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''Liar'' is a YoungAdult novel by Justine Larbalestier, co-author of ''Literature/TeamHuman''. It's about exactly what you'd expect: Micah, the protagonist, is a compulsive liar. Throughout the novel, she copes with the death of Zach, her boyfriend, and her rather strange family.
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''Liar'' is a YoungAdult novel by Justine Larbalestier, Creator/JustineLarbalestier, co-author of ''Literature/TeamHuman''. It's about exactly what you'd expect: Micah, the protagonist, is a compulsive liar. Throughout the novel, she copes with the death of Zach, her boyfriend, and her rather strange family.
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* WillNotTellALie: Micah makes this promise at the beginning of the book, and actually carries it out. [[spoiler: It looks like that for a while, anyway; we find out halfway in that she's a werewolf, and from there, everything kind of... falls apart.]]
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* WillNotTellALie: Micah makes this promise at the beginning of the book, and actually carries it out. [[spoiler: It looks like that for a while, anyway; we find out halfway in that she's a werewolf, and from there, everything kind of... falls apart.]]]]
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That does make more sense.
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Other books titled ''Liar'' can be found [[Literature/{{Liar}} here]].
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Other books titled ''Liar'' can be found [[Literature/{{Liar}} [[{{Liar}} here]].
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Other books titled ''Liar'' can be found [[{{Liar}} here]].
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Other books titled ''Liar'' can be found [[{{Liar}} [[Literature/{{Liar}} here]].
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* ShamSupernatural: Played with. Micah is a pathological liar. She lies about being intersex, so is she also lying about [[spoiler:being a werewolf?]] Most of what she says could be explained by being from a very dysfunctional family and being a liar who can't accept that she [[spoiler:killed Zach.]]
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that's a redirect to I Lied
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* OutrightLie: Micah tells plenty. [[spoiler: Most notable is the one to the narrator, that Jordan was never real, although he actually was.]]
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* MixedAncestry: Micah's dad is black, and her mom is white. [[spoiler: Likewise, her dad has the genes for being a werewolf, and her mom doesn't.]]
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No longer a trope.
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* WillNotTellALie: Micah makes this promise at the beginning of the book, and actually carries it out. [[spoiler: It looks like that for a while, anyway; we find out halfway in that she's a werewolf, and from there, everything kind of... falls apart.]]
* YourCheatingHeart: Zach cheated on Sarah with Micah all the time.
* YourCheatingHeart: Zach cheated on Sarah with Micah all the time.
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* WillNotTellALie: Micah makes this promise at the beginning of the book, and actually carries it out. [[spoiler: It looks like that for a while, anyway; we find out halfway in that she's a werewolf, and from there, everything kind of... falls apart.]]
* YourCheatingHeart: Zach cheated on Sarah with Micah all the time.]]
* YourCheatingHeart: Zach cheated on Sarah with Micah all the time.
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Black Best Friend has been renamed to Token Black Friend, it's unclear whether this is actually an example of that trope.
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* BlackBestFriend: Played with; Tayshawn, who is Zach's best friend ''is'' black... but Zach is Hispanic.
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Other books titled ''Liar'' can be found [[Literature/{{Liar}} here]].
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Other books titled ''Liar'' can be found [[Literature/{{Liar}} [[{{Liar}} here]].
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Not to be confused with ''Literature/{{The Liar|Novel}}'', another book about a compulsive liar, or ''Film/LiarLiar''.
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* RaceLift: Not in the book, but the original cover made by the publisher was that of a white woman, when Micah is biracial. The author was ''not'' pleased by this change, and [[InternetBackdraft neither did a lot of her fans]], leading to the revised cover at the top of the page.
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* RaceLift: Not in the text of the book, but the original cover made by the publisher was that of a white woman, when Micah is biracial. The author was ''not'' pleased by this change, and [[InternetBackdraft neither did a lot of her fans]], leading to the revised cover at the top of the page.
