The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager. Thirteen-year-old Emma Davis goes to Camp Nightingale and gets assigned to Dogwood Cabin with three 16-year-old girls. They vanish. The girls are not found, and the camp is shut down. Emma feels guilty, PTSD-guilty, rehab-guilty. When the camp reopens 15 years later, she ends up in Dogwood again with three different teenage girls. These girls also disappear, and she is the prime suspect. There are so many suspects that until the end, you can never be sure. A well-written and fast-moving mystery.
Camp Nightingale is on the shore of a man-made lake, Lake Midnight. It was created by a dam, and it inundated Pleasant Valley Asylum. The lake and surrounding forests, boulders, and caves are vividly described and can be considered another character. The descriptions of summer camp reminded me of my childhood.
I loved this book until the end. The resolution introduced too much new information for my taste and raised as many questions as it answered.
The camp belongs to the old-money White-Harris family. Franny is the matriarch. Her adopted sons are Theo (older than Emma) and Chet (younger than Emma). Mindy (Chet’s fiancée) only appears during Emma’s second summer. Lottie is Franny’s assistant and has been with the family forever. Ben Schumacher is the gardener and was hired just before Emma’s first summer.
Trivia: Riley Sager is the pen name of Todd Ritter. He chose a pen name because his earlier Todd Ritter novels didn’t sell, and he had to distance himself to get a fresh start in the publishing world. This is not uncommon. The same is true for Kate Elliott who began life as Alis A. Rasmussen.
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Spoilers:
The first three girls: Vivian murdered Natalie and Allison in
revenge for them letting her sister Catherine drown. Natalie and Allison were
best friends with Catherine when she died. Vivian drowned them in Lake Midnight
by the submerged asylum before assuming a new identity.
The entire property is just 4,000 acres. I couldn’t believe that
the submerged asylum wasn’t located after two exhaustive (volunteers, boats,
helicopters) searches. Also, how was 16-year-old Vivian able to construct a new
identity and maintain it for 15 years?
The second three girls: Chet, now 25, invited Emma Davis, now 28,
to Camp Nightingale to punish her for her perceived transgressions against his
old bother Theo 15 years ago. The punishment started with harassment and ended
with framing her for the disappearance of Sasha, Krystal, and Miranda.
Red herrings:
Peaceful Valley Asylum sold the patients’ hair to keep the place
open as a haven for these girls.
Ben Schumacher, the groundskeeper, had sex once with Vivian but
was otherwise innocent. He was 19 and she was 16.
