The Lying Game (the Lying Game, #1)

The first book in The Lying Game series opens with Sutton Mercer, a teenage girl who wakes in an unfamiliar bathtub with no memory of her life. When a girl named Emma enters the bathroom, Sutton discovers she is invisible and has no reflection. Emma looks exactly like her. A fragmented sensation of pain and the image of a shadowy figure lead Sutton to realize she is dead. She narrates the rest of the story from the afterlife, tethered invisibly to Emma but unable to communicate.

Emma Paxton is a 17-year-old foster child living on the outskirts of Las Vegas. She has been in foster care since age five, when her mother, Becky, a woman with a mental health condition, abandoned her and never returned. Emma now lives with Clarice, a bartender, and Clarice's 18-year-old son, Travis, who regularly harasses Emma. Travis shows Emma a video found online under the username "SuttonInAZ": a blindfolded girl identical to Emma is strangled with a necklace chain, goes limp, and is revealed to share Emma's face. Travis also frames Emma for stealing money from Clarice, and Clarice tells Emma she must leave after her 18th birthday.

Searching online, Emma finds the Facebook page of Sutton Mercer in Tucson, Arizona. Sutton shares Emma's birthday and leads a privileged life with loving parents, an adoptive sister named Laurel, a boyfriend named Garrett, and a close circle of friends including Madeline Vega, Charlotte Chamberlain, and twins Gabriella and Lilianna Fiorello, known as the Twitter Twins. Emma messages Sutton asking if they might be related and receives a reply instructing her to meet at Sabino Canyon, warning that "it's dangerous." Sutton, narrating, reveals she did not write the reply.

Emma travels to Tucson, but Sutton never appears. Someone grabs Emma, blindfolds her, and drags her to a party at the home of Nisha Banerjee, a classmate who despises Sutton. Madeline, Charlotte, and the Fiorello twins reveal the abduction was a prank; everyone believes Emma is Sutton. Unable to reveal her true identity, Emma plays along. She meets Ethan Landry, a quiet neighbor who keeps to himself. Charlotte drives Emma to the Mercer house, where Emma finds Sutton's phone, wallet, and clutch on the desk, with Emma's texts sitting unread. Sutton never came back.

The next morning, Emma tells the Mercer family she is Sutton's twin. They dismiss this as another of Sutton's schemes. Laurel hands Emma a note found under her car's windshield wiper: "Sutton's dead. Tell no one. Keep playing along . . . or you're next." Emma runs to the police station, but Detective Quinlan produces a file documenting Sutton's history of false reports and dismisses her. The strangling video has been removed from the internet, and the only ID Emma carries is Sutton's. Emma realizes she must investigate alone.

At Hollier High School, teachers treat Emma with hostility, having dealt with Sutton's troublemaking for years. As Emma adjusts to Sutton's life, Sutton's first extended memory surfaces: a night at a local resort where Sutton was cruel to her friends and sister. When Sutton followed Laurel into the woods to apologize, someone grabbed her, blindfolded her, and shoved her into the trunk of a car. The trunk eventually opened to reveal a broad-shouldered figure with reddish hair before everything went dark. In the present, Charlotte orchestrates an elaborate prank on Nisha at school, featuring fake blood, police tape, and a hired actress playing a police officer. Charlotte calls this a chapter of the Lying Game, the group's secret club devoted to escalating pranks with Sutton as ringleader. Emma recognizes that someone pushed too far by the Lying Game may have killed Sutton.

Overwhelmed, Emma steals Laurel's car and drives to the Greyhound station, planning to flee. She abandons the plan when she realizes running would lead police to her rather than to the killer. At a Friday sleepover at Charlotte's house, the girls play Never Have I Ever, and Emma learns that Sutton stole Garrett from Charlotte and had bragged about planning an "ultimate Gotcha" prank. That night, someone pins Emma against the kitchen island and warns her to keep up the impersonation or face the same fate as Sutton. The attacker strangles Emma with Sutton's silver locket until she can barely breathe, then vanishes. The home security system shows no one entered after it was armed, meaning the attacker was already inside: one of the sleepover guests.

The locket becomes proof that Sutton is dead and the killer has direct access to Emma. She finds Sutton's journal in a filing cabinet, which contains ominous entries including "Sometimes I think all my friends hate me" and "I feel like someone is watching me." Emma updates Sutton's Facebook status to "Game on, bitches," signaling her resolve to investigate.

Over the following days, Emma gathers intelligence. She learns that Charlotte is not over losing Garrett to Sutton, and that Sutton did something to Madeline's missing brother, Thayer Vega, that Madeline refuses to discuss. On Madeline's phone, Emma finds a photo of Laurel wearing a locket identical to the one used to strangle her. She also discovers that Laurel had a romantic crush on Thayer and was furious at Sutton for interfering. Emma's suspicion focuses on Laurel.

On the morning of her birthday, Emma wakes to find Laurel standing over her bed with a hand pressed over her mouth. Laurel claims she was sneaking in to be the first to wish her happy birthday. That night at Sutton's 18th birthday party, Emma flees Garrett after he reveals a planned sexual encounter and stumbles into Laurel's room. On Laurel's computer, she finds a folder labeled "Lying Game" containing prank videos. The last file, titled "THE QUEEN GOES DOWN," is the full version of the strangling video with sound. In it, Laurel dons a ski mask and strangles Sutton with the locket while Charlotte and Madeline direct from behind the camera. When Sutton goes limp, the girls panic and flee. An unidentified person enters the frame, removes the blindfold, and Sutton regains consciousness.

Believing Sutton's friends conspired to kill her, Emma flees the party barefoot over the backyard wall as Charlotte, Madeline, and Laurel pursue her. Ethan pulls her into hiding and drives her to a remote desert road, where he reveals that he witnessed the strangling weeks earlier, intervened to scatter the girls, and untied Sutton, who regained consciousness and left with her friends. The video was filmed roughly two weeks before Emma arrived. Sutton was alive afterward: The strangling was a prank, not the murder. Sutton's corresponding memory confirms Ethan's account.

Ethan urges Emma to stay, warning that if she disappears, the killer could frame her for Sutton's murder. Emma agrees. Back at the Mercer house, she reasserts Sutton's persona. The video strangling was not the killing; something happened to Sutton between the filmed prank and Emma's arrival, and everyone remains a suspect. The Mercer family gathers for birthday cupcakes, and Emma makes a wish: to find her twin sister's killer.

In the epilogue, Sutton reflects on unresolved suspects: the Fiorello twins, resentful at being excluded from the Lying Game's inner circle; Thayer Vega, who disappeared shortly before Sutton's death; and whatever Sutton herself did to provoke the extreme prank. She warns that Emma should trust nothing, acknowledging that she was "the trickiest member of the Lying Game by far."