Liar by Justine Larbalestier

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.

I think the best way to describe this book is “mystery”. From the first page to the last you’re not sure what you’re reading, and slightly uneasy that you don’t quite understand what’s going on, but the author puts that tension to work and keeps the reader guessing throughout the entire book. At first I wasn’t sure how I would react to having a liar as a narrator, but it doesn’t take long before you realize that Micah’s lies are part of the exposition and start to enjoy the game of guessing whether what’s being told to you is the full truth or not. Add in the major twist in the middle that makes this book solidly fantasy and the ending that makes the reader still unsure if anything they’ve read is true or false to Micah, and you’ve got a thoroughly entertaining read. It takes great skill to make a liar accessible and identifiable as a protagonist, and even more skill to make that person sympathetic, but Larbalestier accomplishes both brilliantly. The plot has predictable reveals of Micah “revising” her story, but the revisions are so different that they don’t seem formulaic or staid at all. If you don’t mind being a little uncomfortable I think you should try Liar, it packs a great payout.

Sweetly by Jackson Pearce

SWEETLY is a modernization of Hansel and Gretel and a companion book to SISTERS RED.

Twelve years ago, Gretchen, her twin sister, and her brother went looking for a witch in the forest. They found something. Maybe it was a witch, maybe a monster, they aren’t sure—they were running too fast to tell. Either way, Gretchen’s twin sister was never seen again.

Years later, after being thrown out of their house, Gretchen and Ansel find themselves in Live Oak, South Carolina, a place on the verge of becoming a ghost town. They move in with Sophia Kelly, a young and beautiful chocolatier owner who opens not only her home, but her heart to Gretchen and Ansel.

Yet the witch isn’t gone—it’s here, lurking in the forests of Live Oak, preying on Live Oak girls every year after Sophia Kelly’s infamous chocolate festival. But Gretchen is determined to stop running from witches in the forest, and start fighting back. Alongside Samuel Reynolds, a boy as quick with a gun as he is a sarcastic remark, Gretchen digs deeper into the mystery of not only what the witch is, but how it chooses its victims. Yet the further she investigates, the more she finds herself wondering who the real monster is, and if love can be as deadly as it is beautiful.

Sweetly is a twisty retelling of Hansel and Gretel. Ansel and Gretchen, though, make much more sense than the children in the original story. Sweetly’s characters all jump off the page with life. In fact, a lot of the time I was torn because I knew that two characters were in conflict but I wanted them both to win so badly. I found it really great that each character had such clear and sympathetic motivations. I also really liked the idea of magic candy, and the descriptions of sweets were so vivid I wanted to go buy tons of chocolate every time I picked up this book! The plot was well paced; although I knew where the book was generally going it developed well along the way and provided so many good twists that by the end I was completely satisfied even though I had predicted some of the ending. The romances in the book are good, acting as sub-plots and yet moving along in realistic patterns. The few action scenes are great, however, I think that this really set this book apart from Sisters Red because the plot concentrated more on plot and character than action and battle. It was really great to see some variety from Pearce and know that although she can write an amazing ‘war’ book she can also do justice to slower-paced stories.

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

In Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.

Since the final book in the series, Forever, comes out tomorrow (and because I’m going to a signing on Thursday!) I had to catch up on Maggie Stiefvater’s werewolf series. I’m so glad I did. This is a very good book. It does suffer a little bit from “middle syndrome” (the thing that makes the plot seem to be stalled for the majority of the book because it’s really the lull before the climax of the third part, see “Empire Strikes Back”) but it has enough going on to make it stand up on its own as well as work well to advance the story. Although Grace and Sam seemed to be in a holding pattern, character-development-wise, the work on Isabelle and Cole more than made up for it. Although I think the ‘foreshadowing’ on Cole’s secret was laid on a little thick (especially since the reader already knew the secret, and especially because nothing came of it), but his interactions with Isabelle were great, and I like the match of the two of them. They both seem to understand the other’s pain without condescension or a time table, and although they deal with it differently they still respect the other’s choices. There’s also subtle foreshadowing that there’s going to be a fight about their different approaches in the future. The major plot point is interesting. I like how there’s more exposition on how the “werewolfing” works and how the “cure” served Sam even though they didn’t quite know what they were doing. My only disappointment was that we didn’t see much of the new wolves other than Cole. Hopefully all that will be resolved in the third book, though.