Karen M. McManus has done it again! This author's YA thrillers are always so fun to dive into, and SUCH CHARMING LIARS was no exception. I really enjoyed the found-family aspect of this story, and I totally didn't see some of those twists coming!

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Children's, Delacorte Press for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

4+ stars

I really enjoyed Such Charming Liars. Teenager Kat is way too wise for her age. Her mom is trying to go straight but needs to do one last job stealing a necklace for her employer. They run into Luke and his son Liam on the way to the job. Jamie and Luke were married for a weekend 12 years ago but haven't seen each since.

The novel is told in alternating POV from Kat and Liam, who are both great characters. I loved how the reconnected and felt comfortable with each other after all this time. Fast, enjoyable read.

With her unputdownable style and relatable characters McManus delivers another very satisfying thriller.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pengin Random House for the e-ARC.
Kat and her mom, Jamie are grifters and work for a woman named Gem, who is a professional jewel thief. Jamie wants out of the business, but promises Gem she will do one last heist, at billionaire Ross Sutherland's birthday party, which takes place at a remote compound in northern Maine.
On the way, Kat and Jamie have a flat tire, and guess who pulls over to help: Luke who was married for 48 hours to Jamie, and his son Liam, who has tagged along to keep his dad, a scammer, out of trouble.
This puts a wrench in Jamie's plan, and from here things go bad to worse because soon there is a murder and their lives are now in danger too.

The story goes back and forth from Kat's and Liam's perspectives, as they work together to try to figure out the murder and stay alive while do so.

There a tons of twists and turn and red herrings in this fast-paced mystery. I always enjoy a good heist mystery and students will enjoy this one.

A new Karen McManus book? I’m always ready for that. I have mixed feelings about this one, but I still recommend it for McManus fans (3.5, rounded up). First, the good: I loved the characters Kat and Liam, teens who, for 48 hours over a decade prior, were stepsiblings. They’re reunited under very strange circumstances and immediately reconnect. The story is told from their alternating perspectives, and I found myself rooting for them to each have a better life, one in which they have each other to rely on. On the negative side, there were a few instances of plot holes and implausible events. However, the great characters kept me reading, and I hope we’ll see more of Kat and Liam in the future.

Absolutely LOVED this book! Her best yet honestly. Kept me guessing the whole time and the characters were very well developed. I really cared about the main characters and what happened to them throughout the story.

Such Charming Liars is a compelling read full of twists and turns.
I enjoyed the alternating POVs, and it definitely had an ending that I didn't see coming.
Liam and Augustus were my favorite characters. Although Kat made lots of stupid decisions, she was still a pretty likeable character.
A great suspense/thriller YA novel.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an early copy for review.

Rating:
4.25/5 ⭐️

Lately McManus’ books have been hit or miss for me but luckily this one was a hit.

Things I loved about this book: the alternating POVs, crazy twists that I didn’t see coming, behind the scene look at jewel thiefs, and the found family

I honestly would’ve given this book a higher rating, except that there seem to be almost too many twists and turns. At points the book seemed completely off track, but I still really enjoyed it.

One of my top 3 picks from McManus so far.

Such Charming Liars was another win by Karen McManus. She has a way of drawing you in and making what you think is a predictable story so unpredictable. I loved the main characters Kat and Liam. This is a great YA book that will keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat. I could not put it down.

I've read all of McManus' books and this is my favorite since The Cousins! A compulsive read with twists and turn.

The characters were really great - especially Liam & Augustus. I thought the end of the mystery was a little muddled, but I still enjoyed spending time with the characters.

It took me a few times to get the premise, but once I did I was hooked. This was a super fun, thrilling, and suspenseful adventure that kept me on my toes the entire course of the novel. It was definitely a page turner and I was so excited to see how it all turned out, who was after Kat and Liam and if they made it out alive! Highly recommend. The young YA crowd will eat this up!

The writing is easy to read, and the pacing is solid and snappy. I stopped after chapter 1 (3%). Seems like an easy three to four stars, with five for the right readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Children’s for the ARC.

Long time fan of Karen McManus. This is definitely new territory for her (the heist genre), and she once again did good. I finally guessed right on who was behind it all (Karen is very good about red herrings).

Overall, good read.

This was such a good book! I absolutely flew through this book. The characters were so interesting and I absolutely loved where the author took this story. I will be recommending this book to all my family and friends.

Okay, I'll say it. This is NOT another of the Liars books, even though it had liars in the title. That was a bit disappointing.