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* ShrugOfGod: [[spoiler: Did Micah kill Zach, or was it Pete? Larbalestier doesn't know, that's for sure.]]
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[[quoteright:220:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/liarlarbalestier_271.jpg]]
''Liar'' is a YoungAdult novel by Justine Larbalestier, co-author of ''Literature/TeamHuman''. It's about exactly what you'd expect: Micah, the protagonist, is a compulsive liar. Throughout the novel, she copes with the death of Zach, her boyfriend, and her rather strange family.
And that's about all we can say spoiler-free. This book has an extremely huge twist halfway through, and it's hard to enjoy the book to its fullest potential if you know the twist ahead of time. In fact, [[http://justinelarbalestier.com/books/liar/ Larbalestier herself kindly asked readers and reviewers]] [[DoNotSpoilThisEnding not to spoil the book.]] To comply with this, you're warned: very large amounts of the text below will be hidden by spoiler tags, and opening them before reading the book will greatly change your perception of the book and could ruin the experience entirely.
Not to be confused with ''Literature/{{The Liar|Novel}}'', another book about a compulsive liar, or ''Film/LiarLiar''.
!!Tropes that apply to Liar include:
* AmbiguousSituation: We will ''never know for sure'' whether or not [[spoiler: Micah killed Zach.]]
* AnachronicOrder: The story switches between before and after Zach's death, and it takes some breaks to tell about Micah's personal history, her family's history, [[spoiler: information about werewolves, and Micah's lies to the reader.]]
* AnnoyingYoungerSibling: Jordan. [[spoiler: Even when Micah reveals to the reader that [[DeadAllAlong he's dead]], she still seems to hate him.]]
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Possibly done, if [[spoiler: Micah's theory about werewolves originating from horizontal gene transfer is true.]] It's averted other than that, though, with everything said about [[spoiler: the bodies, sizes, and hunting patterns of wolves]] being true.
* BelievingTheirOwnLies: Discussed:
-->Yet that's not the worst danger of being a liar. Oh no. Much worse than discovery, than their sense of betrayal, is when you start to believe your own lies.
-->When it all blurs together.
-->You lose track of what's real and what's not. You start to feel as if you make the world with your words. Your lies get stranger and weirder and denser, get bigger than words, turn into worlds, become real.
-->You feel powerful, invincible.
** [[spoiler: Possibly played straight at the end, with Micah claiming over and over that she didn't kill Zach.]]
* BigApplesauce: Micah really, really likes New York.
* BigSecret: [[spoiler: Micah is a werewolf. Or is she?]]
* BittersweetEnding: If we take Micah's words at face value, [[spoiler:she starts living with Yayeko and her parents are prosecuted for child abuse. Zach is still dead, and even though the treatments she's getting to prevent her transformation are working, Micah is resigned to being a guinea pig for life to pay her way through college.]].
* BlackBestFriend: Played with; Tayshawn, who is Zach's best friend ''is'' black... but Zach is Hispanic.
* BlatantLies: [[spoiler: It was pretty obvious Micah lied when she said that Jordan was never real.]]
* CannotSpitItOut: Micah never got a chance to tell Zach that [[spoiler: she's a werewolf]] before he died.
* ChastityCouple: Micah and Zach. [[spoiler: Oh wait, no, that was a lie. They had tons and tons of sex.]]
* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler: The desk in Micah's room turns out to be the cage she uses when she transforms into a wolf.]] Also, [[spoiler: the pills that stop her periods are there to keep her from turning into a wolf.]]
* ChekhovsGunman: Yayeko becomes very important in the last 30 pages of the novel or so.
** Also, the white boy that follows Micah and Zach during the latter's final days turns out to be [[spoiler: Pete - the guy that (may or may not have) killed Zach.]]
* ConsummateLiar: Micah.
