Liar - Justine Larbalestier

Liar is the story of a teen girl, Micah, who just can't stop lying.  She lies about her sex, she lies about her boyfriend, she lies about her dad, and lies about her life.  When her boyfriend winds up dead, she needs to stop lying and confront what really happened. That is if she hasn't lied so much that she can't remember the truth anymore.

Why Read - It was a new teen fiction book in the library I work in and it looked interesting.


I have mixed feelings about this book.  The writing style is unusual and in places can be quite hard to follow, Micah jumps rapidly from the present, to the past, to giving you a bit of history about herself.  Which in places is a a really interesting and novel way of telling her story, but can also be quite frustrating.  You feel like you are just getting into a bit of the book and it changes path and tact.

The book is split into three main sections, the first is quite gripping, interesting and wills you to carry on.  The second section, made me groan with the thoughts of not another teen book broaching on this area (I wont spoil the plot lines for you) and the third section although recovers the second part didn't really make up for it all.

I think the plot was good (apart from the bit that made me groan with annoyance).  I did like the way that the author set to her initial theme of lying and that all the way through the story you were told things that were lies and you couldn't be sure that any of it was truth (in a very non fiction type of way). And I also think it being a teen book maybe I did get it as much as I thought I would, perhaps even to describe it as a little immature.

As a teen book, I could see the appeal to young teenage girls.  However I was overall disappointed with this book and thought it could have been done much better.