Took a bit of a leap with this one, kind of wish I hadn't bothered! I bought in to the concept but it really didn't live up to expectations.

The story follows seven teenagers from St. Francis High School who arrive at what they believe is a break they won at a school raffle. Only to find themselves trapped in a deserted, booby-trapped motel. They all then recieve the same text message: “I know what you did a year ago.”

Each of the teens harbor a dark secret connected to a tragic school fire that claimed the lives of three of their fellow students. The group realises they’re under constant surveillance and they’re forced into a deadly game: every hour, they must vote for the “guiltiest” among them to cross a white line, effectively sentencing them to death. If they refuse, they all die.

The characters are annoying, the plot is borderline ridiculous, it is clear to anyone who has to be behind this. It is repetitive and slow. The twist was not unsurprising.

The reasons they were all guilty were not reasons at all. And for someone to kidnap them and sentence them to death off the back of them seemed beyond bonkers. I give this a 1/5.

Circle of liars was a very interesting story!
One year ago a horrible event left students dead. Now seven teenagers are trapped in an abandoned motel.
What follows is a story about the truth, justice and survival.
I did enjoy this story, however I found the ending a bit predictable and was hoping things were going to turn out a different way. Even though I was happy about the end it still sort of felt like it may have sunk in more if things turned out differently. I did enjoy the guessing game of what exactly was going on however. And I the narrator was absolutely brilliant. Can imagine the story happening and reckon it would make a great movie!
Thanks to netgalley and Bolinda audio for the audiobook arc!

A very solid, pacy and tense YA thriller. Despite being well outside the target audience, my partner and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Circle of Liars while travelling around in the car recently.

I enjoyed the different perspectives and how the past story unfolded with each character’s conscience of what happened a year ago. The audiobook was brilliantly narrated by Kate Hanford and Hunter Johns with excellent sound recording by Bolinda Audio.

A rather petty personal annoyance but I did feel two of the male character names were too similar, especially when listening. I was also slightly unsatisfied with the ending. It’s hard to say without giving too much away but it was slightly predictable and I was disappointed after such good storytelling to get there!

Thank you to NetGalley and Bolinda Audio for an ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bolinda Audio for the ARC

Circle of Liars is a twisty and suspenseful thriller. The tension is high from the start and only get tenser as the circle of friends get plucked off one by one. I liked how some grappled with guilt, bad concence and fear while others willingly sacrificed their friends for their own survival. It quickly became us against them. I also liked how the mystery of the past was unraveled and the ending was unexpected, A good fast faced thriller!

I was granted an advanced reader copy of this work in audiobook format from Netgalley free of charge in return for an honest review.

The narration is excellent and gives each of the guilty their own voice.

This read was creepy and I never knew what to expect. With each death you learn more and more about the fire that happened at their school a year ago and how each of them is guilty .
How each had their part to play in what happened.

Its a heart racing thriller that will keep you up long past your bedtime needing to know who will be the next to die and why.

I never saw the ending comming. What a dark , twisted ride this read was.

This book is one that most mystery books fans will really enjoy.
The plot had so many twists and turns I couldn’t put the book down
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes mystery or thriller.

A tense, high-stakes YA thriller.

Seven teens arrive in the Californian desert for an exclusive school retreat, a year after a tragic school fire. They soon realise they are stuck at the abandoned motel and are trapped in a deadly game of revenge. They are each harboring secrets and each hour they are forced to decide who deserves forgiveness and who deserves revenge...

This is a pulse-pounding and utterly addictive story, which is brilliantly narrated by Kate Handford and Hunter Johns. I enjoyed how the story gradually unfolds as the characters disclose their secrets and lies. If you enjoy a story with a murder game, and plenty of secrets, then this is a worthwhile listen.

With thanks to Bolinda Audio and NetGalley for the advanced listening copy of this gripping thriller, in exchange for an honest review.

🎧Audio Book Review🎧

Circle Of Liars
Kate Francis


🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

This book had me gripped right from the start and even though I worked out some of the twists early on, I absolutely loved every second of the journey we took with this group.

One year on from a fatal fire at the school, seven of the students win a trip on an exclusive school retreat.
When they arrive at an abandoned motel, they're convinced it's some sort of prank - that is until they all receive a text telling them that someone knows the truth about the fire and their lies!

This was jam-packed with tension from start to finish and I actually could not put this down.

The group must send someone outside the safety circle every hour and they need to work out a way to decide who should cross.
When the first one over is shot dead, things turn feral and the group starts to turn on each other.

It was great to see the diverse characters and see just how each of them dealt with the situation.
Hearing each story, the events of the previous year unfold gradually and we soon see the parts that each played in the run up to the fire.
Some more damning than others, but all with their own consequences.

This had me on edge throughout and I'm not even sure I blinked for the last quarter!
The tension built and built and I could only imagine how each of the students must have felt as they came to terms with not only their own actions, but also the loss of their fellow students.

