By Jordan Sunkel
Round Table editor

I’ve always wondered what it was like to have a twin, to share a bond that strong. To have someone exactly identical to me, and understand my thoughts and feelings completely would be incredibly amazing.

Emma is a girl that has been passed around in foster cares for nearly all her life. She knew her mother, but one day she was left alone, and her mother hasn’t returned since.

Sutton has been adopted for as long as she remembers. She’s been blessed to live in Tuscon, Arizona with an extremely wealthy family and a great group of friends that like to push boundaries. However, Sutton is not so lucky, because she’s dead.

After Emma gets into a fight with her foster mother and brother, and sees a strange video of Sutton, she sets off to find her twin. When Emma arrives in Tuscon, Sutton’s friends mistake her for the other twin.

Suddenly Emma is thrown into Sutton’s life, and learns how extremely bizarre it is. Emma learns of The Lying Game, which is basically a game to play tricks and threaten each other. When Emma starts getting suspicious about Sutton’s whereabouts, it becomes clearer that someone is playing a very bad prank.

Emma must figure out if this is all a joke, or if Sutton has been murdered. Emma must learn who to trust, and how to play Sutton’s part. If she doesn’t, she may end up just like Sutton.

The Lying Game by Sara Shepard is a thrilling, mysterious novel. Every time I thought I had figured out “whodunit,” it turned out that the person had an alibi or a cover-up.

Shepard is also the author of The Pretty Little Liars series, which has now become a hit television show on ABC Family. The show is on its second season on television.

Not only is it thrilling, but it is surprising and full of twists. Shepard creates thrilling situations that leaves the reader on the edge of their seats. Several times throughout the book I had to put it down and think about what just happened.

Although Emma still does not know exactly who killed her twin, she continues to gain clues about the murder. Emma essentially must be Sutton, her life depends on it.

The two girls are similar, but their internal voices and actions are different enough to define them. At some points the voices are hard to separate, but eventually the two voices split.

The Lying Game is the first novel of the series. It was Shepard’s first book after the Pretty Little Liars series, and although I haven’t read her older books, I will definitely read the sequel.