Will Hurley was an attractive, charming, and impressive student at Dublin's elite St. John's College--and Ireland's most prolific serial killer. Freshman Alison Smith moved to the Big Smoke to enroll in St. John's and soon fell hard for Will Hurley. Her world bloomed—and then imploded when Liz, her best friend, became the latest victim of the Canal Killer—and the Canal Killer turned out to be the boy who'd been sleeping in her bed.
I was expecting a fast-paced story filled with lots of twists and turns, and, while The Liar’s Girl is pretty twisty, I wouldn’t exactly call it fast-paced. The middle portion drags quite a bit, and I found it hard to remain interested in all the minutiae the author choses to include ... The Liar’s Girl is far from my favorite mystery so far this year, but I still consider it worth reading. Its setting is refreshing, and its characters are complex enough to feel like real people. Plus, it has an utterly stellar ending. If I could recommend this book on the strength of that ending alone, I totally would.
Amid distracting details about clothes and cushions, [Alison] confronts not only a past tragedy, but a current threat. Although Howard... meanders a bit through the streets and shops and pubs of Cork and Dublin, she picks up the pace when it most matters—and tosses a lovely curveball at the end, too.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