The writing style was brilliant and I was so completely immersed.
There are definite lessons to be learned from this read but it does make you think about how you'd react in this situation and whether you'd be ruthless enough to sacrifice or save yourself.

This was super fast-paced and I raced through it in just a couple of sittings, staying up late into the night to get the answers I needed.

A great read and I can't wait to see more from this author in the future.



💕Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for my ARC copy - this is my honest review 💕

Though the story wasn’t quite my style, the narration was professionally done and pleasant to listen to. I can see this appealing to many other listeners specially the younger generations.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook.

Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC.

Circle of Liars is a thriller that focuses on 7 teenagers and the secrets that bind them. Forced to play a deadly game, the readers slowly learn what happened the year before and why these 7 characters were chosen.

An engaging read, perfect for fans of twisty plots, hidden truths, and strong female leads."

This was an enjoyable read on audiobook and the twists and turns were good! I enjoy a YA Thriller as I find them easy to get into the book and the characters in this one kept me hooked.

This was SO FREAKING GOOD!!!!! SO GOOD!! I didn’t expect a YA to be so brutal but it was and it didn’t hold back from the awful awful situation these kids were in!!
The way the emotional experiences were communicated, expressed, worded etc. was so good I was IN IT!!! Completely absorbed and basically finished this in one day!! The audiobook was really good also!! The narrators did such a fantastic job at converting the urgency, the emotions, everything these characters were going through!!

I love a YA murder mystery as much as the next girl and this one might just be on my list of all time faves!! All the twists and turns, I didn’t guess each one which was such a bonus bc I was on my TOES!! Stomach in KNOTS!!! What a great mystery!! & the anxiety of it being contained within the circle!! I loved this book!!

Circle of Liars is a new YA thriller following a group of teenagers who survived a fire in their school the year before. But someone thinks they all have something to hide about the fire, and they’re led to a motel in the desert. A motel where they’ve been trapped and have to choose the guiltiest of the group to send out of the circle to die if they want to survive.

I love a good murder game book, so when I saw this one available in audio on NetGalley, I immediately requested it. Thanks to Bolinda Audio for this one; the physical book is also available from Usborne.

The best part of this book was definitely the atmosphere. It dives straight into the story with the characters arriving at the motel and wondering what was going on. You meet all the characters and immediately get a good idea of their different personalities.

And that atmosphere and character writing is what made some of the deaths so impactful. The first death, oof, it actually hurt a lot. It was one of the characters you’d least expect to care about. But his confusion and worry, the reaction of the characters it was happening? It worked so well. It wasn’t the only death that almost had me tearing up, too.

However, I do have to admit that the big plot twist near the end of the book does kind of ruin the impact they had on me. Plot twists shouldn’t make what happened in a book feel pointless, but it did. I won’t go into details as I don’t want to spoil this aspect. As it really should be a surprise. It was a shame, though.

I was also able to guess who the killer actually was. Not from the clues that one of the characters worked out with. Honestly, she was pretty clever for that. It just felt a little obvious with everything that was going on. But it didn’t take anything away from the mystery. I wasn’t reading the book to work out who ‘Norman’ was, but to find out what these teenagers had all done to be blamed for the fire. So that was all fine.

I also specifically listened to the audio ARC of this one. The audiobook was decent, but it wasn’t anything special. We had two narrators who covered all the kids. I feel like it could have been a little better if each character had their own voice. It wasn’t bad, though, and I was glad to have been able to listen to it. Thrillers often make for a good listen, and with the emotional moments, listening to them being told definitely added to that.

Overall, it was a decent audiobook, but not one you must listen to over reading it physically or as an e-book.

Generally an interesting time, but one that unfortunately had a disappointing ending.

Thank you Bolinda Audio, Kate Francis and Netgalley for the audio Arc of Circle of Liars.
Narrated by Kate Handford; Hunter Johns

Circle of Liars is a fun quick read that has a good mix of mystery, lies and someone picking the main characters off one by one. Seven older teens herded to a location have to decide every hour who would walk over the white line and sacrifice themselves. These teens are tied by bad situations which may of caused a loss of an innocent life and must be brought to justice. It made for a medium paced and immersive read which was engaging and interesting. The final little twist I didn't really see coming and for me, was quite unique. The characters, again for me, were unlikable, but I do engage in these books better as I try and work out who Im rooting for!

Thank you to =Kate Handford and Hunter Johns for narrating this audiobook. Both narrators worked really well together to keep the characters individual and as both narrators had similar pacing of their voices, it made it easier to listen to.

4 stars.

feel like just the mention of 7 teens without wifi would be enough to summon up horrors in my own YA’s

In the opening of Circle of Liars I was really invested, there are loads of comparisons I could make, and my brain was firing off in loads of different direction’s, but in conclusion I’ve decided not to liken to anything because in its own right while it bares some similarities it’s entirely its own story, its layered, smart and genuinely terrifying at times.

