Somehow I always have difficulty with Ruth Ware’s plotting—her novels never use a traditional mystery story arc and I get impatient waiting for the narrative to develop. The secret that the four protagonists—friends thrown together at the Salten School 17 years—are covering up doesn’t even emerge until almost halfway through the book. While the characters are engaging, their “lying game” also isn’t strongly defined. The ending is spectacular, however, even if there are some holes in the resolution of the mystery, but still it’s hard to forget that I struggled with putting the book down for the entire first half.