Book Review 2021 #9 - Riley Sager's The Last Time I Lied
The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: July 3rd, 2018
Format: Hardcover, 370 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
Emma finally got the chance to go to the rich bitch summer camp. Yes, her summer plans were upended, but her friends would be so jealous when she returned after six weeks in the wild. Of course her parents forgot to tell her she was going until an hour before they had to leave and they arrive at Camp Nightingale late. All the other cabins with girls her age are full so Emma is put in Dogwood with three older girls, Vivian, Natalie, and Allison. It will always be those three girls, Vivian, Natalie, and Allison, in that order. Because something happened during the two weeks Emma was there that would change her future and the future of the camp. After a roaring bonfire on the forth of July Vivian, Natalie, and Allison leave Dogwood and are never seen again. Fifteen years later Emma is having her first solo art exhibition. She paints large canvases where the forest seems palpably real. Vines and leaves and branches twist and turn in sinuous ways. Though only one other person knows the secret hidden in her paintings. Each and every painting has Vivian, Natalie, and Allison in them. They are forever lost in the forest primeval in perfect white dresses. At the opening a figure from Emma's past buys one of her paintings. Francesca Harris-White, but please call her Franny, is older, but Emma instantly recognizes the founder of Camp Nightingale. The camp has remained closed all these years but she intends to reopen it and wants Emma to teach painting to the girls. They will no longer be the rich bitch camp but campers chosen on merit to enjoy the luxury that generations of girls got to enjoy before that fateful summer. Emma is at first shocked by the proposition. She never thought she'd return to Camp Nightingale and Dogwood, but Franny has assembled an interesting collection of people who were there the year the camp closed. So while Emma might be courting insanity in returning, this is also her one chance to actually find out what happened to her three friends. Her one chance to find closure. Even if it kills her.
I have always had a bit of an obsession with summer camps because I never went to one. OK, I lied, I went to a Jewish summer day camp for two weeks in a park near my house that is now known for gay cruising. Also I was raised Catholic. So there's that conundrum. But I was obsessed for those two weeks with the crafts side of camp, the tie-dying, the candle making, the colored sand in jars, the friendship bracelets, I adored all of it. The closest I ever got to going to a real camp was an overnight Girl Scouts trip to what had to have been a summer camp at some time in it's past. There were long wooden bunk houses, bug invested latrines, and an open air dining hall, all laid out in an oval and very down-at-heel. The best part was when we got to explore. At the back of camp in the woods there were these amazing rocks and we just sat on them and looked out over the lowland. Sadly we never got to go back to the rocks and the trip ended how most of my encounters with nature end, covered in bug bites, overheated, sunburnt, and totally sleep deprived. I almost passed out in church too, remember Catholic, because I had lost a lot of blood due to my constantly having nose bleeds and our troop leader thinking it would be a good idea to eat breakfast after mass. Needless to say, how I was as a child meant that summer camp, a real summer camp, was never going to be an option for me. Which is how I became obsessed with them. It's not that I even wanted to go, it's just the whole mystique, the whole microcosm created at the camps that made me want to live vicariously through other experiences. Which is why I'm drawn to ghost stories and horrific tales set at camps. They combine my darkest thoughts about them with my need to be a part of them. Because of this The Last Time I Lied was my jam. Not only do we get the teen experience of camp but also the experience of returning as an adult. It's everything I could have wanted and more, because oh, when I started picking up on Picnic at Hanging Rock vibes, well, at first I was wondering if I was imagining it, then I didn't care because it was too awesome, but then I was validated in the end. A satisfying feeling just enveloped me when I finished the book. It's a rare feeling to be sure.
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