The Lying Game: Lying Game, #1 -- Sara Shepard

Lying game Sutton Mercer wakes up in a gross bathtub in a bathroom she doesn't remember ever seeing before. Actually, her memory's pretty patchy, period.

Turns out, there's a reason for that: She's dead.

Or she thinks she is, anyway. That's the only explanation she can come up with.

And, now that she's dead, she's discovered that she had a long-lost twin. Because, you know. She's haunting her.

Seventeen-year-old Emma Paxton has spent most of her life bouncing from one foster home to another. All she's ever wanted is to belong to a family. So when she sees a YouTube video featuring a girl who looks exactly like her, Emma knows that she's got to find her.

Trouble is, it looks disturbingly like a snuff film.

But, when Emma takes the plunge and sends Sutton a message via Facebook, she gets a message back: A message that invites her out to Arizona. So... clearly she's fine, right?

Ghost Sutton knows otherwise, but she's got no way of communicating with Emma. And once Emma gets out there, she realizes that Sutton's missing... but no one else knows it, because everyone thinks she's Sutton. Everyone, that is, except Sutton's killer... who makes it very clear to Emma that if she tries to leave... SHE'LL BE NEXT!

Fans of the Pretty Little Liars books will be perfectly happy with The Lying Game, the first book in Sara Shepard's new mystery series. It's different in that it really only follows one main character (not counting poor old Ghost Sutton), but it's got the same guiltily satisfying combination of mystery and mean girls.

I enjoyed it, with one major caveat.

Here's the thing. The story hinges on Emma passing as Sutton.

Emma, to her credit, tries to tell people that she's not Sutton. (Well, before the Big Bad tells her to cut it out OR ELSE!) But no one believes her. Which is understandable, as Sutton was a huge liar. And Emma doesn't have any ID because someone stole her purse. And there's a part of her, of course, that doesn't want to give up a ready-made family, even though she's uncomfortable with a whole lot of Sutton's life*.

However.

It wouldn't be that gd hard to prove her identity. She has her driver's license, so she'd be in the DMV records. Plus, she's been in foster care since she was five years old. Methinks that there'd be a paper trail, complete with pictures, if not some freaking fingerprints. Dental x-rays, even. Yeesh.

So that was irritating. But, you know. Fun, if served with a large dollop of suspension of disbelief.

I mean, a way larger one than the rest of the plot already requires...

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Amazon | Indiebound

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*Main issue? Her friends are ginormously, terrifyingly mean. Which Emma isn't.

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Book source: ILLed through my library.