* ContrivedCoincidence: [[spoiler: Micah seems to want the reader to believe one - namely, that she happened to be a wolf on the night that Zach died, but that she didn't kill him. Although since Pete could only transform into a werewolf when Micah did, it's not ''that'' big of a coincidence.]]
* CoolTeacher: Yayeko, Micah's biology teacher. Micah says she's the only teacher that she actually likes.
* CursedWithAwesome: [[spoiler: Micah [[IJustWantToBeNormal really, really doesn't want to be a werewolf.]]]]
* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler: Jordan, although Micah's status as an UnreliableNarrator means it was played a bit differently than this trope normally is. Jordan's being dead wasn't a surprise to any of the characters; Micah just failed to mention it.]]
* DeathIsDramatic: Micah spends most of the book angsting over Zach's death [[spoiler: and eventually finding his murderer.]]
* DidNotDieThatWay: [[spoiler: The official story was that Zach had been killed by dogs, but Micah (probably correctly) assumed that he'd been killed by a wolf. Which may have been her.]]
* DoNotSpoilThisEnding: Larbalestier has asked readers not to spoil the major twist of this book. This has not stopped nearly everyone who reviews it negatively.
* EnemyWithin: Either subverted or played straight, depending on whether or not [[spoiler: Micah killed Zach.]]
* FalseInnocenceTrick: [[spoiler: Possibly pulled ''[[MindScrew on the reader]]'', depending on whether or not Micah was lying about not having killed Zach.]]
* FelonyMisdemeanor: Micah gets called to the principal's office for lying about her gender, even though it wasn't hurting anyone, and it was her teacher's fault for making the mistake in the first place. It also happens [[spoiler:when she lies about being intersex.]]
* {{Flashback}}: They make up approximately two-fifths of the book, as Micah talks about Zach before his death and her childhood.
* FlashbackTwist: [[spoiler: Jordan was real, and he's dead.]]
** [[spoiler: This also applies to every single interaction with Micah's extended family in part one of the book; they're all changed with the knowledge that everyone involved is a werewolf.]]
* {{Foreshadowing}}: There's plenty.
** [[spoiler: Micah talks about smelling things a ''ton'' throughout the first part of the novel. It's because she's a wolf.]]
** [[spoiler: After Micah tells us that Jordan never existed, he's still mentioned a lot. The most notable example is when, as part of a theory from therapist for why Micah lies, it's said that Micah is angry or resentful of Jordan, and then mentioned in parentheses that he doesn't exist. He actually does exist - he was just DeadAllAlong.]]
** [[spoiler: The first line of the book is that Micah was born with a coat of fur.]]
** [[spoiler: The frequency with which Micah mentions her pills makes you think that something worse than a painful period will happen if she forgets.]]
** [[spoiler: Micah's attempts to avoid the genetic test at school. At first, it looks like this is because the results will show she's not human. Actually, it's because the results will show she is.]]
* FriendsWithBenefits: [[spoiler: Micah and Zach, as it turns out. Micah says he was her boyfriend, but it was really more of this.]]
* GenderBlenderName: Micah Wilkins, so much that a teacher addresses her as "Mr. Wilkins" and she keeps up the facade for two days.
* GenreShift: [[spoiler: It goes from contemporary to fantasy halfway through. And then possibly back to contemporary at the end.]]
* IJustWantToBeNormal: [[spoiler: Micah really doesn't want to be a werewolf, a fact that most of her family doesn't understand.]]
* InterspeciesRomance: [[spoiler: Micah and Zach, as well as Micah's parents.]]
* InvoluntaryShapeshifting: [[spoiler: Micah's transformation into a werewolf, although she can control it using pills that stop her periods.]]
* {{Jerkass}}: Brendon. His sole role in the story is to make everybody at school hate Micah for no good reason.
* LeftHanging: [[spoiler: We never do find out for sure everything Micah was lying about. This either makes a wonderfully open, ambiguous ending, or frustratingly rushed, dissatisfying ending.]]
