced to a bevy of privileged students and the staff who teach them as the mystery over a murdered student slowly builds. But just past the halfway mark, the reasons for the twists become apparent (to me anyway) and this is where the story felt like it had a different focus.

A lot of page time is spent with teenage angst, crazy university sorority-like hazings, unhealthy relationships and Mean Girl behaviour that would make even Regina George grimace. But it was the instances where readers are expected to suspend reality for the story to work that I couldn't get behind. There were also a few extraneous characters (the cop and his niece, the senator) that didn't add much to the story but it was the 'telling instead of showing' (particularly with one romantic relationship that seemed to come out of nowhere) that influenced my overall feelings for the book.

This book had a good premise and was an easy read slow-burn kind of read with an epilogue that added a bit of a final twist but, while Good Girls Lie has teenage Mean Girl angst in the bag, it didn't quite give me enough suspense.

My Rating: 3 stars

Author: J.T Ellison

Genre: Suspense

Type: Hardcover (464 pages)

Source: Local Public Library

Publisher: MIRA

First Published: December 30, 2019

Opening Line: The girl's body dangles from the tall 

iron gates guarding the school's entrance.

Book Description from GoodReads: Goode girls don’t lie…

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.