If you like gothic vibes
psychological thrillers – this one for you!
The story takes place
at an exclusive boarding school, where one can expect secret passageways, secret
societies, murder, to name a few. I loved everything about the setting and the
atmosphere of this book! It was truly creepy and mysterious!
Also, it was very unpredictable!
If you think you know what will happen, think again! I’ve never read something quite
like this, a very creative premise!
Finally, the ending!
WOW, that was such a great ending! Definitely, a must-read! Expertly written,
and full of surprises!
Thank you to Harper Collins for
providing me with an electronic ARC of this book via NetGalley. As usual, my
reviews are my honest and unbiased opinions
Good Girls Lie
Author: J.T. Ellison
ISBN: 9780778330776
Publication Date: 12/30/19
Publisher: MIRA Books
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Author Bio: J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 20 novels, and the
EMMY-award winning co-host of A WORD ON WORDS, Nashville's premier literary
show. With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim,
prestigious awards, and has been published in 26 countries. Ellison lives in
Nashville with her husband and twin kittens.
Book Summary:
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.
J.T. Ellison’s pulse-pounding new novel examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to to protect their secrets.
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.
J.T. Ellison’s pulse-pounding new novel examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to to protect their secrets.
Excerpt
1
THE
HANGING
The
girl’s body dangles from the tall iron gates guarding the school’s entrance. A
closer examination shows the ends of a red silk tie peeking out like a cardinal
on a winter branch, forcing her neck into a brutal angle. She wears her
graduation robe and multicolored stole as if knowing she’ll never see the
achievement. It rained overnight and the thin robe clings to her body, dew
sparkling on the edges. The last tendrils of dawn’s fog laze about her legs,
which are five feet from the ground.
There
is no breeze, no birds singing or squirrels industriously gathering for the
long winter ahead, no cars passing along the street, only the cool, misty
morning air and the gentle metallic creaking of the gates under the weight of
the dead girl. She is suspended in midair, her back to the street, her face
hidden behind a curtain of dirty, wet hair, dark from the rains.
Because
of the damage to her face, it will take them some time to officially identify
her. In the beginning, it isn’t even clear she attends the school, despite
wearing The Goode School robes.
But
she does.
The
fingerprints will prove it. Of course, there are a few people who know exactly
who is hanging from the school’s gates. Know who, and know why. But they will
never tell. As word spreads of the apparent suicide, The Goode School’s
all-female student body begin to gather, paying silent, terrified homage to
their fallen compatriot. The gates are closed and locked—as they always are
overnight—buttressed on either side by an ivy-covered, ten-foot-high, redbrick
wall, but it tapers off into a knee-wall near the back entrance to the school
parking lot, and so is escapable by foot. The girls of Goode silently filter
out from the dorms, around the end of Old West Hall and Old East Hall to Front
Street—the main street of Marchburg, the small Virginia town housing the elite
prep school—and take up their positions in front of the gate in a wedge of
crying, scared, worried young women who glance over shoulders looking for the
one who is missing from their ranks. To reassure themselves this isn’t their
friend, their sister, their roommate.
Another
girl joins them, but no one notices she comes from the opposite direction, from
town. She was not behind the redbrick wall.
Whispers
rise from the small crowd, nothing loud enough to be overheard but forming a
single question.
Who is it? Who?
A
solitary siren pierces the morning air, the sound bleeding upward from the
bottom of the hill, a rising crescendo. Someone has called the sheriff.
Goode
perches like a gargoyle above the city’s small downtown, huddles behind its
ivy-covered brick wall. The campus is flanked by two blocks of restaurants,
bars, and necessary shops. The school’s buildings are tied together with
trolleys—enclosed glass-and-wood bridges that make it easy for the girls to
move from building to building in climate-controlled comfort. It is quiet,
dignified, isolated. As are the girls who attend the school; serious, studious.
Good. Goode girls are always good. They go on to great things.
The
headmistress, or dean, as she prefers to call herself, Ford Julianne Westhaven,
great-granddaughter several times removed from the founder of The Goode School,
arrives in a flurry, her driver, Rumi, braking the family Bentley with a
screech one hundred feet away from the gates. The crowd in the street blocks
the car and, for a moment, the sight of the dangling girl. No one stops to
think about why the dean might be off campus this early in the morning. Not
yet, anyway.
Dean
Westhaven rushes out of the back of the dove-gray car and runs to the crowd,
her face white, lips pressed firmly together, eyes roving. It is a look all the
girls at Goode recognize and shrink from.
The
dean’s irritability is legendary, outweighed only by her kindness. It is said
she alone approves every application to the school, that she chooses the Goode
girls by hand for their intelligence, their character. Her say is final.
