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.
Review:
Through the first few pages of this novel, I expected it to be a four-star. Expensive private Virginia girls' school...not my area of expertise. Then with the next section as protagonist Ash's Oxford home life is exposed, my interest quickened. It wasn't long before I found myself totally absorbed in the mysteries and machinations, the puzzles and questions, the lies and concealment. Soon I was puzzling over the novel when away from it. Such an unreliable narrator! Such masquerading and facades throughout! For a School with an unutterably strict Honor Code: such deceit throughout! A solidly five-star psychological puzzler--not soon to be forgotten.
Review:
Through the first few pages of this novel, I expected it to be a four-star. Expensive private Virginia girls' school...not my area of expertise. Then with the next section as protagonist Ash's Oxford home life is exposed, my interest quickened. It wasn't long before I found myself totally absorbed in the mysteries and machinations, the puzzles and questions, the lies and concealment. Soon I was puzzling over the novel when away from it. Such an unreliable narrator! Such masquerading and facades throughout! For a School with an unutterably strict Honor Code: such deceit throughout! A solidly five-star psychological puzzler--not soon to be forgotten.
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