Good Girls Lie
by J.T. Ellison
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.
J.T. Ellison’s pulse-pounding new novel examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to to protect their secrets.
My Rating:
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.
J.T. Ellison’s pulse-pounding new novel examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to to protect their secrets.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
Everyone lies. To themselves, to each other. It’s a way to belong, to be included. To look important.
I employ the only tool in my arsenal— silence. It only adds to the mystique. Who knew? I thought lies had power until I saw what silence could do.
My Review:
J.T. Ellison has mad word skills and is a master storyteller, her descriptive and emotive prose fully created each scene from the ground up with multiple textures, scents, sights, and sounds. I was sucked right in and fully present, sometimes, uncomfortably so. While it wasn’t an edge of your seat thriller, I was deeply invested in this twisted and tense hybrid tale that was part YA, part Women’s Fiction, part suspense, part family drama.
The main character of Ash was always taut with tension and anxiously on edge for fear of discovery and I found myself often nibbling on my cuticles with the extremely poor posture of my shoulders in my ears while clutching my Kindle with a vise-like grip. This was a long, complex, and cunningly paced tale with multiple layers and interesting textures. The storylines were rather ingenious, shrewdly plotted, and expertly populated with a cast of diabolical and oddly intriguing characters of all ages. The most heinous was, of course, the teenaged girls, who were especially vile and vicious as only teenaged girls can be. Although, and I know from personal experience, rich and privileged teenaged girls are the absolute worst of the breed.
About The Author
J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 20 novels, and the EMMY-award winning co-host of A WORD ON WORDS, Nashville's premier literary show. With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim, prestigious awards, and has been published in 26 countries. Ellison lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens.