* LoveTriangle: Between Sarah, Zach, and Micah, before Zach dies.
* LiarRevealed: [[spoiler: When we find out that Micah was lying to the reader.]]
* LyingToProtectYourFeelings: "No one suggested that the world is better the way I tell it."
* MenstrualMenace: [[spoiler: Micah only becomes a werewolf while on her period.]]
* MindScrew: [[spoiler: It's basically impossible to tell which parts of the story are true and which parts aren't, because Micah constantly [[UnreliableNarrator lies to the reader.]] Was she really a werewolf or not? Did she kill Jordan? Zach? It's even possible that the entire thing is made up by Micah.]]
* MixedAncestry: Micah's dad is black, and her mom is white. [[spoiler: Likewise, her dad has the genes for being a werewolf, and her mom doesn't.]]
* MuggleAndMagicalLoveTriangle:[[spoiler: Micah being Zach's magical girlfriend, and Sarah being his muggle one. Downplayed, since he doesn't know that Micah is a werewolf.]]
* MurderIsTheBestSolution: [[spoiler: Micah thinks this of Pete.]]
* NarrativeProfanityFilter: The book mostly has no problem with saying curse words, but at one point, in Micah's censorship class, one word is skirted around - it's said to be written on the blackboard, but nobody is brave enough to say it in the dialogue. Most fans agree that the word was probably '[[CountryMatters cunt]]'.
* NeverGotToSayGoodbye: Micah towards Zach, which ended up being pretty bad for her; see CannotSpitItOut above.
* NoPeriodsPeriod: Averted. A large plot point in the book is that Micah takes pills to avoid her periods, because they were incredibly painful; this becomes even more the case when [[spoiler: we find out that periods cause the change into a werewolf.]]
* OneOfTheBoys: Micah wants to be one, to the point where she lied to everyone at her high school about her gender for a couple days.
* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: [[spoiler: The change isn't caused by the full moon, but by mensuration. ([[ItMakesSenseInContext Yes, even in the males.]]) Because of this, it's possible to block a change by taking pills to avoid having your period.]]
* OutrightLie: Micah tells plenty. [[spoiler: Most notable is the one to the narrator, that Jordan was never real, although he actually was.]]
* PainfulTransformation: [[spoiler: Micah's transformation into a werewolf is extremely painful.]]
* RaceLift: Not in the book, but the original cover made by the publisher was that of a white woman, when Micah is biracial. The author was ''not'' pleased by this change, and [[InternetBackdraft neither did a lot of her fans]], leading to the revised cover at the top of the page.
* RedHerring: [[spoiler: Pete, if Micah is lying to us about him, which is fairly likely.]]
* ResistTheBeast: [[spoiler: Micah does everything she possibly can to avoid turning into a werewolf.]]
* TheReveal: [[spoiler: It happens every time Micah reveals that she lied to the narrator, and when she tells us that she's a werewolf.]]
* SchrodingersButterfly: [[spoiler: It's entirely possible that every single thing that happened in the story was made up by Micah. That's not entirely likely, but it ''is'' fairly likely that she was lying about who killed Zach. And there's also the question of whether Jordan is alive, or even if he's ''real''.]]
* SeamlessSpontaneousLie: Micah is pretty good at them.
* ShapeshifterModeLock: [[spoiler: One of Micah's great-uncle is permanently transformed into a wolf.]]
* ShoutOut: According to WordOfGod, Micah pretending to be a boy was meant to be a shout out to ''Literature/{{Leviathan}}'', a series written by her husband. In that series Deryn also pretends to be a boy (albeit for [[SweetPollyOliver completely different reasons]]).
* ShrugOfGod: [[spoiler: Did Micah kill Zach, or was it Pete? Larbalestier doesn't know, that's for sure.]]
