DC Ffion Morgan lives with her mother in the village of Cwn Coed and knows almost everybody in her patch. My secret is that I’ve secretly watched tv-shows, being both fascinated and disgusted by myself for peeking into others lives. I loved the idea of the reality TV show and it was so reminiscent of what we see on our channels these days. Picking up Ffion’s story, and the filming of a reality show set in the fictional village of Pen Y Ddraig, I was hooked from the start.

I enjoyed the format of this one, it has a reality television series as the main point of the plot and throughout the book we get different points of view from the contestants. Detective Ffion Morgan has to put aside what she’s watched on screen, and find out who these people really are – knowing she can’t trust any of them.One contestant is so scared that they leave the isolated camp, evading cameras and squeezing under a fence into the Welsh countryside with no survival gear. It seems like their lives are moving forward in separate ways until they meet in another case related to one of the highest-rated reality shows, "Exposure. In addition, she uses a lot of Welsh phrases that aren’t always immediately translated, which adds to the setting. Her will-they-won't-they-well-they-already-did-but-will-they-again relationship with English DS Leo Brady is also very believable and it's interesting to see how it plays out in the context of the investigation. I received a free copy of, A Game of Lies, by Clare Mackintosh, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

For me, this book had two parts: the first being catching up with Ffion, and seeing her work with her former friend/lover, Leo, on another investigation. The mystery itself is suspenseful and twisty, and I think I suspected almost every character of murder at one point or another … well, except for the actual murderer, that is.Their unresolved feelings lead them to act like stubborn, immature children who make false assumptions about each other, while George is caught in the middle of their hot-cold war. My inner romantic compelled me to give this rating, overriding my usual thriller-seeking, puzzle-loving, mystery-nerd self.