Book Review: Hide and Seek (The Lying Game #4) by Sara Shepard

It's nice to be two thirds of the way done with this series. Wonder what's coming next! Thoughts below.

Summary (as seen on Goodreads):

My friends and I used to play lying games.

Now my twin sister is living one.

When I was alive, my family seemed picture-perfect. My adoptive parents adored me, and my little sister, Laurel, copied my every move. But now that my long-lost twin, Emma, has taken my place to solve my murder, we’re both learning just how flawed my family really is.

Laurel is shooting Emma nasty looks and sneaking around with my ex-boyfriend. And it turns out my parents are keeping a huge secret—could it be the reason I’m dead?

How far would they go to keep the truth buried? No one can harm me now, but Emma is still fair game. And if she’s not careful, she’ll end up buried, too. . . .

Yays:

• The author is getting a better grip on handling the dual Emma-Sutton POV thing. At times it still feels a bit jarring, but there is a slight improvement of smoothness.
• The idea that Mr. Mercer might have been the killer was interesting, although I kind of guessed all along that this would be proven false - just like every other novel in the series.

So-sos:

• While the secret behind Becky is very interesting, it also kind of feels like a cop-out. There was a slight hint that it was coming when Emma wonders if she got some traits from some of the family members she was around, but currently the secret really is quite messed up and feels very weirdly placed.

Nays:

• The grounds for suspecting Laurel are shaky and don't make any sense. The book was still dedicated to this idea that it could be Laurel for way more time than necessary.
• Sutton isn't supposed to have a heart, so how is it thumping? This contracts "If I could have shivered, I would have," and "I wished I could cry, too." But somehow this still happens: "I opened my mouth and wailed." This definitely threw me off a lot.
• Too many random italics. If I used capital letters instead, perhaps that would explain some of my annoyance. "I'd FEEL it." "I HADN'T seen it yet." "Unless we...FIND her." Italics usually go for thoughts, not for emphasis of random words. Someone who has published as much work as Shepard has should have a better handle on how to use italics.

Again, I do find it difficult to review and rate work of this genre, but I'll keep giving it a shot anyway with the next two books. For now, this book shall receive two jellyfish, mostly due to the whole Laurel weirdness thing.

Any thoughts about this series, especially the theory that all the possible murder suspects end up being anything but?