* SlutShaming: Micah is the victim of it a lot when people find out that Zach cheated with her, under the assumption that the two of them had sex. [[spoiler: They actually did have sex, although her classmates had no way of knowing that.]]
** Supporting character Erin Moncaster is another victim.
* SmellsSexy: Micah talks about smelling a lot [[spoiler: because she's a wolf]], and some of Zach's smells are described to be... arousing.
* SoapOperaDisease: The 'family disease' that Micah talks about appears to be this, until you find out that [[spoiler: the 'disease' is actually just being a werewolf. Or may not exist at all.]]
* SureLetsGoWithThat: Micah's first lie that got her in school trouble came off as this, where a teacher addressed her as "Mr. Wilkins". Micah doesn't think it's worth embarrassing the teacher, so she goes with it for a couple of days.
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: [[spoiler: Micah. Did. Not. Kill. Zach. She says this a ''ton'' throughout the novel.]]
* SweetPollyOliver: Played with; Micah pretends to be a boy for two days of high school, but it was more out of convenience and because she wanted to be a boy than because she wanted to accomplish a specific goal.
* ThatLiarLies: Other characters say this to Micah all the time.
* ThinkOfTheChildren: It's discussed that censorship is more likely to occur in media for children and teens than for adults. Micah has a theory as to why:
-->It's because grown-ups don’t remember what it was like when they were teenagers. Not really. They remember something out of a Disney movie and that’s where they want to keep us. They don’t like the idea of our hormones, or that [[SmellsSexy we can smell sex on one another]]. That we walk down halls thick with a million different pheromones. We see each other, catch a glance, the faintest edge of one, that sends a shiver through our bodies all the way to the parts of us our parents wish didn’t exist.
* TokenReligiousTeammate: Sarah.
%% * UnreliableNarrator
* WhamLine: [[spoiler: "I'm a werewolf."]]
* WillNotTellALie: Micah makes this promise at the beginning of the book, and actually carries it out. [[spoiler: It looks like that for a while, anyway; we find out halfway in that she's a werewolf, and from there, everything kind of... falls apart.]]
* YourCheatingHeart: Zach cheated on Sarah with Micah all the time.
''Liar'' is a YoungAdult novel by Justine Larbalestier, co-author of ''Literature/TeamHuman''. It's about exactly what you'd expect: Micah, the protagonist, is a compulsive liar. Throughout the novel, she copes with the death of Zach, her boyfriend, and her rather strange family.
And that's about all we can say spoiler-free. This book has an extremely huge twist halfway through, and it's hard to enjoy the book to its fullest potential if you know the twist ahead of time. In fact, [[http://justinelarbalestier.com/books/liar/ Larbalestier herself kindly asked readers and reviewers]] [[DoNotSpoilThisEnding not to spoil the book.]] To comply with this, you're warned: very large amounts of the text below will be hidden by spoiler tags, and opening them before reading the book will greatly change your perception of the book and could ruin the experience entirely.
Not to be confused with ''Literature/{{The Liar|Novel}}'', another book about a compulsive liar, or ''Film/LiarLiar''.
!!Tropes that apply to Liar include:
* AmbiguousSituation: We will ''never know for sure'' whether or not [[spoiler: Micah killed Zach.]]
* AnachronicOrder: The story switches between before and after Zach's death, and it takes some breaks to tell about Micah's personal history, her family's history, [[spoiler: information about werewolves, and Micah's lies to the reader.]]
* AnnoyingYoungerSibling: Jordan. [[spoiler: Even when Micah reveals to the reader that [[DeadAllAlong he's dead]], she still seems to hate him.]]
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Possibly done, if [[spoiler: Micah's theory about werewolves originating from horizontal gene transfer is true.]] It's averted other than that, though, with everything said about [[spoiler: the bodies, sizes, and hunting patterns of wolves]] being true.
* BelievingTheirOwnLies: Discussed:
-->Yet that's not the worst danger of being a liar. Oh no. Much worse than discovery, than their sense of betrayal, is when you start to believe your own lies.
