Reviews

Liar City by Allie Therin

dayday_reads's review

dark emotional funny tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

a_reader_obsessed's review against another edition

4.0

4 Stars

This was really captivatingly complex. Therin has created a nuanced world with many rules and unyielding beliefs, all of which are inevitably made to be broken and disputed.

Here’s the bare basics. Empaths are fairly new anomalies in this alternate world of ours. With mere skin to skin contact they can know every feeling and thus, infer every motive, thought, or secret about a person. Such a powerful ability is thankfully limited to actual touch. Or is it?

A high profile, very vocal senator who’s seeking to limit empath rights is found murdered, and what unravels is a grand cover up of several truths that many will go to obvious murderous lengths to never let them see the light of day. At the center of this scandal is empath Reece and his detective sister Jamey, both who are trying to figure out who the killer is as they’re forced to partner with dangerous, secret agent “specialist” Grayson. When it becomes clear that the senator’s death was at the hands of an empath (who are presumably absolutely incapable of harming others), what they all discover will shockingly shift their paradigm.

Again, this was so very complex. The worldbuilding was interesting and just barely scratched the surface. Things are nebulous, and like real life, there’s valid arguments for both sides involving basic human rights, privacy, and the ongoing hypothetical debate of the morality of leashing a subset of the population due to their scary powers that could potentially not be benevolent. Is it right to convict before a crime has even taken place? Are protocols to prevent harm justified despite certain powers having yet to manifest?

This made me think. It simulated the brain cells. Reece was frustratingly quite annoying in his unfaltering ability to put everyone else first. He’s also terribly acerbically funny (with some TSTL doozies) as he struggles to cope with the world’s unkindness and his apparently changing abilities that scare him shitless. Grayson was the complete opposite. Calm, collected, a purported heart made of stone, he was a compelling enigma with a very secret agenda and past. These two are barely friends by the end of the book, and it remains to be seen if this series evolves into a romance, if that’s at all possible.

Overall, I’m wholly impressed with what Therin has created here. This is an author I’m going to definitely explore further and be on the lookout for more!

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for a copy in exchange for an honest review

skim44's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

readundancies's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I can't give this 5 stars purely because this is the first of a series and I have expectations on the subsequent and currently unreleased sequels.

So just know this is basically a 5-star read for me.

Everything about it was my jam: the relationship dynamics, the hot political climate, the grumpy x sunshine vibes, THE BANTER. An urban dystopian SFF with an alternate-universe Seattle, an AEAB (All Empaths Are Bad) movement and all the prejudiced tension that comes along with it set up as the backdrop for a high-profile murder investigation?

You couldn't take my money fast enough.

I started off with a copy from the library and made it my mission to own a physical copy before I was even done reading it.

Since finishing, I'd been trawling online for the sequel to pop up so I could pre-order it and immediately dropped all my hard-earned dollar bills once it finally did.

Do yourself a solid and pick up a copy so that I don't have to be the only person dying in wait for the story to continue.

Also, Allie Therin, in the off-chance that you or someone from your team comes across this review, please put me down under would be terribly grateful to get hands on an ARC for the next one in the series.

heathere6093's review against another edition

Writing was hard to follow for me. Jumped right into a different world without any preamble.

tansy's review

adventurous dark mysterious

4.0

Enjoyable mystery set in an alternate universe in which some people have emotion-based powers. While it's self-contained, it leaves everything set up for a larger story, and possible romance, that will pay off over future books. Sadly, the book is poorly copy-edited, which makes it all the more astounding that the publisher is charging more than £10 for a digital edition! Get this from the library instead.

margotreads's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

rennyzenny's review against another edition

adventurous tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Fun and whimsical and mystery without romance but ~with~ queer characters, yet another slay fro miss Allie Therin

millah's review against another edition

adventurous emotional lighthearted mysterious sad tense

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

4.0

This was fun. My expectations were, not low, but contained, when I started to read this book. This was partly because I hadn’t read any contemporary stories by Allie Therin before and partly because I didn't know if this was mainly a fantasy/mystery or mystery romance. My lack of genre expectations  turned out to be a good thing, making me lean back and enjoy the ride.  This wasn't a romance, but I enjoyed the mystery, the unlikely friendships, and the LGBTQIA+ characters and themes. The writing was immersive, and I liked the urban paranormal murder mystery vibe. 

