Review: Circle of Liars

Circle of Liars by Kate Francis

Published By: Usborne Publishing
Publication Date: July 3, 2025
Date Read: July 29, 2025
Genre: YA – Thriller / Mystery
Source: ARC from Usborne Publishing
Format: Paperback
Pages: 354

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The utterly addictive new YA thriller with a twist you’ll NEVER guess… A nail-biting summer mystery, for fans of ONE OF US IS LYING and WE WERE LIARS.

Seven liars in the circle. Only one can survive…

Seven teens arrive for a school retreat – only to find an abandoned motel and a sinister text message waiting for I know what you did a year ago.

Each of the seven buried a guilty secret about their tragic school fire. And now someone is out for revenge.

Every hour they must choose the guiltiest one among them to cross over the white line that circles the motel and be killed. Otherwise, they all die.

But who deserves to live, and who to die? Because only one of them can survive…

DO YOU DARE ENTER THE CIRCLE OF LIARS?

I was really intrigued when I first heard about Circle of Liars. While I am not a big fan of Thrillers, I’ve always quite enjoyed how fun YA Thrillers and Mysteries are. So when I won the ARC of Circle of Liars at last years YALC, I was super excited to see what this one was like. I’ve not read anything by this author before so I was excited to see if she brought something a bit different to the genre. After finishing the book, I’m definitely in two minds about this one. I loved the beginning but ended up feeling a little bit disappointed in the resolution of everything.

Circle of Liars follows seven teenagers who are hiding secrets regarding what really happened in the deadly fire that happened at their school last year. Lured to an abandoned old motel under the guise of being a rewarding trip from the school, the teenagers are faced with a ‘game’. Choose the most guilty among them to die… and the last one standing gets to survive. As the stakes get higher and higher, secrets start to be told.

I really enjoyed the set up of Circle of Liars. I was really intrigued as to what role each of these teenagers played in the fire and I honestly flew through the first half of this book. It was gripping and addictive and I was on the edge of my seat deperate to find out who had set all of this up. I honestly had forgotten how much I do enjoy a thriller and it’s definitely made me realise I need to read more of them in the future, as I do find them really gripping and entertaining.

My first issue with the book was some of the language that was used. I felt like some of the phrases the characters said would just not be in the vocabulary of an American teen. The first example of this was in the first two chapters. When the students arrive at the motel there seems to be something blocking the signal and so they cannot use their phones. When they discover this the teens repeat multiple times ‘I have no cell’. Maybe this is a miscommunication thing with me not being American but I was confused by this as a cell is the phone itself isn’t it? I feel like they’d be more likely to say cell reception or cell signal? I don’t know but it completely drew me out of the book. The second instance of this was later in the book when the students make ‘cheese toasties’. I just don’t think US teenagers would call them this as this is a very British term. It just made me question the likelihood of some of the language being used.

My second issue… and the main one really was the resolution of the mystery. I don’t know if the author’s intention was for the main mystery to be the teenager’s secrets but when we found out who set up the whole ‘circle’ and game… I didn’t have a clue who they were. I was like… who? I was so disappointed by this as I really wanted to be able to figure out who had done it all just to be faced with someone I didn’t even remember. I did guess a lot of the teenager’s secrets so that was something I guess but I just ended up really disappointed. When I read a thriller I want to be shocked by the resolution… and this one was just a let down. I felt like the book has such a strong start for it to just fizzle out in the middle. I ended up towards the end skim reading a lot as I was just ready for it to be over. Maybe I’ve just read too many YA Thrillers now and I’m over them a little… I don’t know.

Circle of Liars had so much potential, but for me it just didn’t quite live up to my expectations in the resolution of it all. If you’re new to the genre I’d still definitely recommend it as the build up of the whole thing was fantastic. It was just a bit of a let down for me personally. Perhaps at my ripe old age of 34, I’m just a bit too old to enjoy YA Thrillers and need to move on to adult ones instead.

“It’s not how long you live that matters – it’s how you live. It’s what you do with the time that’s given to you, however short.”