-->When it all blurs together.
-->You lose track of what's real and what's not. You start to feel as if you make the world with your words. Your lies get stranger and weirder and denser, get bigger than words, turn into worlds, become real.
-->You feel powerful, invincible.
** [[spoiler: Possibly played straight at the end, with Micah claiming over and over that she didn't kill Zach.]]
* BigApplesauce: Micah really, really likes New York.
* BigSecret: [[spoiler: Micah is a werewolf. Or is she?]]
* BittersweetEnding: If we take Micah's words at face value, [[spoiler:she starts living with Yayeko and her parents are prosecuted for child abuse. Zach is still dead, and even though the treatments she's getting to prevent her transformation are working, Micah is resigned to being a guinea pig for life to pay her way through college.]].
* BlackBestFriend: Played with; Tayshawn, who is Zach's best friend ''is'' black... but Zach is Hispanic.
* BlatantLies: [[spoiler: It was pretty obvious Micah lied when she said that Jordan was never real.]]
* CannotSpitItOut: Micah never got a chance to tell Zach that [[spoiler: she's a werewolf]] before he died.
* ChastityCouple: Micah and Zach. [[spoiler: Oh wait, no, that was a lie. They had tons and tons of sex.]]
* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler: The desk in Micah's room turns out to be the cage she uses when she transforms into a wolf.]] Also, [[spoiler: the pills that stop her periods are there to keep her from turning into a wolf.]]
* ChekhovsGunman: Yayeko becomes very important in the last 30 pages of the novel or so.
** Also, the white boy that follows Micah and Zach during the latter's final days turns out to be [[spoiler: Pete - the guy that (may or may not have) killed Zach.]]
* ConsummateLiar: Micah.
* ContrivedCoincidence: [[spoiler: Micah seems to want the reader to believe one - namely, that she happened to be a wolf on the night that Zach died, but that she didn't kill him. Although since Pete could only transform into a werewolf when Micah did, it's not ''that'' big of a coincidence.]]
* CoolTeacher: Yayeko, Micah's biology teacher. Micah says she's the only teacher that she actually likes.
* CursedWithAwesome: [[spoiler: Micah [[IJustWantToBeNormal really, really doesn't want to be a werewolf.]]]]
* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler: Jordan, although Micah's status as an UnreliableNarrator means it was played a bit differently than this trope normally is. Jordan's being dead wasn't a surprise to any of the characters; Micah just failed to mention it.]]
* DeathIsDramatic: Micah spends most of the book angsting over Zach's death [[spoiler: and eventually finding his murderer.]]
* DidNotDieThatWay: [[spoiler: The official story was that Zach had been killed by dogs, but Micah (probably correctly) assumed that he'd been killed by a wolf. Which may have been her.]]
* DoNotSpoilThisEnding: Larbalestier has asked readers not to spoil the major twist of this book. This has not stopped nearly everyone who reviews it negatively.
* EnemyWithin: Either subverted or played straight, depending on whether or not [[spoiler: Micah killed Zach.]]
* FalseInnocenceTrick: [[spoiler: Possibly pulled ''[[MindScrew on the reader]]'', depending on whether or not Micah was lying about not having killed Zach.]]
* FelonyMisdemeanor: Micah gets called to the principal's office for lying about her gender, even though it wasn't hurting anyone, and it was her teacher's fault for making the mistake in the first place. It also happens [[spoiler:when she lies about being intersex.]]
* {{Flashback}}: They make up approximately two-fifths of the book, as Micah talks about Zach before his death and her childhood.
* FlashbackTwist: [[spoiler: Jordan was real, and he's dead.]]
** [[spoiler: This also applies to every single interaction with Micah's extended family in part one of the book; they're all changed with the knowledge that everyone involved is a werewolf.]]
* {{Foreshadowing}}: There's plenty.
