The Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen-it all starts with a lie, and life can change in a minute. This book explores those ramifications. While a pretty good concept, the writing itself is rather dull. I found this book a long read and just couldn't identify with it.

my second read by this author (waking lions), and i loved it. when a shy, unattractive teenage girl has a moment between telling the truth or a lie - she chooses. and everything changes.

The premise of this book is unsettling, but the author did a great job with it. Nofar, a 17 year old girl, tells a terrible lie after a not so great encounter with a celebrity.

This book is meant to make you very uncomfortable; and it did just that. I hope Ayelet Gundar-Goshen continues to write books and work with her translator - the translator captures her writing beautifully!

A bored teenager who wants to be noticed tells a lie. A massive one with the potential to ruin a life. I can’t say more without spoiling the novel, but honestly, while I appreciate authors pushing boundaries in their fiction, not this time. The Liar gives weight to what is a dangerous statistical anomaly used against women all the time. Gundar-Goshen writes a nuanced story, but it wasn’t enough to change my antipathy towards the premise itself.

I had high hopes for this book, but alas, I spent most of my energy trying to decide whether I was more bored or annoyed by it as I was reading.

The quasi-moral dilemma premise wasn’t particularly appealing to me, but I had heard good things about the writing so I decided to try it. Unfortunately the slow, dull narrative and deeply unlikable and uninteresting characters meant that the writing just didn’t matter.

It also seems that the translation wasn’t particularly well done, which certainly doesn’t help when the book already has too many problems to be considered good reading.

Great book with a great plot. The lies we weave sometimes have serious consequences and The Liar shows exactly how serious those consequences can be and the tangled webs we weave when we choose to be dishonest. I really enjoyed this book and look forward to future work by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen!!

I enjoyed this book from the first word to the last, in large part because I absolutely LOVED this author's writing style! She really brings out the thoughts and motivations of the characters in such a humorous way as many of those thoughts and motivations are ones we have all felt ourselves at times. The characters were just great--unique, real, quirky--and the story kept taking me by surprise. I can't wait to recommend this to friends!

I loved reading a book set in Israel. It was very interesting to see how a lie can take over and spread and stick in so many ways. I liked the looks at all the side characters who were effected by the lie. The writing flowed nicely as well.

This novel was interesting, but wasn't one I found myself wondering about when I wasn't reading it. I didn't feel like I knew the characters enough to really care what happened next. Rather what kept me reading was a curiosity about the plot and how it'd play out.

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is a fine writer, to be sure. I think what kept me from connecting more with the characters and the novel as a whole was what felt like a distance in the POV. I like close POV and this one is further away than I prefer.

Overall it's an interesting story though.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free e-ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review

A 17 year old falsely accuses a man of attempted rape.

Warning: I don't know what mislead me about this novel, since the description literally mentions rape in it, but I did not think it was going to be as dark as it was? Maybe it was the pretty pink cover? But this novel explores sexual assault, blackmail, and suicidal thoughts/tendencies.

The only redeeming thing about this novel, actually, was how dark it got. I like the emotional depths we were able to explore and think about with all the characters.

Now.. the other stuff. The stuff I really did not like.

- I'm not sure if it's the translations or not, but the writing just isn't my style. It kind of jumped all over the place with different perspectives. I think a lot of the perspectives were unnecessary. In the description of the novel it mentions that there is another "liar" but she doesn't come in until over halfway through the novel, and it is super jarring. It completely confused me and didn't seem important to this particular story.

I understand that it was cool for Nofar to meet another "liar" but there wasn't much else there.

- I hated every single character in this book. They were all very selfish and mean and against one another. Not a single character deserved sympathy from the reader. Obviously, this isn't required in a novel, but wouldn't you expect to feel bad for the poor 17 year old girl? Or the falsely accused rapist? Or the family members involved? Nope. Nothing. Nada.

- The ending was very abrupt and eh. Anticlimactic considering how much time I felt was wasted on discussing what would would happen if this or that happened. No spoilers, but I'm sure you can guess how it ends.

- I totally understand that this is fiction. I don't really care that this book was published in a bad climate for this kind of book. BUT. I do agree that this book just felt icky. It is interesting to read the POV of a lying rape victim, but literally every girl in the story that hears Nofar's story has been sexually assaulted at some point in their life and never spoke up about it.

I almost wish the cops or detectives didn't believe Nofar so willingly because that would make this story more realistic and more understanding as to why literally ALL the other women in the novel didn't speak up when they were assaulted.

It also doesn't seem like there is much support for the true victims or anyone that might be harmed by Nofar's lies. Nofar herself doesn't give much thought to other survivors because she is super selfishly thinking only of herself and the consequences that will directly affect her.

- I kind of already touched on the various perspectives a little bit, but let me just explain. There were way too many POVs here. We get a deaf mute, who ends up doing nothing. The detective, who ends up doing nothing. Nofar's father and mother, who essentially end up doing nothing. We get Raymonde, who is only in there for maybe 3 chapters for NO REASON. A mayor at some point who talks about how he sexually assaulted his assistant while she cried (disgusting). It just felt like the author wanted to cram as much information as possible into the book to make sure the reader would understand all the thoughts she had about the topic.

Don't get me wrong, I see what the author was doing with all these extra POVs, but it felt unnecessary.

