Book Review: Cross My Heart, Hope To Die by Sara Shepard

Title:  Cross My Heart, Hope To Die
Author:  Sara Shepard
File type:  hardcover
Release date:  February 5^th, 2013
Genre:  YA, thriller, mystery

Rating: 4 stars

When I died two months ago, my killer told my twin sister to become me—or else. Now Emma has it down to a T. She tosses her hair with the signature Sutton Mercer flip and can lead a Lying Game prank with the best of them. She’s even repairing my relationship with my adoptive family. The only thing she hasn’t done is solve my murder.
Then our birth mother, the woman who abandoned us, showed up in Tucson. Emma hasn’t seen Becky in twelve years, but Becky recognizes Emma immediately—as Emma. Is it a mother’s intuition . . . or does Becky know I’m already gone?

This review contains spoilers. You’ve been warned!

Even though Pretty Little Liars is much more popular I prefer The Lying Game. It just seems more realistic and the plotline still makes sense while PLL has been dragged for way to long. How many books are there? 14? Wow. That is like worse than all those embarrassing House of Night sequels.

We start the book where we last left things. Sutton and Emma’s mum, Rebecca finally shows up and she is hard to catch. In last book we found out that Mr. and Mrs. Mercer are in fact S&E’s grandparents. Rebecca has had mental issues since she was much younger so she hid Emma from her parents and gave them Sutton. But after five years, she gave up Emma too. The biggest part of this book is about family problems and it was refreshing to read about family drama, rather than about boy trouble.

But Emma still has plenty of boys running around- Ethan, her boyfriend and Thayer (RAWR), Sutton’s ex-boyfriend. Ethan is still dating Emma and I can’t help but think he might be Sutton’s killer, if she is even dead. There were a lot of hints and since Sutton did pull a Lying Game on him, which made him loose his college scholarship, I think he has a real motive. He gives of this creepy vibes and his relationship with Emma seems kind of strange. He is also very jealous of Thayer (double RAWR). Now, Thayer is what a call a perfect future boyfriend. He is a caring, protective, hot mysterious guy who fell in love with Sutton, even though she was a huge bitch to him. But I think she pushed him away because she was afraid of her real feelings towards him.

Since this novel was more focused on family matters, Sutton’s friends were pushed to the background in this novel. They did punk the new girl in school and hosted a party, just like they always do. I think it’s all an excuse to dress up and parade around. Girls finally let one other person into their Lying Game society-Nisha. Nisha has grown on me, when she was helping Emma out with her birth mum, only to later reveal a huge shocker I wasn’t expecting at all.

I seriously hope Seven Minutes in Heaven will be the last instalment because I don’t want TLG to loose it’s charm, just like PLL has. Can’t wait to finally find out what happened to Sutton. Hope Emma has a happy ending and gets her family. She’s been through a lot.