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Such Charming Liars by Karen M McManus - Review

Wednesday, February 5, 2025


I recently realised that I have been out of the loop on what Young Adult literature there is around at the moment. So I made a concerted effort to look in a couple of bookshops. And honestly, I was quite disappointed. It felt like a lot of the books were the same stuff that has been hanging around in YA sections for like ten years. And that's a lot of years when the target audience of these books are only fifteen years old. It's sad really that nothing new and spectacular seems to be coming out. So I decided to have a look at my local library, which isn't always brilliant, but I hoped it would be a bit better. And it was! I really need to look at the big library in the middle of Barnsley, so I'll try to do that too. But I was happy with the selection in my local library. I picked up three books, including this one, because I've read everything else by Karen M McManus but this from last year had bypassed me. 

I liked this one as much as I've liked her other ones, so that's good. I'm glad she is out there writing new contemporary YA even if no one else is. 

So, there are two protagonists of the book, and sometimes I felt like it switched oddly, but that's one of my only criticisms of the book. The first one is Kat. She's sixteen and she lives with her mother, Jamie, and her found family, Gem, who is like her grandma, and Gem's daughter, Morgan, who is the same age as Jamie. Gem is a jewel thief. She runs a front, a cleaning company called Spotless. Jamie works for her. After a bad time with Kat's dad, Cormac, when Kat was little, Jamie ran away with her and eventually met Gem. But she is trying to go straight. She is going to do one last heist; she is going to swap the ruby necklace of a woman called Annalise Sutherland with a fake, and use the money to set herself and Kat up for good. 

Meanwhile, Liam is seventeen, and after the traumatic death of his mother a few months ago, he has been living with his dad, Luke. His parents have been divorced since he was tiny, and he has never been close to his dad. But now he has no choice. Luke is a conman - he has been leading women on on dating sites and Liam has been trying to stop him and has told women what he's up to. Luke has been dating Annalise and has been playing the doting father to try to win her over. Liam isn't convinced at all. But then Annalise's dad, patriarch Ross Sutherland, is turning eighty, and there's a big party planned on his compound. He's very rich and it's obvious that Luke just wants in on the family money. But he and Liam are invited to the party so they head off together. 

Jamie has got a job as staff for the party, so she heads off. But Kat schemes to go with her. Jamie isn't happy but there's not much she can do about it. On the way to the party they break down, and are stopped on the side of the road when Liam and Luke turn up. 

And it turns out they already know each other. When Kat was four and Liam was five, Jamie and Luke got married in Vegas. They were married for just forty eight hours and in that time Kat and Liam went missing and there was a whole panic before they were found by Gem (which is why Jamie got involved with Gem in the first place). Jamie has never forgiven him and so the reunion by the side of the road isn't a happy one. Liam and Kat remember each other though. 

So then they're all on the compound and many things happen - I couldn't even include them all. Kat ends up having to trust Liam without really knowing him. They both get friendly with the Sutherland grandson, Augustus. The whole family is a mess - Augustus' father is an alcoholic and has been in and out of rehab, and everyone else is basically insufferable. Jamie is trying to pull off the heist by swapping Annalise's necklace, but everyone else is scheming too.

This is a really good fun heist novel with added YA - Kat and Liam are both excellent characters and it's easy to feel sympathy for both of them as well as liking them. I did find the book dragged in a couple of places and could have done with a tiny edit, but I really liked the twists. I'm giving it five out of five. 

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