"Liar" by Justine Larbalestier
First read: 30.05.2010 (audiobook)
Second read: 17.03.2012 (Started with the audiobook but got impatient and read the rest. I did notice this time that the narrator has a 'black accent', I suppose they didn't want any more trouble after the cover...)
I loved it, although like in “Magic or Madness” there are still some rough edges (and the two sequels are best left unmentioned). So this novel is a YA adventure novel about Micah, who freely admits she’s a compulsive liar but it’s trying, she says, to change her ways. It’s very post-modern in the way she keeps questioning reality and making you question reality by revealing from time to time that what she told you before? Not completely true, not exactly like that, she forgot a tiny detail. Only soon you start expecting things to be lies but you don’t necessarily suspect the things that are lies. And then after all the carefully crafted fibs she comes up with this completely ridiculous one and you’re like… she’s finally gone off and started to believe her own lies. No longer worried about her sincerity but about her sanity you follow along as she investigates her boyfriend’s murder and tries to cope with his death.
*random spoilers*
I liked her relationship with Sarah and T-Jan, it was a bit incomplete, the kind of relationship you have more in your head than in reality because it's hard to be with someone else when you don't know who you are. I liked her complicated love affair with Zach that neither of them could admit was important and real out loud but both of them revealed to be so with their actions. I liked that she never questioned her desire to kiss any of them. I didn't like that neither Sarah or T-Jan ever stopped being a link to Zach but I thought it made sense, she feels connected to them because they miss Zach dreadfully as well, not because of who they are. *spoiler for the ending*
I loved how she lied so much that even though there's no reason I shouldn't in the context of a YA novel I couldn't quite believe her when she reveals she's a werewolf, even though it makes sense that that's why she lies, because she has to keep this big part of herself secret, this part of herself she doesn't even understand, and you are like, she's trying to get one past me again! But of course I'm not going to believe that and you keep waiting for her to confess it's a lie (of course it's a lie, silly, what did you expect?) but she never does, she carries on and then at some point I agreed to believe her lie but I never stopped doubting it until in the very last sentence she goes: "I know you're going to think this is the biggest lie of all but well, I have told you the truth, for once, and now it's up to you."
The only thing that really annoyed me was how unclear Jordan's death ended up, did Micah kill him like in her fantasy? Or in some other way but because of her? Was it a random household accident? Because depending on that I can condone her parents' actions or not (If they think Zach's murder is her responsability, even if indirectly because she forgot to take her pill in the same way that Jordan's was because she miscalculated her strenght then I get them thinking that she is too dangerous to be allowed to stay).*
The original cover where Micah is mysteriously white.
2010, 2010: novel in english, book-2010, #novel, *author: female, @read in english, #audiobook, #young adult, #urban fantasy, +crossdressing, +family, +social issues, +gender, +postmodernist +superhuman, +supernatural, x: recommended, author: justine larbalestier