This book just wasn't my cup of tea. Took me over a month to read. Had to force myself through it. 2/5 stars because "It was ok."

The book just isn't working for me after getting about a third of the way in. Very realistically written; I believe the characters. I just found them unlikeable.

My Thoughts: The Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is the story of 17-year old girl, Nofar, who gets swept up in a lie she didn’t really mean to tell. Many people quickly believe her lie, offering sympathy and rewards for her bravery in speaking out. It becomes almost impossible for her to let go of the lie. Even when she tried to take the lie back others refused to believe any change to her story. Besides the victim of her lie, no one suffered from it more than Nofar and that deep examination of a lie really worked for me. What worked less (and seemed completely unnecessary) was a side story about an older woman who also told a lie. Her story only minimally overlapped with Nofar’s and almost felt like filler to plump up an already short novel. Throughout the book what shone brightest for me was Gundar-Goshen’s beautiful writing.

“Guilt, when it comes to visit, can choose from any number of routes. It can sudddenly appear from behind and sink its talons into your back. It can charge you head-on. But Nofar’s guilt, like a Persian cat, rubbed her legs fleetingly, sat for a brief moment on her lap, then moved onward. It had no desire to stay longer than that.”

Her phrasing of certain passages had me reading them over and over. Grade: B

Note: I received a copy of this book from Little, Brown and Company (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review.

We've all done it, right? Everyone has lied. And we've all lied about various things. But what about the consequences? The Liar is a story of what happens when you lie, no matter how small or big the lie may be.

I think one of the best parts of The Liar is how close to human nature this book takes you. Why do we lie, does it matter who we lie to? And of course, what happens after the lie has fumbled out of our mouths and it's now out there, in the world, ready to do damage.

I remember as a kid, I had a small accident. I lied about it to my parents. They knew I was injured, but to this day, I still lie about how it happened. Mostly because I can't go back on the lie, but also because the truth, to me, at this point, just sounds less believable. So, 25+ years later, and I'm still lying.

If any of that speaks to you, then you'll like The Liar as I did.

I really struggled with this book. I did not like what the characters were doing. It was reprehensible and in the case of Nofar it was destructive to women who struggle with being believed. Also, often the writing felt like it was just randomness thrown out. Anecdotes about minor or completely absent characters were added at various points (like why a guy decided to become a tattooist). And, one of the characters doesn't enter the book until more than halfway through. It felt like one story was done and another was beginning. But it wasn't! A bit jarring. Finally, I really did not like the two main characters. Ms. Gundar-Goshen tries to help people understand how someone could get caught in the spiral of a lie and unable to free themselves. However, she chose two situations that I thought were a bit too electric to be useful. I was unable to get past my dislike for what they were doing to accept the situation.

The Liar tells the story of Nofar, an unremarkable girl whose whole life changes one summer when she tells a lie that spirals out of control, changing the lives of many people around her.

I am of two, very conflicting minds about this book. First, the positives. Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is a beautiful writer. She has created a beautiful character study, showing us a cast of very different characters that are all fully developed and three-dimensional. She really explores how actions of one person can deeply change the character and lives of another. Also, she deftly talks about problems in Israel without getting political or making the moments feel at all forced. Instead, this novel really feels like a slice of life.

Now for my problems with the book. I really don't feel like this is the right time for this book. We are in a currently in a climate where women are not being believed when they come forward with accusations of sexual assault and so a book in which the main character fakes a rape doesn't feel right. I feel like this book could be used as a weapon to show why we shouldn't believe women. This is a very serious subject and I feel like this book doesn't handle that fact. There is one character who Nofar interacts with that makes her feel bad about her story but I never felt that she felt the weight of what she was doing enough or that she had changed the way the public would view other women who were actually assaulted.

That said, I would recommend this book for the writing and the characters if you can get past the repercussions of the novel, which I found I wasn't always able to do.

I decided to sit this one aside after forcing myself to read it for over a week and only getting to the 25% mark. I couldn't stand Nofar and something about the way the story was told (the lack of dialogue maybe?) didn't sit right with me.

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for giving me the chance to review this eArc.

Thought the premise is intriguing, as I read the book I had a hard time getting into it.

This book is not for me and I have decided not to finish reading it. It's very rare that I DNF a book, but this is one of those times I have to, I even tried skimming pages and didn't want to do that throughout the whole thing. I tried to read it three times now and have only reached 17% into it and the way it's written is just not catching my interest at all.

Only 17, Nofar thinks her life will improve when she begins working after school at the local ice cream parlor. So far, her life has been dull and ordinary especially when compared to that of her younger beautiful sister Maya.
Her life improves when she tells one lie that gets her more attention than she ever wanted. While she struggles between protecting her life and confessing the truth, a neighborhood boy Lavi sees her as the heroine she's always wanted to be.
This book is so well written that it's impossible to say what is right and what is wrong even when an elderly holocaust survivor gives her own somewhat jaded input. This is a classic story that will resonate with everyone who reads it.
I received an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, and I'm happy I had the opportunity to read this book.

Thank you netgalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I unfortunately could not finish this book. I tried to get into it, but after a few chapters I had to put it down. It has an interesting plot, but the way it’s written made it hard to enjoy.