** [[spoiler: Micah talks about smelling things a ''ton'' throughout the first part of the novel. It's because she's a wolf.]]
** [[spoiler: After Micah tells us that Jordan never existed, he's still mentioned a lot. The most notable example is when, as part of a theory from therapist for why Micah lies, it's said that Micah is angry or resentful of Jordan, and then mentioned in parentheses that he doesn't exist. He actually does exist - he was just DeadAllAlong.]]
** [[spoiler: The first line of the book is that Micah was born with a coat of fur.]]
** [[spoiler: The frequency with which Micah mentions her pills makes you think that something worse than a painful period will happen if she forgets.]]
** [[spoiler: Micah's attempts to avoid the genetic test at school. At first, it looks like this is because the results will show she's not human. Actually, it's because the results will show she is.]]
* FriendsWithBenefits: [[spoiler: Micah and Zach, as it turns out. Micah says he was her boyfriend, but it was really more of this.]]
* GenderBlenderName: Micah Wilkins, so much that a teacher addresses her as "Mr. Wilkins" and she keeps up the facade for two days.
* GenreShift: [[spoiler: It goes from contemporary to fantasy halfway through. And then possibly back to contemporary at the end.]]
* IJustWantToBeNormal: [[spoiler: Micah really doesn't want to be a werewolf, a fact that most of her family doesn't understand.]]
* InterspeciesRomance: [[spoiler: Micah and Zach, as well as Micah's parents.]]
* InvoluntaryShapeshifting: [[spoiler: Micah's transformation into a werewolf, although she can control it using pills that stop her periods.]]
* {{Jerkass}}: Brendon. His sole role in the story is to make everybody at school hate Micah for no good reason.
* LeftHanging: [[spoiler: We never do find out for sure everything Micah was lying about. This either makes a wonderfully open, ambiguous ending, or frustratingly rushed, dissatisfying ending.]]
* LoveTriangle: Between Sarah, Zach, and Micah, before Zach dies.
* LiarRevealed: [[spoiler: When we find out that Micah was lying to the reader.]]
* LyingToProtectYourFeelings: "No one suggested that the world is better the way I tell it."
* MenstrualMenace: [[spoiler: Micah only becomes a werewolf while on her period.]]
* MindScrew: [[spoiler: It's basically impossible to tell which parts of the story are true and which parts aren't, because Micah constantly [[UnreliableNarrator lies to the reader.]] Was she really a werewolf or not? Did she kill Jordan? Zach? It's even possible that the entire thing is made up by Micah.]]
* MixedAncestry: Micah's dad is black, and her mom is white. [[spoiler: Likewise, her dad has the genes for being a werewolf, and her mom doesn't.]]
* MuggleAndMagicalLoveTriangle:[[spoiler: Micah being Zach's magical girlfriend, and Sarah being his muggle one. Downplayed, since he doesn't know that Micah is a werewolf.]]
* MurderIsTheBestSolution: [[spoiler: Micah thinks this of Pete.]]
* NarrativeProfanityFilter: The book mostly has no problem with saying curse words, but at one point, in Micah's censorship class, one word is skirted around - it's said to be written on the blackboard, but nobody is brave enough to say it in the dialogue. Most fans agree that the word was probably '[[CountryMatters cunt]]'.
* NeverGotToSayGoodbye: Micah towards Zach, which ended up being pretty bad for her; see CannotSpitItOut above.
* NoPeriodsPeriod: Averted. A large plot point in the book is that Micah takes pills to avoid her periods, because they were incredibly painful; this becomes even more the case when [[spoiler: we find out that periods cause the change into a werewolf.]]
* OneOfTheBoys: Micah wants to be one, to the point where she lied to everyone at her high school about her gender for a couple days.
* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: [[spoiler: The change isn't caused by the full moon, but by mensuration. ([[ItMakesSenseInContext Yes, even in the males.]]) Because of this, it's possible to block a change by taking pills to avoid having your period.]]
