Liar: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

Product Information

Griffiths, Eleanor Bley (19 June 2017). "Downton's Joanne Froggatt is a serious schoolteacher in first-look image from ITV thriller Liar". Radio Times. This book was written in third person and featured multiple POVs. I was hoping for a more animated, creepy, and chilling read with an intensely unreliable narrator, but this book didn't deliver strongly enough. The upside? The last ten percent of this book took a most noteworthy turn.

Liar by Lesley Pearse | Goodreads

Even though what really happened isn't the point, I can't help but speculate. This is what I believe really happened: Liar ensnared me, played with my emotions, kept me guessing, kept me reading all through the night, made me question my thoughts, it's gripping,and truly is the perfect physiological thriller!!! This is an interesting, if disturbing, peek into a young messed up mind. As a student of psychology, it's fascinating to me because it shows just how far the mind goes before it connects with a coping device that it can comfortably live with. Considering how young Micah's mind is (and possibly how young she was when she started killing at 12) it's especially chilling. Here's an interesting exercise: exchange all the instances of "werewolf" in the text with "killer" the next time you read the book. Ben doesn't understand why Judi hates Amber so much, and Judi is extremely upset that Ben is allowing Amber to cut him and the boys out of her life. Amber just wants Ben and the children. Ben then becomes torn between the two women in his life who both appear to want him and the boys all to themselves. Since this is usually tagged as contemporary, I have suspicions that Micah was indeed lying. But the audience is never told that. We're left with trivial half truths that don't really add much to the plot, such as the three-way make-out session. While that was interesting to read, I didn't care. Finding out about the cage, Jordan, the farm -- that was interesting. But this feels like the prologue to another novel. It feels like the Before of Looking for Alaska. And I'm still waiting for the After.Micah is heartbroken because she didn’t kill Zach. She has no idea why or how Zach was killed. Everyone is looking at her, assuming she knows something. But Micah doesn’t know anything. Or does she?

Liar, Liar by Lisa Jackson | Goodreads Liar, Liar by Lisa Jackson | Goodreads

I'll fully admit that Justine Larbalestier's "Liar" had me captivated. I've never read a book with an unreliable narrator quite as fascinating as Micah was, considering her account of events kept me on my toes from beginning to end. She's by no means a perfect character - if anything, the line "My father's a liar, and so am I" tells you from the get-go that she's capable of being straightforward with her shortcomings. But the larger question that the novel presents in several spurts is just how much of the truth she's telling and in what capacity. I thought that the technique used in keeping Micah's account dangling on unseen strings was brilliant - though I suspect for readers who might want some kind of cohesive, forthright account might be seemingly frustrated with how this novel comes across. I think it might appeal more to people who are still new to the genre. Or have not yet burnt out on it. Believe me there is a girlfriend in this one you will love to hate and you will most likely want to scream to the clueless boyfriend "what's wrong with you"?!! Well we know what's wrong with him. He's pu##ywhipped. Yeah, difficult, because there is a lot of really great stuff here. The three movement structure with successive layers of more "truth" is built perfectly. The writing is vivid and complicated, with this lovely scattershot thematic arc of binaries mixed – Micah's race, her sexuality, her gender for a while, truth and lies, and, well, spoiler. This is a book that lies about its genre, and makes it work. In the real scenario, I imagine it's like this. Micah was the school outcast who kept to herself and spun lies to make herself interesting to her classmates but Zach, the popular guy, was the one she truly wanted to be with. He's handsome, funny and great at basketball but unfortunately he's already with someone and most likely doesn't return the affection. So Micah imagines she's his girlfriend after hours when no one else is around. They can't keep their hands off each other one moment but they also cuddle and slept next to each without doing anything the next. One day Micah is tired of dreaming and decides to make it a reality. She confronts him to reveal her feelings for him but when he dismisses her advances (perhaps calling her a freak as she describes him calling someone else), she becomes offended ("did Zach think that of me, too?") and then she kills him and mutilates his body to the point that he is unrecognizable (prior evidence shows that Micah has a tendency to act violently when she doesn't receive satisfactory answers or actions).We go through chapter by chapter as this scenario is played out. Judi doesn't trust Amber. Amber does something sneaky to annoy Judi. Judis husband and son don't see anything wrong and think Judi needs to see a doctor. Rinse and repeat for a large chunk of the book and the story starts to become of course repetitive, wafer thin and irritating. Compelling stories about lies aren’t simple or straightforward or moralistic. Real lies and their repercussions aren’t simple; they don’t just destroy, they create. They’re dualistic by nature and infinitely complicated. You can’t separate truth from lies in neat lanes, as convenient as that would be. They don’t work that way, and neither do we. And all the best writers (and liars) know that. Here are 10 of my favourites.

Liar by Lesley Pearse | Waterstones

This starts off as a really interesting premise. We get the end at the start and so know two women fight and one is killed(again no spoiler, it's in the opening chapter) then we get to know Judi and the family and finally get into Ambers world before they all come together. There is intrigue as we are wondering what Ambers motives are and what her end game is. We are rooting for Judi as she seems to be the only one that sees through her facade. Warren Brown as PC Tom Bailey (Series 1), Laura's ex-boyfriend who is having an affair with her sister, Katy From a personal point of view though, there was a HUGE amount of soul searching involved for me in watching Judi struggle with her life changing experiences. As a woman of a certain age approaching my own empty nest, I felt every hormonal and overcharged emotion that flooded through Judi’s mind and body. There were some quite socially relevant observations here, especially for me, regarding growing older within a long term marriage so I actually found it tough reading at times. I can tell you now, those menopausal emotions and hot flushes can hit you hard just when you are least expecting them and it can affect all of those who are closest to you. I found it so terribly sad reading the paragraphs where Judi is mourning the loss of the closeness she used to share with her husband and how middle age creeps upon us without us realising where the time has gone. But menopause can affect women’s mental health in very different ways which meant that Judi was the perfect unreliable narrator for this thriller! And she was matched every step of the way by Amber!Liar by K.L. Slater is an outstanding psychological thriller that I just couldn’t put down - I was hooked right from the start! This book is about the deep and disturbing hatred between a controlling and proud mother/grandmother and the beautiful and conniving new girlfriend. Micah is a liar. She lies to her classmates. She lies to her parents. A boy at her school has just been murdered--a boy Micah's been involved with, a boy who is someone else's boyfriend. Micah has decided it's time to stop all the lies. She's going to tell the truth, to you. The whole truth. Honestly.

Liar by Justine Larbalestier | Goodreads Liar by Justine Larbalestier | Goodreads

Ben is a widower with two young sons. His mother Judi is very possessive of him and the kids. Amber enters Ben’s life, and they soon get to be very close. Judi is convinced there is something fishy about Amber and feels she is taking Ben and his sons away from her and her husband Henry. There is a tension between them all the time and much against Ben and his dad trying to get Judi to change her opinion, she is constantly aggressively confronting Amber. What is Micah's big secret? How did Zach die? How are we supposed to believe her after all the lies she's told, even to us? How it played out became fairly obvious quite early on. Not a problem for me usually as that shouldn't be the be all and end all of a novel like this but, when there isn't the characters or intruiging story there then that's the only hook left for me.So i got this book after going to ALA With bbya, and it was the first book that I read because the woman who gave it to me made it sound AMAZING. She said that there were twists and turns that would make you wonder what REALLY happened, and when she said that, I was expecting something totally different from what I got. I was expecting her to say something like, "didnt secretly date him. I secretly stalked him." or, "I'm the real killer." Just, something like that. Bt instead, she says she's a werewolf, and I'm like "Holy cheerios where did THAT come from!"