Micah is the girl who cries wolf in Justine Larbalestier's LIAR

So, I'll admit it.  I only heard about Liar because of its cover controversy and I decided to throw some of my money at the corrected cover.  So if Bloomsbury just pulled some devious publicity stunt, it worked on me.

But it doesn't matter, because this book is awesome and I'd buy it again in a heart beat.

Micah is a modern unreliable narrator and its hard not to fall inlove with her, even while questioning everything she tells us.  Micah's boyfriend is found murdered and the suspense builds as Micah jumps around, decribing events both before, and after his death.

Justine Larbalestier has created a psychological thriller that had me turning pages in search of the next piece of the puzzle.  I kept fitting the pieces together, trying to make sense of it all, only to find out that some of the pieces weren't there at all.

Micah tells us straight off the bat.  She's a liar.  But this time, she's going to come clean, honestly.  For a while she had her whole school convinced that she was a boy.  So we know she's a liar, and that she's good at it.  We know we should be skeptical about everything she tells us, and yet...

Through all her lies, it's so transparent that Micah just wants to be loved.  Her yearning makes her so likable, so realistic, that I wanted to believe everything she told me.  Even when she recants, admits she slipped up and told us a lie, I wasn't angry, I just wanted to hear more.  The beauty of this story is that the more bizarre Micah's stories become, the more I believe them.

Larbalestier brilliantly plays off her readers.  I mean, I'm reading fiction, I'm prepared to suspend disbelief.  When this book sits on the same shelf as books about vampires, magical adventures with mad-cow disease, and faeries, why wouldn't I believe everything Micah tells me?

OK, I got to stop myself here.  I might have already said too much.  I'm going to read this book a second time, in search of the truth.  It's a great book, you should definitely read it, honestly.