See How They Lie - Sue Wallman

Title: See How They Lie 
Author: Sue Wallman 
Publisher: Scholastic
Date Published: March 2nd 2017 
Pages: 320 
Source: Publisher ARC 

Buy It Here: See How They Lie *

All’s not well at the Hummingbird Creek wellness resort. No one can see in. No one can get out…
New from the talented author who brought you Lying About Last Summer: a psycho-chiller to wake up your darkest phobias. If you got to live in a luxury hotel with world-class cuisine, a state-of-the-art sports centre and the latest spa treatments, would you say ‘yes please’?
Well, that’s kind of what Hummingbird Creek is like. No wonder Mae feels lucky to be there. It’s meant as a rich-kid’s sanatorium, but she isn’t sick. Her dad is the top psychiatrist there. But one day Mae breaks a rule. NOT a good idea. This place is all about rules – and breaking them can hurt you…

I was so excited to see this book fly through the letter flap in my door. I'm a lover of all things psychological so I had the highest of hopes for this book. I have to say, I was a little disappointed with it, for various reasons- but the concept is incredible.


The first thing I didn't like about this book was the pace. I mean, nothing really happened until we got to the last 100 pages or so. I think there was way too much introduction to the facility and the characters that was really just unnecessary. By the fourth description of the facility, I was pretty much convinced that I lived there - we knew every little irrelevant detail there was to know about the running of Hummingbird Creek... but nothing really happened.

Secondly,  I wasn't a fan of Mae. I didn't really like her tone, I wasn't convinced that she was as smart as she was made out to be.. I mean.. if she was, she would have known something was fishy a long time ago, right? I just thought she was a pretty bland main character. Her relationship with Drew was dull and seemed quite forced. I didn't feel a connection between them, they didn't have that 'best friend bond' that you usually read about in books, at all. Maybe it was just the environment they were in, or maybe it was because they were pretty much forced to be friends because there was no one else around to be friends with? I don't know.

So the next point is something that I'm honestly annoyed with. I'm annoyed at the fact that this didn't happen because I would have loved to read about it. Er, so I'm going to spoil the end... so if you haven't read this book then you'll never find out what I'm annoyed about.. sorry!!

So I really wished we could have seen the police investigation of the facility when they get found out at the end. I think it would have been a much stronger story if throughout the novel we got a perspective from a police officer - we could have seen how Hummingbird Creek was able to get away with what they were doing for so long - and when they were eventually found out and all the details came to light, we could have been there throughout the whole investigation.
I also hated how Drew was completely forgotten about. He left the Creek and we didn't get to see what happened to him, where he went etc. Did he find Mae after she left too?

I thought the book was very rushed, the finale was underwhelming and there were a lot of loose-ends that never got tied up. Saying that, I really loved the concept of the book, I thought it had the potential to be an incredible book. These types of stories are right up my street, so although there were major flaws and there were ways this book could have been improved - I still enjoyed reading it and would love a sequel! I rated this book 3* on Goodreads!