Title: Liars, Inc.
Author: Paula Stokes
Genre: Mystery, YA
Summary: A student named Max starts a club called Liars, Inc. where he and his friends forge signatures, call in for "sick" kids, and other petty high school stuff. But then, Max is framed for the disappearance for this best friend, Preston and things go from bad to slightly less bad to really bad to ???
Rating: 3/10 stars
Review:
I'm going to start this review with the things I did not like. First, the character Parvati. While part of me can appreciate a half-Indian love interest/female lead (not something you see in YA fiction a lot), most of me was upset with Parvati's characterization. It wasn't enough to make her a free spirit, which is something that I don't think I would have a problem with. Stokes took it way too far.
My issue comes with her being a lying, scheming, drug abusing manipulator. A South Asian girl being shown as untrustworthy and only starting to gain a conscience when she finds the right Basic White Boy? Come on, now. It's a main point of the story that the characters are all untrustworthy, but I feel that Stokes overdid it with Parvati's character. Max lies to the FBI? Shitty decision but when you're being set up for murder and interrogated, with a criminal record, I can understand why he'd do those things and for his character, it makes sense for him to impulsively do things. If I were in his position, I'd probably make the same dumb choices. With Preston, not to spoil anything, but I get why he did the things he did. It's believable and in line with his characterization.
But with Parvati, I felt that too much was piled onto her to make her seem too much like a mysterious bad girl, when her smarts and rebellious streak that got her kicked out of her last school would have been more than enough to justify the narrative painting her as untrustworthy and for Max doubting her. Unfortunately, Stokes decided to dump way too much onto Parvati and it turned out messy and insensitive.
There are a pair of twin Korean babies in the story, and they're nowhere near needed for the plot. One's named something or another but the other is named Jo Lee, as in that's her "first name" and her surname is the name of the white people who adopted her. I'm obviously not an expert on Korean culture, but I'm at least eighty percent sure that the name Jo Lee makes no sense as a given name. Lee is a surname. And even if the kid's surname was Lee and her first name was just Jo, her twin would have the same surname, which she does not in the book. Again, I'm not Korean, or even Korean-American, so I could be wrong about this, but if I'm not, that seems a bit like the typical "pick vague names that possibly fit a culture and put them in the book because Western readers won't know the difference" bs that many authors like to pull.
Then there's a part in which a character has green eyes and pale skin and therefore looks ~less Latino~ and :) when :) will :) white :) people :) realize :) that :) they're :) not :) the :) only :) ones :) with :) pale :) eyes :) and skin :) and :) having :) those :) features :) does :) not :) make :) PoC :) any :) less :) of :) members :) of :) their :) own :) race :) :) :)
There's also a part in which Parvati is referred to as looking "otherworldly, like a ghost or a hot alien chick" because yeah, people who aren't 100% white Americans must be ALIENS. You can have a love interest who is a woman of color without using the teenage male narrator to fetishize her and make lowkey racist remarks about her. Hiding behind the character won't excuse your casual racism.
But racist undertones aside, Liars, Inc. is a pretty predictable mystery. There was no point where I slapped my hand over my mouth or gasped aloud. For a book that is advertised to be like Gone Girl and How To Get Away With Murder, clearly you can see why I was disappointed with the mystery plot. I guessed many things early on. As soon as one clue was revealed, I figured out its significance. I kept reading the book because I wanted to be blindsided by something. I wanted Max to actually turn out to be guilty, or for any of my predictions to be completely wrong. A photo of a kid who looks like Preston could turn out to be a photoshopped red herring. All these videos and photographs that were found of Parvati having sex? Perhaps they led to someone getting arrested for child pornography (for real, you can't tell me that F.B.I. agents would just let that slide. I've been binge watching Quantico. Alex Parrish would never let something like that go.) I feel that SOMETHING should have come from nowhere and thrown the reader for a loop, but it never happened.
The book might have benefited from involving Liars, Inc. more. After the first act of the book, the idea is just dropped and only mentioned in passing. I get that there is a mystery happening but I feel that if half the premise is this club, and the book is NAMED after it, there should have been a bigger purpose for it. Like Max said, he would have covered for Preston even if Liars, Inc. didn't exist, so why was it in the book in the first place if the narrative wasn't going to use it for more than a few chapters?
Overall, Liars, Inc. isn't the worst book I've ever read, and it's not the worst YA mystery out there. But with its offensive content and paint-by-numbers plot, it's not anything special. I flew threw it thanks to the short chapters, and while there are worse books to spend time on, I still don't think Liars, Inc. is a must read for YA mystery lovers.