This book focuses on Kat and her mom, Jamie. Jamie is involved with someone who fakes expensive jewelry, then tries to replace the real stuff with look-alike fakes. The person she works with is quite good too, so she is sent on assignment to swap necklaces at the birthday party for a rich family. And of course things go wrong.

I think my students will like this book. I found it hard to get into and didn't find the characters relatable. And then the ending just wasn't for me.

I received a free eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a fun teenaged heist. After not being able to get through One of Us is Back (no matter how many summaries I read, I just could NOT keep the details from the previous books inside my brain! Nor could I keep any of the characters straight), I’ve realized that I like McMannus’s standalones a lot better. The Cousins was really fun, and this is too.

Kat’s mother is a jewel thief, but she’s ready to go straight. But first…one last job (isn’t there always?). When she was four, they fled Kat’s horribly abusive father, and minus a quickie 48-hour marriage in Vegas when Kat was 5, it’s been just the two of them ever since. That quickie marriage will become important, because the second narrator is none other than Kat’s “Vegas step brother” Liam. He and his father Luke are also headed to the Sutherland compound - Kat’s mother Jamie is going to “work” the event (but really steal a multimillion dollar necklace and replace it with a fake), and Liam’s father Luke is hoping to get closer to his girlfriend’s family. Said girlfriend Annaliese, is of course the owner of that fancy necklace. Kat wasn’t supposed to tag along on the trip, but she cons her way into it (telling her mom she’s staying with a friend, and then when her mom is about to drop her off, admitting that friend is actually out of town). When they arrive, Jamie is immediately violently ill, so Kat ends up having to pretend to be her mother and take the lunch service shift. She has a hard time flying under the radar (there’s a whole comedy of errors where this fancy ring that somehow ended up in her suitcase gets stuck on her finger, so she’s serving with this SUPER expensive piece of jewelry, which of course draws a lot of attention). Jamie still isn’t better by dinner service, which means Kat may have to do the thieving and swapping herself. There’s only one problem - the necklace disappeared during the lunch service.

On Liam’s end, after his parents’ divorce (and his father’s ill-advised quickie Vegas marriage), he lived with his mother until she died several months earlier. Seeing as he’s not yet 18, Liam is forced to move back in with his father. Dad seems to have no real job or source of income other than scamming gullible women he meets online. Liam tries to put a stop to as much of the nonsense as he can, but then Luke lands Annaliese, and Liam is convinced this is yet another con his dad is running. He’s technically invited along for the Sutherland birthday bash, but he’s mostly hoping to keep dad in check, as Annaliese seems like a perfectly nice if gullible rich lady.

The Sutherlands of course come with Roy family levels of drama, and there was definitely a point when (like in Kit Frick’s The Reunion) I wished this story were about the adults instead of the teens. But again, that’s not the story that’s being told here (given all that unfolds, it does ultimately make more sense to have Kat/Liam be the narrators). On the night of the big birthday party, one of the Sutherlands ends up dead. Kat is the only witness (not that anyone knows that), but she didn’t get a good enough look at the guy - it was dark. And it seems like someone is definitely trying to keep her quiet. She’s not sure if she can trust the stepbrother she had for all of 48 hours (and hasn’t seen or spoken to since), but he may be her only hope for getting out of the weekend alive.

I’ve been reading a lot about the state of YA recently, and it’s intriguing to me. Apparently so many adults read YA these days, that a lot of the YA that’s coming out is starting to feel more like it’s geared towards adults than kids. I find that fascinating, as I feel (and I’ve had conversations with friends who feel the same way) like I may have finally “outgrown” my love of YA, as I don’t have the patience I used to for teenage “stuff.” I don’t really have a point here, just that…it’s interesting. These characters were entertaining to read about, and they did mostly feel like teenagers (Liam more so than Kat, given that she’s had to grow up pretty quickly). Kat’s pretty singularly focused on heisty stuff, while Liam does spend a fair amount of time mooning over Augustus, Annaliese’s cute nephew. It’s a fun, quick read, and I can definitely see it being popular when it comes out this summer.

Starting the year with Karen McManus was a stellar plan!
Such Charming Liars follows Kat and Liam as they navigate through an incredibly awkward family gathering filled with secrets, a jewelry heist, and murder. Each of them has their own family secrets to protect which complicate matters even further as they race to find out who the killer is and if he’s after them now.

I always enjoy McManus’s writing- she creates engaging tales that generally keep me guessing who all the key players are.

This is another solid story by Karen McManus that needs to be on my classroom library shelf. Five stars!!

This was okay. My problem with this book comes down to personal preference: I'm not a huge fan of heist stories. I loved McManus' high school murder stuff much more. Oh well! The characters in this one were pretty cool, though. I could recommend this to younger readers.