The Plot In 5 Sentences Or Less: Georges is a 7th grader in Brooklyn whose family has just experienced job loss and moved from a house to an apartment building. Life at school isn’t much better because he is lately the target of the class bullies.  At the new apartment building, a strange boy named Safer ropes him into spying on a tenant nicknamed Mr. X.  As Georges grapples with the school bullies and struggles to understand Safer’s behavior, he finds that navigating the social waters of adolescence is often times confusing but also rewarding in the oddest of moments.

My Take:  I greatly admired Stead’s Newberry Winner When You Reach Me (2009) and consider it one of my favorite middle grade books.  I enjoyed Liar & Spy, but it was a less pleasurable reading experience for me.  Stead has a gift at creating characters for realistic fiction that are believable, quirky, and endearing to the reader.  I enjoyed getting to know Safer and the odd world that he inhabits in his mind.  I did feel that there were some minor problems with the plot.  Georges’s father seems to contain secrets in his sadness that are never fully fleshed out and there is a plot point involving the mother affixed near the end that feels unnecessary.  Still, this is an enjoyable read about a middle schooler in transition.

One Interesting Note About The Author:  According to her website, before her writing career, Rebecca Stead was a public defender (she thought being a writer was impractical!).