Liars, Inc.

It started off innocently. A forged permission slip for a fellow student leads Max Cantrell, his best friend Preston and his girlfriend Parvati, to start Liars Inc, selling lies to their classmates. They’ll forge permission slips, lie about study sessions, all for a price. It seemed harmless. Until Preston needs his own alibi so he can meet a girl he met online. And he never makes it home. Evidence is found linking Max to the crime but he knows he didn’t do it. Who will believe him and can he find the real killer before he ends up in jail?

I went into this book a little nervous since it was a mystery/thriller and the twists aren’t always huge surprises. But this book managed to do just that. It surprised me and I loved that. I was able to figure some of the twists out but I was blown away by others, which I liked because after finishing it, I was able to reflect and see where those twists were coming from instead of them making no sense.

I really liked the character of Max. His mother died during birth and his father died from a heart attack a few years later so Max is an orphan, one who grew up in the system and was homeless for a while until he was adopted by the Cantrells. He wasn’t a jock, he wasn’t involved in any school clubs, he saw himself as pretty plain. He was smart and he cared about his friends and his adopted family, even if he had trouble trusting them. I found it easy to understand where his issues with trust and his jealousy were coming from and how that affected him with how to react to trying to avoid the police and clear his name.

Preston and Parvati were interesting characters. Both were rich kids who’d been expelled from their previous school and ended up befriending Max. Preston was the star of the school, beloved football player, and Parvati was involved in the newspaper and raised by strict parents. The author did a great job of developing them so I could see why they’d be friends with Max, to give them their own distinct voices, but also held back enough to make them suspicious at times. Because this was a book where I felt suspicious of everyone at one point.

The romance between Max and Parvati was nicely done. It was always there but it never overtook the plot. They could be cute together but when they had issues, I thought it was handled realistically.

The plot was very fast paced and action packed. It seemed like every chapters had another twist or another clue. Something was always happening. This was the type of book that could make the reader’s head spin with so many wild theories with none of them even close to being right. It all came to a conclusion that left my jaw dropped. My mind was bent. The few things I has figured out paled in comparison to how much I did not see the ending coming. I loved that I was fooled.