Below is the complete list of Sara Shepard’s The Lying Game books in publication order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
The Lying Game Books in Publication Order
- The Lying Game (2010)
- Never Have I Ever (2011)
- Two Truths and a Lie (2012)
- Hide and Seek (2012)
- The First Lie (2012)
- Cross My Heart, Hope to Die (2013)
- True Lies (2013)
- Seven Minutes in Heaven (2013)
About The Lying Game
Sara Shepard’s The Lying Game is one of her sharpest high-concept series, built around a premise that immediately creates both emotional tension and mystery: Emma Paxton, a foster teen who has spent her life without real family roots, discovers she has an identical twin, Sutton Mercer, only to learn that Sutton is already dead. The series then turns that revelation into its central engine. Emma steps into Sutton’s privileged Arizona life, pretending to be her sister while trying to uncover who killed her. Official and major series listings consistently identify six main novels in the core run, with additional companion novellas surrounding them.
What makes the books work is not just the twin-switch hook, but the way Shepard uses it to fuse identity drama with murder mystery. Emma is not simply solving Sutton’s death from a safe investigative distance. She is living inside Sutton’s friendships, rivalries, family life, and secrets, constantly exposed to the possibility that the killer is close enough to notice the impersonation. That gives the series a strong built-in instability. Every conversation, every old grudge, and every family interaction matters twice over: as social drama on the surface and as possible evidence underneath.
The first novel, The Lying Game, establishes that dual structure especially well. Emma enters a wealthy, polished world that looks enviable from the outside but is immediately marked by cruelty, manipulation, and hidden violence. Shepard has always been very good at writing girls’ social hierarchies as systems of power rather than mere background detail, and this series benefits from that instinct. Sutton’s circle is not just there to provide teen atmosphere. It is where motive lives. That gives the books a more claustrophobic and personal feel than a broader teen thriller might have had.
As the series continues through Never Have I Ever, Two Truths and a Lie, Hide and Seek, Cross My Heart, Hope to Die, and Seven Minutes in Heaven, the mystery keeps widening without losing the intimate pressure of Emma’s impersonation. Reader and publisher listings show that these six books form the main arc, while titles such as The First Lie and True Lies function as companion novellas rather than replacements for the primary sequence. That structure matters because the series is best read as one sustained mystery line. The suspense does not reset from book to book. It accumulates, with each installment deepening the web of deception around Sutton’s death and Emma’s increasingly dangerous role in the life she has borrowed.
One of the series’ strengths is tone. The Lying Game is less sprawling and less campy than Pretty Little Liars, even though it clearly comes from the same authorial sensibility. It still has Shepard’s taste for privilege, secrets, female friendship under strain, and high emotional stakes, but the structure here is tighter. The story revolves around one central impersonation and one central death, which gives it a cleaner, more focused momentum. Emma is also a different kind of heroine from many YA mystery leads. She is not naturally powerful inside this world. Her vulnerability is part of the point. She has to learn Sutton’s life while surviving it, and that imbalance gives the books much of their urgency.
Seen as a whole, The Lying Game is a six-book mystery sequence about identity, performance, and the danger of wanting belonging badly enough to risk becoming someone else. The twin premise gives it its immediate appeal, but the series lasts because Shepard understands that the real suspense lies in how thin the line can be between inheritance and invention. Emma may start by pretending to be Sutton, but the books grow more interesting the longer that performance continues and the more it threatens to consume them both.