Liar

Last night I finished listening to Liar by Justine Larbalestier.  Before the review, a couple of things about audio books.  First: I do consider listening to audio books to be reading books.  Secondly: The program I'm using to listen to books from the library let's me play them a little faster than normal (I go with 1.4x speed) which I like.  To me audio books are less about the performance and more about the content.  Lastly: (the does not negate my first point) I think something is a little bit lost by listening to a book rather than reading.  Sometimes the formatting of a book is really important and short of the narrator saying, "Title in bold size 16 font left aligned on the page" there is no way to retain this.

I listened to most of this book yesterday while I was making some desserts.  The story is about a teenage girl named Micah.  Micah is a compulsive (probably pathological) liar.  Her story begins after her boyfriend is murdered.  She promises the reader to give her story with only the truth for the first time ever.  The mystery of the circumstances surrounding the murder, her family life, and her struggles dealing with "the family disease" surround Micah's story.

It would be impossible for me to give a good summary of the story without revealing something that took me by surprise about a third of the way through the book.  Micah's story takes a jarring turn by one of her revelations that switches even the genre of the book itself.  At first I was frustrated with the turn of events and it made me role my eyes, but that was just at first.  Then, it grew on me.  The pace of the story picked up and this very common plot device was handled in a way I found at least moderately refreshing. I thought the story was good and don't regret reading it, but it wasn't the best thing I've ever read.