Book Review: "Who is the Liar" by Laura Lee Bahr

Well, I'm back on the Kindle Store and there are so many amazing books to choose from if you simply click on the horror fiction tab. I quite like folk horror yes, and I'm quite a fan of occult-based horror yes, but this time I wanted to try my hand at something else. What do we call this sub-genre though? I would call it domestic horror, or rather even contemporary religious horror. I didn't think I was going to enjoy exploring this new sub-genre nearly as much as I did and the book itself is something I just flew through. One sitting is all it took. Let's take a look at it...

The story starts off with the Stone family, there's the mother and father and then the four daughters: Ruby, the twins Lily and Lavender - and the youngest one, Topaz. Topaz narrates the novel and, through the eyes of this ten-year-old, we see everything from family feuds to the freak-outs her overly religious mother has. Topaz is often bullied and abused by her older sister, the sixteen-year-old 'problem child', Ruby. Ruby manipulates Topaz by threatening to kill her hamster named Cocoa Puff. The hamster will disappear and when Topaz has complied, the hamster will reappear as if by magic. The parents keep the girls inside the house as there is a known child murderer going around the town stumping the police. Ruby has something she needs to confide in Topaz.

The fact that family dynamics are described from the beginning as being strained means that the author really wants to establish a sense of dislocation in our child narrator. Now, I'm not going to lie - sometimes I can think the child narrator doesn't work. But, after reading books like this and the stories of Silvina Ocampo, I am inclined to read more.

Out of 'protection', Ruby has stalked the child killer and has chained him up in the cold-space of the house - a room that sits at the very bottom of the home where the flooboards meet the dirt. When visiting the chained-up man, Topaz realises she recognises him from the church - a man named Brother Johnson. He is well-regarded, very wealthy and when Topaz initially speaks up, nobody believes her. Ruby is known for her lies, her betrayal, her manipulation and for being an all-around bad kid. And so, Topaz does not know who to believe. When she asks for proof that the killer is Brother Johnson, Ruby doesn't have an actual answer for her. But, asks her if she wishes for Brother Johnson to be let go. Topaz says yes.

The dichotomy of character between Ruby - the no-good problem child, and the prosperous, religious almost stadium-Christian Brother Johnson is a great way to have the reader constantly going back and forth about who the liar is. I can honestly say that when I found out, I kind of saw it coming but it was more fun reading it than finding it unpredictable.

Topaz then tells Lily and Lavender, who are the two who initially don't believe her. But as the conversation goes on, the three girls no longer know whether it is Ruby or Brother Johnson who is lying. Believing he is no longer in the cold-space, Topaz realises that Ruby never actually let him go and just pretended to. The child who had gone missing whilst Brother Johnson was tied up in the cold-space was found alive and well after having run away from home, which complicates things for Topaz. Eventually, Lily, Lavender and Topaz ask for proof from Ruby who takes them to a special place where they can see the home of Brother Johnson whilst the man lies almost dead in the cold-space. The girls don't accept this as proof. But then Ruby says she has photographs.

Ruby is eventually sent away for being a part of a strange group with her shady boyfriend, Dale. Dale has since gone missing. He is a violent and horrible character whom I absolutely hated. After this, Topaz decides she must find out the rest of the story on her own. The sisters no longer have that hold from Ruby to help them rebel against their parents and the church etc. When we hit the climax of the book, the author doesn't reveal much about who the liar actually is, but you tend to understand it in time. I would be pretty open to a sequel to this book if there was one, one that solely investigated the minds of the four sisters as they grow older.

All in all, this book was full of horror tropes - having all those shadows and faces appearing in windows, the broken jars, the secret places and the satanic panic. It was blended with a thrilling pace, varying the chapter lengths with some of them no longer than a couple of pages. It was also a very fun read because of all the twists. I am normally concerned about too much dialogue but I think it worked here.