The idea behind this story was cool and, I believe, unique, with empaths who were feared by most people, with supernaturally strong folks, and a company attempting to control everything. I liked that the magical abilities were mirroring neuro affective disorders like ADHD, ASD and PTSD, but I wished that I knew more about how they developed and worked. Several aspects of worldbuilding were presented without much explanation. For instance, empaths were so rare that there were only 2 empaths known to exist in Seattle, yet in a couple of decades, they had somehow become the most feared element of the society. I know that fear-mongering and scapegoating of small minorities is a real thing, in the USA as well as around the world. Still, how could this fear and hate of empaths have become so widespread, when the empaths were so few, and they were believed only to feel someone’s feelings by touch? The USA is one thing, but the whole world? At one point, I wondered if some of the politicians or business folks in power had used Emotional Inception on the masses (dun dun dun).    

I liked the main characters, Reece Davis and Evan Grayson, even if they were a bit over the top and we only got to know them a little. Reece was struggling with the aftermath of a bad read, but there were no details of what happened. The book barely explored how he developed his character traits. There were only hints about how his abilities had influenced his relationships with people and impacted his values and beliefs. Similarly, we got very few glimpses of Evan’s background, and very late in the story. 

Weirdly enough, the fact that the romance was building so slowly that it was hardly there, helped me tolerate the grumpy/stoic and sunshine/sensitive trope more than I usually would have. This is just one of my hangups, and if this had been a typical romance, I may have felt the trope was too much. Now, though, I mostly found it cute. Also, I could easily relate to being a short person, having badly regulated empathy, little impulse control, wanting to protect people's feelings, forgetting my own needs, and being socially hyper-vigilant and clueless at the same time. In addition to that, I suppose my significant other could seem quite stoic, at least in comparison to me. I would almost feel like a hypocrite if I complained too much about the trope being used. 

I'm not certain I would have allowed someone to call me Care Bear the first time we crossed paths, though.  

There were several interesting supporting characters, and I especially liked Reece’s sister, Briony St. James, called Jamey. This story had so many characters that I ended up confusing some of them and I felt like one or two could have been edited out. There were brief POV sections from side characters that didn’t seem necessary to the plot since we eventually got the information through Reece’s POV anyway. As a reader, I learned the identity of the murderer long before Reece, and that probably decreased the impact of the scene where he finally learned the truth. 

To be honest, Reece seemed a bit dense around certain themes, but so did other characters. If you haven't guessed so far, I should mention that if you want to enjoy this story and these characters' actions, you will probably have to suspend your disbelief a bit. For instance, Jamie, Liam and Evan repeatedly kept secrets from Reece, somehow ignoring the risk of Reece’s ignorance leading him to do stupid and dangerous things. Naturally, Reece ended up doing exactly that. This also led to some funny moments, and I was positively surprised by some of the humour. I enjoyed a lot of the banter between Reece and Evan, and some funny moments made me chuckle. 

Reece was overly sarcastic, though, without caring much about hurting people’s feelings. To me, it made little sense that he, as an empath, who was so sensitive that he couldn’t even talk about violence, could be snarky and cruel and not aware of how he could hurt people. Still, I thought of it as mirroring vulnerable folks sometimes learning to use sarcasm as a deflecting shield, protecting their vulnerabilities from exposure, or maintaining control and keeping their emotions in check. Sarcastic remarks could also be slips of the tongue stemming from, I don’t know, empathy fatigue from trauma or overwhelming situations. I would have liked it if Reece had been confronted with some of the things he said and why he did so. Also, I would have preferred that Reece had quit calling Evan the Dead Man after the first or second time, because ouch. I hope book 2 will be mainly in Evan's POV, because I suspect Reece misinterpreted quite a few things about Evan. I mean. Obviously.

Overall, this was fun, and I even liked this book more than the Magic in Manhattan series. Despite my nitpicking here, I liked this book and stayed up far too long at night because I didn't manage to put it away. Now, I want to read more. The light worldbuilding is something I can easily overlook enough to give the next book in the series a try. 

ismendes's review against another edition

adventurous medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5