The Lying Game by Sara Shepard

Title/Author: The Lying Game (The Lying Game #1) by Sara Shepard
Publisher/Date published: HarperTeen, December 7th 2010
How I got this book: received it from the publisher through NetGalley
Why I read this book: it sounded interesting.

Goodreads summary: "I had a life anyone would kill for.
Then someone did.

The worst part of being dead is that there’s nothing left to live for. No more kisses. No more secrets. No more gossip. It’s enough to kill a girl all over again. But I’m about to get something no one else does — an encore performance, thanks to Emma, the long-lost twin sister I never even got to meet.
Now Emma’s desperate to know what happened to me. And the only way to figure it out is to be me — to slip into my old life and piece it all together. But can she laugh at inside jokes with my best friends? Convince my boyfriend she’s the girl he fell in love with? Pretend to be a happy, carefree daughter when she hugs my parents good night? And can she keep up the charade, even after she realizes my murderer is watching her every move?
Let the lying game begin."

Emma is the twin who seemingly got the short end of the stick. Dropping her of at a friend's house one day, Emma's mother never returned to pick her up and Emma hasn't seen her since. She's lived in foster homes and at the moment has an evil 'brother' who gets her thrown out yet again. A part of his scheme is a video he shows her fostermom of Emma being strangled as a sort of joke. Only one problem: it's not her. It's a girl who looks exactly like her, named Sutton. Emma didn't know she had a sister, let alone an identical twin. She tracks her down through Facebook and sends her a message to set up a meeting. She gets a message back, telling her where they can together. One minor detail: Sutton is dead, so who's sending the message?

When Emma arrives at the place, she's hauled inside by friends of her sister, no one seems to notice she's not Sutton and in the beginning she decides to play along, figuring Sutton will show up any minute. Except she doesn't. And now Emma's stuck playing the part, cause the one who killed Sutton wants her to keep pretending, or she'll be next.

It didn't sit well with me at first that literally no one noticed something off about 'Sutton', I like to think I would notice if one of my best friends was replaced. Even if it was by her identical twin. But later on we're shown that Sutton's 'friends' aren't what they seem to be and it leaves me wondering how much they really know about all of this.

Emma is shocked when she finds out some stuff about Sutton, The Lying Game for example. Sutton and her friends pull really extreme pranks on other people and even each other, which is ultimately the reason no one believes Emma when she claims to be Suttons long lost twin. Sutton's pulled stuff like that before. And apparently, no one informed Suttons adoptive parents of the fact she had a twin.

The fact you're not sure about any of the characters in the book makes it a great read! I didn't know what to expect, one minute the murderer seems to be one of her friends, then her sister.. It's all very paranoia inducing, which must be what it would be like to actually live it, the author did a really good job of expressing this through her writing.

Sutton herself has a voice in the story, she is forced to follow Emma around in her ghost-like state. She can only see what Emma sees, not remembering what happened herself, this and not being able to communicate with anyone frustrates her to no end. I really liked her, though I didn't like the girl she was alive if that makes sense. She seems to care more than she showed living and is shocked herself at the things she and her friends have done.

I'm looking forward to the next part of the series cause I NEED to find out what really happened!

My rating: 3.5 stars