Something terrible happened a year ago, now a group of 7 have won a school prize of a breakaway. Immediately they arrive at their destination it’s clear something is very wrong, they’ve unwittingly entered a horrific game, each of them holds a secret about the school fire, and the puppet master of the game will kill them one by one until the truth comes out. Loads of twists, turns and surprises throughout.

For me, personally the cast of characters felt a bit like a box ticking exercise, but I do need to remind myself what while I enjoy YA it’s not a genre directed at me, and the books target audience will probably appreciate the representation. I’d probably pitch this towards the slightly older teen age bracket. It also felt very slightly too long.

There’s a pretty full cast of narrators, and while the majority of the characters were portrayed really well, there were some accent issues and sometimes a bit of a crossover with characters.

3.5 🌟

My gratitude to Bolinda Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this ALC 🎧

Seven teenagers find themselves at the abandoned hotel and each hour one of them is supposed to die. They need to decide who is the guiltiest one, each has something to do with a fire that happened exactly a year ago.

The premise is nothing new, there are a lot of YA books with similar plots and I really enjoy reading those. This one in particular looked at feelings of grief and guilt quite well, the characters were well written (except one I talk about later in this review) and had interesting points of view. Some were just so unbearable as people I hated them with my whole heart and some were very relatable, and their storylines just made me so sad, I wanted to hug them and tell them everything is going to be fine. The character developments were really interesting, everyone's decisions made sense to me (considering their storylines) except Caden: one minute he is really smart and notices how the blood splatter doesn't add up and the next scene he is so high he doesn't remember where he is. How is this supposed to make sense??? What also annoyed me a bit is how every couple of chapters somebody would say “Thank God there are no cameras to spy on us” or something similar.... like be for real somebody kidnapped you and put cameras and microphones everywhere. Do you really think there are no backup cameras or microphones??It just didn't make sense and was really irritating.
I liked the writing style, some formulations though were a bit weird, like "expensive looking Rolex”.. I mean every rolex is an expensive looking rolex so why add the expensive part??

Now the plot twists… I actually expected them to not be dead at the end so it didn't shock me but made me very happy instead. And the big reveal of who “Norman” was was also kinda easily guessable. What I didn't see coming was Ellis paying 20 dollars to burn the fucking school down like whaaaat. Amazing plot twist! I still don't get why Ana just gave her phone to Ellis to delete the video of him confessing. I think they should have cleared the name of the guy who is hated by the whole school (who also died!!) even though he is not the one at fault!

Overall an enjoyable read! The book I will definitely recommend to others!

Seven teens win a weekend at a motel that turns out to be a setup: last year this time, a tragic fire at their school caused devastation and their captor is out to exact their revenge. With rigged explosives set to go off every hour, the kids have to pick one of them to die, or they all have to die. Everyone has their own secrets about that night but with the clock ticking, who is going to make it out alive?

Ana, who lost her twin in the fire, was clearly the one leading the tale. Unfortunately the other six characters felt like stereotypical tokens at times (a transgender teen, a gay teen, a jock, a social media influencer? This unfortunately put me off quite early on) and I understand with so many characters, you can’t go into absolute depth with every single one, but these seemed to be their only defining factors in the limited time we had with each one.

The mystery and suspense wasted no time with taking off and pulling me in, and I enjoyed the pacing. The build up towards the ending was good and I enjoyed the reveal of the captor, albeit rather sensational. The final twist was very satisfying and I enjoyed the ending! Fans of “One of Us Is Lying” will enjoy.

The narrators gave a decent performance, although the accents were a bit sketchy in places. With so many characters and POVs, it is a task to differentiate them, which i think they did quite well. Learning everyone’s names off the bat was tricky, especially when I kept confusing Alex and Ellis (which sound very similar to me in the narration, and Ellis also sounded like “Alice” at the beginning, which was very confusing when he turned out to be a guy)! Overall a good narration and it was definitely the sort of book that needed more than one performer.

Thank you to Bolinda Audio and NetGalley for this ARC; all opinions are my own.

Not a bad listen and with a twist I definitely wasn't expecting at the end , Some of the chapters swapping to different players got confusing and I did have to go back a chapter a couple of times

Circle of Liars … I’m not sure where to start. I guess simply: I enjoyed this. It was a fun read.

I did, however, see the ending coming from the start. And the big reveal of who Norman was.

I liked the characters, but some of the things they said … I didn’t like so much. Like, Ana’s story versus Jade’s? Not the same, and Alex painting it as a “we’ve all done just as bad” like NO. She was trying to save her and her brother from a fiery death.

I LOVED THE NARRATION CHOICES FOR THIS. COULDNT BE MORE PERFECT

I Know What You Did Last Summer meets Squid Game introduced by Alfred Hitchock. Perfectly pitched for Young Adults, with plenty of tension, intrigue, and secrets set against a background of teenage angst and unexpressed feelings, it is an excellent and entertaining listen.