Book Review: Seven Minutes in Heaven (The Lying Game #6) by Sara Shepard

Well, at last the series is over. Hallelujah.

Summary (as seen on Goodreads):

My sister wants the truth.

But sometimes the truth hurts.

For months, my long-lost twin, Emma, has been living my life and trying to solve my murder. She's unearthed dark secrets about my friends, my family, and my tangled past. But when it comes to finding my killer, she keeps running into dead ends.

Until my body shows up in Sabino Canyon. Suddenly everyone knows there are two girls who look like Sutton Mercer—and that one of them is dead. At first the police assume the body is Emma's. But as questions and accusations start flying, it's harder than ever for Emma to keep playing me. The truth is bound to come out eventually. And when it does, Emma will be suspect number one in my murder investigation. If she can't find my killer before time runs out, she'll end up behind bars . . . or worse.

Yays:

• I managed to get through this without spoiling anything except Nisha's death from last book for myself. So that's good. I know that has nothing to do with the book itself, but wanted to make a note of that.
• I appreciated the reference to The Crucible. Love that play.
• It was cool that Thayer subtly said Emma's name and got her to pause in her tracks, thus letting him figure out that Emma wasn't Sutton.
• How nice for the MC to not end up with someone at the end of this novel. For that this doesn't get a 1-star review.
• Thayer finally got suspicious! Yay! Although it's frustrating that no one else was really suspicious of anything before this...

So-sos:

• Never really super liked Celeste to begin with, but why basically remove her in this book when she was only so recently introduced? I expected her to have a bigger role. Not that I ever really liked her that much, but still.

Nays:

• I was confused as to why Garrett wasn't investigated sooner. It didn't really make sense, especially re-suspecting Laurel a few books ago.
• Not enough hints to make it realistic that the killer was Ethan. There is something called balancing clues and not being obvious. This didn't have enough clues leading up to the conclusion. A little more instability, more signs of antisocial personality disorder would've been nice. Ethan played his part way too well for it to be realistic.
• Dislike how it was predicted that Sutton's death would be pinned on Emma way early on in the series, and then it happens... not very original.
• It's cool that Emma is able to occasionally see flashes of Sutton toward the end of the series, but it never made sense when it happened. It was always just random, apart from when Sutton is able to help Emma get away from Ethan. That was disappointing.
• While Thayer and Laurel did save Emma's life, it was a deux de machina - in a seemingly hopeless situation, even though Emma had called Laurel for help, it feels like a save just to make sure the heroine wins.

Overall, this series had a lot of potential but didn't quite live up to it. Perhaps if it had been better condensed or something it would've been better, but overall, not my favorite series. 2 jellyfish for this particular book, especially because of who the killer ended up being.

Thanks for tuning in, and as always, feel free to leave suggestions and such for reading or comments below!