Larbalestier, Justine. Liar.

Larbalestier, Justine. Liar.
Bloomsbury see St. Martins 2009 376p 16.99 978-1-59990-305-7 hs Liar combines the original writing style of Justine Larbalestier with current popular topics, in this case the werewolf, and adds the drama of an inner city teenagers and a murder and creates a truly unique novel. Liar combines the right ingredients to make a high school student turn each page in anticipation. In How to Ditch Your Fairy, Larbalestier shows us creativity whereas in Liar, she has gone to the next step in what will be a very successful writing career. The reader wants to believe Micah, but this protagonist is an edgy, independent, teenager who has two problems, she is a compulsive liar and she is a werewolf. The reader is led through a maze of chapters which have titles like “Before”, “After”, and “Family History” in which Larbalestier divulges lie after lie and finally, truth after truth, maybe! After the brutal murder of Micah’s boyfriend, everybody is suspected of the crime. Micah knows she didn’t do it, but as a werewolf, could she have torn Zach apart during one of her runs through Central Park? It doesn’t help that she is stalked by another teenager who appears from time to time throughout the book. Despite being a pariah at her school, she is befriended by Zach’s best friends briefly; however, it is in the unraveling of Micah’s life details in which the reader relishes each chapter. Micah takes her daily pill to prevent her transformation to werewolf, but this is not enough to keep her parents from discovering that they have made a mistake in keeping her in the city. They return her to the Greats, Micah’s paternal family, who resides on a farm in Connecticut, where she learns what is most important to her in life is to follow her dream of becoming a researcher and biologist, especially of DNA, in order to learn all about werewolves and horizontal gene transfer. Even at the end, we wonder if Micah is telling the truth! Maybe the entire novel was a lie. Squaresky, Martha

How to ditch your fairy.

Larbalestier, Justine How to ditch your fairy.
Bloomsbury see St. Martins 2008 307p 16.99 978-1-59990-301-9 ms/hs

The citizens of New Avalon possess fairies. Some are happy with their fairies; others are not. Charlie and Fiorenze are definitely NOT happy with their fairies. Their miseries become our entertainment! When something good or bad happens repeatedly to somebody, we say, "You're lucky!" or "You're so unlucky!" In How to Ditch Your Fairy, Justine Larbalestier has found the cause of both good and bad luck! It's a fairy. In this uniquely crafted novel, young teens at a sports' high school in a futuristic, nondescript city have a clothes-shopping fairy and a parking fairy, a fairy to keep them out of trouble and a fairy that makes them attractive to the opposite sex. Young readers will love the plot from beginning to end as they read about Charlie and Fiorenze and the development of their unlikely friendship. They NEED each other in order to ditch their unwanted fairies. Steffi, the dreamy suitor, offers himself to the girl who is in possession of the fairy that attracts members of the opposite sex, and the reader will pity him for his role as the helpless, fickle doos guy (meaning "cool"). After successfully performing the transfer, Charlie and Fiorenze realize that the other's fairy is as undesirable as the original. In a death-defying attempt to rid themselves forever of their fairies (that will have you laughing out loud), the girls slip and slide down a man-made mountain of ice, without a bobsled! The vocabulary is outlandishly clever, and the concept of a new type of high school where one focuses entirely on one's avocation is especially timely in light of the current crisis in education. If you keep an open mind, you will find yourself examining your own luck and the likelihood that a fairy is either watching over you or torturing your very existence! The "List of Known Fairies" ties real life with the fantasy life as it provides an explanation of the most common fairies. We all know people who are in possession of some of them. Finally, there is a glossary to help the reader with words like pulchritudinous, spoffs, doos, and fairy dung. Fairy dung doesn't need a glossary! M.Squaresky