Liar - Book Review

By Gillian Zane

Synopsis

Karma doesn’t get an off day. Working for Karma Incorporated might sound like the best job in the world, but there’s one really big catch: you’ve got to die to get it. Cassandra Mercier died at the ripe old age of twenty-one and is now gainfully employed by the Afterlife Corporation as a Karma operative. She’s still working nine to five, undercover as Cassidy Hail to deliver some much needed cosmic payback.

Her next target is a big, fat liar.

Lori Kay Biggly, Lori Kay, not Lori by itself. There was another Laurie, but the other Laurie spelled her name with an ‘AU’. To set herself apart she must be called Lori Kay. Kay as in the middle name, not the letter. Her last name was Biggly. Lori Kay Biggly. Maiden name Craig, but she goes by Biggly only. No hyphenation or ‘feministly’ holding on to old last names for this girl. And Lori Kay Biggly was a liar. She lied. She sabotaged others at her work, she manipulated the boss with sexual favors…and she was getting her just desserts. Courtesy of Karma, Inc.

While on the case, Cassandra also has the matter of her own death that she must solve, a goddess that has decided to take a more “hands-on” approach to management and a curious private investigator who she finds it hard to maintain her own lies with. It’s just another day working for Afterlife Corporation.

Review

LIAR is the third book in the Karma Inc. novella series and continues on from where the previous book—SHARK—ended. As with the previous two books, Cassidy spent a small portion of her time working on her current Karma case, but most of the book is focused on her finding out what happened to her in her past life.

I don’t know if this is a continuation error or if I just misunderstood, but I was under the impression that Cassandra had been missing since her disappearance a year ago and that no-one knew what had happened to her. Yes, foul play was suspected, but no-one knew for sure. Here it was sprung on us that her body was in fact found the day after she went missing and she had been brutally murdered. Like I said, maybe I just misunderstood, but as soon as I read that scene my first thought was “Ummm…Wait…What?”.

Moving on, we knew from the previous book that there was something special about Cassidy because she could see through the glamour of a god. In this instalment we learn that there’s at least one other god who is “involved” with her life/afterlife—but we don’t know who—and that she is changing in ways she shouldn’t be.

She spent a lot of time with Drake in this book and they finally take their “relationship” to the next level. She confessed to him who she really is and that she hired him to find out what happened to her. He obviously has some experience with the paranormal because he took her confession extremely well. We know Drake isn’t exactly human, but we still don’t know what he is. I don’t even think he knows what he is; he just knows he’s different.

LIAR is told only in Cassidy’s POV and ends in a cliffhanger. Each book in this series is connected and cannot be read as stand-alones. I don’t know the name of the next book or when it will be released, but I’ll definitely be reading it when it comes out.