My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Goodreads rating: 3.99 with 798 ratings (as of 1/3/2020)

Goode girls don’t lie…

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.…more on Goodreads

200 Word Review

I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review.

J.T. Ellison’s latest work, Good Girls Lie, is set in an elite boarding school which is set atop a hill in the small town of Marchburg, Virginia. The students are only the best girls who are hand-picked each year by the dean. However, it is not a young adult book. It is a thriller full of secrets, secret societies, lies, and a strict honor code that is not always followed.

In the beginning, I found it difficult to get into the book but I am glad I kept reading. Several reviewers described it as fast-paced but I disagree. It is a slow burn but it does definitely burn. The twists were both expected and unexpected but worked well.

It opens with a body being found then flashes back to learn the events that lead up to the death. It is not a new tactic but, with the story, it works well.

J.T. Ellison is best known for her Lt. Taylor Jackson series. The 8th book, “Field of Graves” was published in 2015. She has teamed up with Catherine Coulter to write “A Brit in the FBI” series. The 6th book in the series, The Last Second, was published in 2019.

This review was published on Philomathinphila.com, Smashbomb, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble on 1/10/2020. When available, the review will be published on Scribd.com and, using Overdrive, will be rated in 9 libraries.

Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Print Length: 384 pages
ISBN: 0778309185
Publisher: MIRA
Publication Date: December 31, 2019

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