My Life with the Liars by Caela Carter

My Life with the Liars is another novel brought to me by a student this month. This particular student is the type of kid every teacher loves. She is cute as a button and very eager to please. She shows up early every day to pass out student notebooks and gives me unsolicited hugs on a daily basis. She is a little island of goodness and light in the chaotic vortex of pain that is my seventh period. Basically, she'd do anything to help me and I'd do anything to help her at this point. She was the very picture of enthusiasm when she brought this book up to me, with her eyes all wide and her little body practically vibrating with excitement. "You have to read this book," she told me. "It's SO good!" With an endorsement like that, I could hardly say no. As soon as I finished up with Wool, I started this one right away.

The novel is told from the perspective of Zylynn, a twelve year old girl that has been raised in a religious group called "The Children of the Light." She has always lived inside the group's compound in the desert and followed the teachings of their enigmatic leader, Father Prophet. Her entire life is ruled by his edicts, which include things like considering anyone outside the compound to be an evil liar, enduring entire days with no food as punishment, and believing that God is her literal mother and Father Prophet is her literal father. Everything she sees and does is filtered through this set of beliefs, but she still can't help but feel a little curious about the outside world. She tries her hardest to suppress these feelings, as she considers them to be "abominations." 

The plot begins with Zylynn in great turmoil. A man calling himself her father arrives at the compound and takes her away from everything she has ever known. He brings her to a house full of people he calls her stepmother and three step-siblings and puts her in a pink bedroom that he says belongs only to her. For Zylynn, who has been raised to believe her parents are God and Father Prophet, and who has been taught that no one should ever own any possessions, her immediate reaction is terror. She can think of only one thing--getting back to the compound as quickly as possible. She is desperate to go home and begins to try and plan her escape.

As a few days go by, Zylynn's struggles continue. She knows from her upbringing that she is supposed to consider everything she hears an outsider say as a lie. However, she doesn't understand how things like delicious foods, soft clothing, and hugs could be bad things. She's also coming to develop loving feelings towards the people she's living with. Confused, she believes that any enjoyment she gets out of life with her so-called family must be a test of her faith and redoubles her efforts to run away. Throughout the rest of the novel, Zylynn continues to try and sort out her complicated feelings towards The Children of the Light and her new home and figure out where she really belongs.

I never thought I'd read a middle grades novel about a cult, but here we are. An even bigger surprise was how well that concept worked. My Life with the Liars was a very good novel. Zylynn's narration was realistically unreliable, and her confusion over normal life events like shopping and bathing were written in a way that middle grade readers would be able to interpret and understand. Mixed in with her bewilderment over "normal" life were flashback sections that explained more about what her life in Children of the Light was like. The amount of information revealed in these sections was portioned out well, allowing readers to piece together the reasoning behind why Zylynn makes the decisions she does as the story goes on. I felt for her character and wanted so badly for her to figure everything out. I was pulled in from page one and stayed engaged with the story until the very end.

At around 280 pages, this is a relatively quick read. I moved through it in a few days and I believe middle grade readers would move through it fairly quickly as well. My little kiddo that recommended it to me certainly did. I think this is an easy one to pull in a kid that likes realistic fiction, and I can definitely see myself recommending this to future students. Caela Carter did a nice job walking a fine line with this one. It feels somewhat "dangerous" because of the subject matter (which kids love), but it remains totally appropriate for young readers. This was a surprising find, and is just one more reason to love the little one that brought it to my attention.


Challenge Tally
Total Books Read in 2018: 35