At an elite private school nestled in the Colorado mountains, Natalie, an office assistant, dreams of having a life like the school moms she deals with every day. Women like Brooke and Asha. Their fates are bound by the handsome assistant athletic director Nicholas, whom Natalie loves, Brooke wants and Asha needs. But when two bodies are carried out of the school one morning, it seems the tension between mothers and daughters, rival lovers, and the haves and have-nots has shattered the surface of this isolated, affluent town—where people stop at nothing to get what they want.
Right from the start, it is obvious that nearly any character could be the victim, but even more impressive, any character could be the murderer ... The classic unreliable narrator trope is used with tremendous success here ... The storylines are complex, the characters even more so, and Ward is like a talented puppeteer behind it all, weaving twists and turns together and then ripping them apart ... While I found the first third of the book to be somewhat slow—Ward takes a bit too much time to set the scene...the final third more than makes up for it with shocking (read: horrifying) twists, and a villain whose deviousness you never quite see coming, even when the major reveal has already happened. Ward likes to dig into her characters’ heads and really gets to the heart of what makes them tick, even when she is writing them into bigger and more convoluted lies.
Entertaining ... No one tells the truth in The Lying Club, which Ward elevates with clever twists and deep character studies. The characters undergo believable metamorphoses, with Ward showing their public and private sides--and how it all leads to murder.
