Liar - Justine Larbalestier

Description:
Micah will freely admit that she’s a compulsive liar, but that may be the one honest thing she’ll ever tell you. Over the years she’s duped her classmates, her teachers, and even her parents, and she’s always managed to stay one step ahead of her lies. That is, until her boyfriend dies under brutal circumstances and her dishonesty begins to catch up with her. But is it possible to tell the truth when lying comes as naturally as breathing? Taking readers deep into the psyche of a young woman who will say just about anything to convince them—and herself—that she’s finally come clean, Liar is a bone-chilling thriller that will have readers see-sawing between truths and lies right up to the end. Honestly.


Crystal's Thoughts:
This book was definitely not what I expected it to be.  I had so many conflicting feelings about almost every aspect of it from the story itself to the narrator to the plot.  It becomes extremely clear that Micah is an extraordinarily unreliable narrator.  Even though she admits in the beginning that she is a liar, I believed everything she said up to the second part of the book.  After reading it in its entirety, some of her lies seemed believable while the revelation that she is a werewolf was completely absurd and unexpected.  I think we read a book about a girl who has never felt loved and  I don't know whether to hate her or feel sorry for her.  She brought a lot of her problems on herself because, after all, who likes a liar?


I picked this book because the opinions I heard varied from one extreme to another, absolute love or absolute hate.  It's one those things where I just wanted to see for myself.  This is definitely not a book I would typically read but it was just good enough to hold my attention.  There has to be a little truth in some of the things she said.  From what I gathered, it's hard to say what her relationship with Zach really was.  Was she is his girlfriend on the side or his running partner?  Or was she just a psycho stalker?  In regards to Zach, her accounts of the last time she saw him changed throughout the book and it's hard to say the nature of their relationship.  I think that Zach may have been a crush who was nice to her but that the majority of their romantic involvement is what she wishes really happened.  She wants so badly to be liked or loved and because Zach may have been nice to her (relating to her on their common interest in running) she made up their secret affair. I believe that she was an outcast at school who wanted to fit in and appear cool, hence the lying.  It's hard to say where Tayshawn and Sarah fit in but it seems that she is getting something out their grief. She wants for Sarah, a girl who she admires and wishes she could be like, to be jealous of her though I doubt she was.  


As I said before, her being a werewolf is completely absurd in the context of this book.  Maybe her wolf side, refers to the dark side of herself.  I think that she not only killed Zach but also Jordan, her brother, and Yayeko Shoji, her teacher and teacher's family.  She is in denial that she herself is capable doing something so terrible. She has a hard time seeing that anything she does is wrong but, then again so do most teenagers.  I didn't like how it seemed like Micah was laughing at us, the reader, like we are the crazy ones instead of her.  It's obvious that she has mental problems, as she has seen or is seeing psychiatrist.  It's hard to say if she can distinguish what is reality and what she has made up in her mind.  Somewhere along the way her lines got blurred and she started believing the fibs.  In the a quote she says: 

"Not one of them [the shrinks] has ever suggested that maybe I lie because the world is better off the way I tell it."  pg. 264

 Pete, the white boy who was supposedly also a werewolf, only exists in her mind.  I think he is also another side to herself.  She needs someone to blame for the crimes she committed.  She wants sympathy, and because Pete is a side of herself, she depicts him in a way that makes him seem like an innocent victim.  The more we learn about him the younger he gets.  In the end when she says: 

"I wish - often wish- that I was not what I am, not who I am ... I liked having a future.  I want it back."  pg.298

I believe that she is telling her story from prison and her parents have abandoned her because of what she did.


 I guess one of the things I did like about this book was that it allows readers to draw their own conclusions about what is truth and what is fiction.  The author did a good job at making you think the book was one thing while it turned into something completely different.  I found this book to be frustrating and infuriating but also funny in some ways.  Some of the obvious lies made me laugh out loud.  After finishing this book, I couldn't stop thinking and speculating about what did or didn't or could've happened.  In a way, isn't that a sign of a good book or at least good writing?  I really liked the concept and thought that it was executed well.  But to me, a book not only has to be good but also has to be one I would want to revisit later and quite frankly I would not read this book again.

3 ★s

I found this interesting for those of you who care.  There was some controversy surrounding this book when it was first released.  As you know, Micah is described as being half black with short curly hair and darker skin.  Originally, the book had a white girl on the cover.  Readers didn't like that and Larbalestier got a lot of e-mails about why she allowed this to happen. Personally, I like the changed cover and it is better depiction of Micah, though it is still not how I envision her.  The author's side of the story is here.  She was also interviewed by RACEBENDING.COM