* OutrightLie: Micah tells plenty. [[spoiler: Most notable is the one to the narrator, that Jordan was never real, although he actually was.]]
* PainfulTransformation: [[spoiler: Micah's transformation into a werewolf is extremely painful.]]
* RaceLift: Not in the book, but the original cover made by the publisher was that of a white woman, when Micah is biracial. The author was ''not'' pleased by this change, and [[InternetBackdraft neither did a lot of her fans]], leading to the revised cover at the top of the page.
* RedHerring: [[spoiler: Pete, if Micah is lying to us about him, which is fairly likely.]]
* ResistTheBeast: [[spoiler: Micah does everything she possibly can to avoid turning into a werewolf.]]
* TheReveal: [[spoiler: It happens every time Micah reveals that she lied to the narrator, and when she tells us that she's a werewolf.]]
* SchrodingersButterfly: [[spoiler: It's entirely possible that every single thing that happened in the story was made up by Micah. That's not entirely likely, but it ''is'' fairly likely that she was lying about who killed Zach. And there's also the question of whether Jordan is alive, or even if he's ''real''.]]
* SeamlessSpontaneousLie: Micah is pretty good at them.
* ShapeshifterModeLock: [[spoiler: One of Micah's great-uncle is permanently transformed into a wolf.]]
* ShoutOut: According to WordOfGod, Micah pretending to be a boy was meant to be a shout out to ''Literature/{{Leviathan}}'', a series written by her husband. In that series Deryn also pretends to be a boy (albeit for [[SweetPollyOliver completely different reasons]]).
* ShrugOfGod: [[spoiler: Did Micah kill Zach, or was it Pete? Larbalestier doesn't know, that's for sure.]]
* SlutShaming: Micah is the victim of it a lot when people find out that Zach cheated with her, under the assumption that the two of them had sex. [[spoiler: They actually did have sex, although her classmates had no way of knowing that.]]
** Supporting character Erin Moncaster is another victim.
* SmellsSexy: Micah talks about smelling a lot [[spoiler: because she's a wolf]], and some of Zach's smells are described to be... arousing.
* SoapOperaDisease: The 'family disease' that Micah talks about appears to be this, until you find out that [[spoiler: the 'disease' is actually just being a werewolf. Or may not exist at all.]]
* SureLetsGoWithThat: Micah's first lie that got her in school trouble came off as this, where a teacher addressed her as "Mr. Wilkins". Micah doesn't think it's worth embarrassing the teacher, so she goes with it for a couple of days.
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: [[spoiler: Micah. Did. Not. Kill. Zach. She says this a ''ton'' throughout the novel.]]
* SweetPollyOliver: Played with; Micah pretends to be a boy for two days of high school, but it was more out of convenience and because she wanted to be a boy than because she wanted to accomplish a specific goal.
* ThatLiarLies: Other characters say this to Micah all the time.
* ThinkOfTheChildren: It's discussed that censorship is more likely to occur in media for children and teens than for adults. Micah has a theory as to why:
-->It's because grown-ups don’t remember what it was like when they were teenagers. Not really. They remember something out of a Disney movie and that’s where they want to keep us. They don’t like the idea of our hormones, or that [[SmellsSexy we can smell sex on one another]]. That we walk down halls thick with a million different pheromones. We see each other, catch a glance, the faintest edge of one, that sends a shiver through our bodies all the way to the parts of us our parents wish didn’t exist.
* TokenReligiousTeammate: Sarah.
%% * UnreliableNarrator
* WhamLine: [[spoiler: "I'm a werewolf."]]
* WillNotTellALie: Micah makes this promise at the beginning of the book, and actually carries it out. [[spoiler: It looks like that for a while, anyway; we find out halfway in that she's a werewolf, and from there, everything kind of... falls apart.]]
* YourCheatingHeart: Zach cheated on Sarah with Micah all the time.