Absolute. But for all her goodness, her compassion, her kindness, Dean
Westhaven has a temper.
She
begins to gather the girls into groups, small knots of natural blondes and
brunettes and redheads, no fantastical dye allowed. Some shiver in oversize
school sweatshirts and running shorts, some are still in their pajamas. The
dean is looking for the chick missing from her flock. She casts occasional
glances over her shoulder at the grim scene behind her. She, too, is unsure of
the identity of the body, or so it seems. Perhaps she simply doesn’t want to
acknowledge the truth.
The
siren grows to an earsplitting shriek and dies midrange, a soprano newly
castrated. The deputies from the sheriff’s office have arrived, the sheriff hot
on their heels. Within moments, they cordon off the gates, move the students
back, away, away. One approaches the body, cataloging; another begins taking
discreet photographs, a macabre paparazzi.
They
speak to Dean Westhaven, who quietly, breathlessly, admits she hasn’t
approached the body and has no idea who it might be.
She
is lying, though. She knows. Of course, she knows. It was inevitable.
The
sheriff, six sturdy feet of muscle and sinew, approaches the gate and takes a
few shots with his iPhone. He reaches for the foot of the dead girl and slowly,
slowly turns her around.
The
eerie morning silence is broken by the words, soft and gasping, murmurs moving
sinuously through the crowd of girls, their feet shuffling in the morning
chill, the fog’s tendrils disappearing from around the posts.
They
say her name, an unbroken chain of accusation and misery.
Ash.
Ash.
Ash.
2
THE
LIES
There are truths, and there are lies,
and then there is everything that really happened, which is where you and I
will meet. My truth is your lie, and my lie is your truth, and there is a vast
expanse between them.
Take,
for example, Ash Carlisle.
Six
feet tall, glowing skin, a sheaf of blond hair in a ponytail. She wears black
jeans with rips in the knees and a loose greenand-white plaid button-down with
white Adidas Stan Smiths; casual, efficient travel clothes. A waiter delivers a
fresh cup of tea to her nest in the British Airways first-class lounge, and
when she smiles her thanks, he nearly drops his tray—so pure and happy is that
smile. The smile of an innocent.
Or
not so innocent? You’ll have to decide that for yourself. Soon.
She’s
perfected that smile, by the way. Practiced it. Stood in the dingy bathroom of
the flat on Broad Street and watched herself in the mirror, lips pulling back
from her teeth over and over and over again until it becomes natural, until her
eyes sparkle and deep dimples appear in her cheeks. It is a full-toothed smile,
her teeth straight and blindingly white, and when combined with the china-blue
eyes and naturally streaked blond hair, it is devastating.
Isn’t
this what a sociopath does? Work on their camouflage? What better disguise is
there than an open, thankful, gracious smile? It’s an exceptionally dangerous
tool, in the right hands.
And
how does a young sociopath end up flying first class, you might ask? You’ll be
assuming her family comes from money, naturally, but let me assure you, this
isn’t the case. Not at all. Not really. Not anymore.
No,
the dean of the school sent the ticket.
Why?
Because
Ash Carlisle leads a charmed life, and somehow managed to hoodwink the dean
into not only paying her way but paying for her studies this first term, as
well. A full scholarship, based on her exemplary intellect, prodigy piano
playing, and sudden, extraordinary need. Such a shame she lost her parents so
unexpectedly.
Yes,
Ash is smart. Smart and beautiful and talented, and capable of murder. Don’t
think for a moment she’s not. Don’t let her fool you.
Sipping
the tea, she types and thinks, stops to chew on a nail, then reads it again.
The essay she is obsessing over gained her access to the prestigious, elite
school she is shipping off to. The challenges ahead—transferring to a new
school, especially one as impossible to get into as The Goode School—frighten
her, excite her, make her more determined than ever to get away from Oxford,
from her past.
A
new life. A new beginning. A new chapter for Ash.
But
can you ever escape your past?
Ash
sets down the tea, and I can tell she is worrying again about fitting in.
Marchburg, Virginia—population five hundred on a normal summer day, which
expands to seven hundred once the students arrive for term—is a long way from
Oxford, England. She worries about fitting in with the daughters of the DC
elite—daughters of senators and congressmen and ambassadors and reporters and
the just plain filthy rich. She can rely on her looks—she knows how pretty she
is, isn’t vain about it, exactly, but knows she’s more than acceptable on the
looks scale—and on her intelligence, her exceptional smarts. Some would say
cunning, but I think this is a disservice to her. She’s both booksmart and
street-smart, the rarest of combinations. Despite her concerns, if she sticks
to the story, she will fit in with no issues.
The
only strike against her, of course, is me, but no one knows about me.
No
one can ever know about me.
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