I received this ARC on Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

Title: Last Girl Lied To

Author: L.E. Flynn

Genre: Young Adult, Mystery, Contemporary

Pages: 352

Publisher: Imprint

Publication Date: April 16, 2019

Something made him angry that night.
Something made her cry.
Something made Trixie disappear.
What if it was all the same thing?

Fiona claims she doesn’t remember anything about the night her best friend left a party early and walked into the ocean. But the truth is, she wishes she could forget.

Trixie’s disappearance is ruled a suicide, but Fiona starts to believe that Trixie isn’t really dead. Piecing together the trail of a girl who doesn’t want to be found leads her to Jasper, Trixie’s former friend with benefits, and Beau—the boy who turned Fiona down, who loved someone else, who might be happy Trixie is gone.

The closer Fiona gets to finding out what happened, and the closer she gets to Jasper and Beau, the more she realizes that the girl she knew better than anyone may have been a carefully constructed lie—and she might have been waiting to disappear the entire time.

Told in alternating chapters between the past and the present, Last Girl Lied To is a gripping emotional thriller.

Goodreads

This is a fantastic YA mystery. I flew through this book and it was so hard for me to put down. I really connected with the main character, Fiona, so much. And I’m in my early 30’s. If I was still a teenager I would have loved her even more. Fiona is messy and sometimes makes wrong choices but most of these choices come from her being in pain or her need to feel loved. The characters in this book all felt realistic which kept me wanting to find out what was going to happen next to them. The pacing of the story was also really well done. There would be some stuff happening and then it would skip ahead  in time but nothing ever felt rushed. I actually liked that not everything happened in a short amount of time.

Also, the mystery of her trying to figure out what exactly happened to her friend, Trixie was giving me major Pretty Little Liar vibes. The stories aren’t all that similar but it is about a friend dying and trying to figure out what happened in the backdrop of high school drama. So, I guess sort of similar. Except it’s basically just Fiona trying to figure stuff out and there is no A or threatening text messages.  It could be that I have PLL on the brain since the spinoff has started but I do really think that if you enjoyed PLL that you will like this book too.

I do want to point out that Fiona does reference her weight a lot in the book and I know for me, that would have been really triggering if I was still a teenage girl. It was making me uncomfortable at times reading it but I do think that it also helped to make Fiona more of a realistic character. I think a lot of people will identify with her but I know that for some of us that kind of talk can be harmful. There is no reference to her actual weight in the book just how Fiona feels in her body and how she perceives others to see her.

For me the ending of this book was predictable but I still really enjoyed it. There were parts of the final reveal that I didn’t see coming. Also, the way the reveal was done was so good. We had been building to the reveal the whole book and it didn’t disappoint at all. The actual ending was a pretty typical YA ending but since I was so invested in the characters I didn’t mind it too much.

This book comes out today and I hope that if it at all sounds intriguing to you that you check it out. If you usually shy away from mysteries but enjoy YA contemporaries than I strongly recommend this book to you. Even if you don’t really read YA but enjoy mysteries or contemporaries than I still think you would enjoy this book. I will definitely be checking out Flynn’s past novel and anything else she writes in the future.

~Cassie