Two Truths and a Lie by Sara Shepard

First, this is my 100^th blog posting!!!! And as promised, I am offering a super sweet book giveaway contest at the end of this book review, to celebrate.

So, I’m a big fan of the TV show, The Lying Game, and was inspired to start reading the books that started the show. I’ve reviewed the first two books in this series already. And while these books are not my favorite YA books, they do make for some entertaining reading!

The first book was all about how everyone in Sutton’s life was a suspect to Emma in trying to solve her twin sister’s murder. Her newly discovered twin was murdered, and she kind of takes over her life before anyone notices, in order to find out what happened to her. The second book was all about clearing the names of those closest to Sutton, and now Emma. And this third book is about Thayer, the brother of Sutton’s best friend, Mads. He disappeared before the first book started and Emma had been hearing some rumors about how Sutton had something to do with his disappearance since she took over Sutton’s life.

My favorite thing about these books is how they are all told from Sutton (the dead twin’s point of view). She doesn’t remember everything about her life, particularly how she died, but as Emma goes along pretending to be Sutton and trying to find clues, Sutton gets memories and flashes of her life. And it becomes clear that while Thayer is a big suspect on Emma’s list, he was also the love of Sutton’s life. And I love how snotty Sutton is. I find her character, while kind of evil at times, to be so much more interesting than Emma. Emma is doing all she can and genuinely seems to be a good person. But, she’s also kind of not that interesting.

This book is full of all the drama and mystery of the first two. There’s break-ins, lying game pranks, jail visits, sisterly rivalry, romantic meet-ups in the tennis courts, parties, lots of family craziness, and all the creepiness of a teen horror movie with a killer on the loose. Hearts are broken and memories are had. I made a promise to myself that after the second book ended back at square one for Emma that I wouldn’t continue with the series if book 3 ended the same way. And it kind of did. Some interesting things were learned though, and Sutton definitely recalls a lot more about the day she died, so it’s not exactly square one. I still can’t give up though. I feel like I need to keep reading even more. I need to know who killed Sutton!

I loved the drama. I loved the eerie, supernatural twin connection, and I loved the suspense. I got a little tired of all the thrift store mentions about Emma. We get that Sutton likes name brands and Emma likes thrift stores; I don’t need to be reminded of this 101 times. I feel like their differences in class were exaggerated enough in the second book. It’s okay to stop pointing out these differences as much now. I really liked Thayer’s character, and I felt bad for him not knowing what happened to Sutton, and why she stopped caring about him. I give this one an 8/10, and I will keep reading because I really need to know.

Now it’s contest time!

What you can win: one of my top five favorite books of 2011.  These were my favorites:

1) Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
2) Divergent by Veronica Roth
3) Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
4) Blood Red Road by Moira Young
5) Across the Universe by Beth Revis

My rules: You need to follow my blog. You need to live in the United States. You need to leave a comment to this post with your email address in it. (If you don’t want the world sending you spam, put your email in this format: noriscloset at gmail dot com). And you need to tell me in your comment which of my top five you want to win, and why.

I will pick one of the comments randomly, and send whoever wins an email by Wednesday Feb. 29^th (one week from today). You will have two days to respond to my email with your shipping address, and if I don’t hear back from you in two days, I will pick another winner. The winner will win whichever of the five books you mention in your post.

Good luck everyone! Happy 100!