Priya Shah lies. A lot. So goes the tagline for The Girl Who Couldn’t Lie by Radhika Sanghani. So far, so Liar Liar. While, in the film, Jim Carrey lies for his own advancement, Priya lies because she doesn’t want to hurt anybody.
What Is The Girl Who Couldn’t Lie?
Priya is a teenage girl with lots of pressures on her. Pressure at school from being gifted, pressure from her parents to conform, and pressure from her gymnastics coach because there is an important trial coming up. To please everybody, she lies. She lies about her parents’ rocky marriage. She lies about being bullied at school. It’s the only way she feels she can balance all the plates and keep everybody happy.
But her grandma saw through her. She knew that Priya showed the world a brave face. Only now Priya’s “Ba” has passed on, and Priya finds she even has to keep her feelings about Ba’s death bottled up. Yet Ba knew how Priya felt and her parting gift was something to fix the problem.
She leaves Priya a bangle that, once worn, cannot be removed. A bangle that makes Priya tell the truth.
Why Read The Girl Who Couldn’t Lie?
Anybody with children will know that we tell them to always tell the truth, even though we tell harmless lies almost daily. The world would cease to function if we didn’t.
“How was the cake, dear.”
“Dry and tasteless.”
Priya is about to find out how difficult it is never to lie. It’s hard to tell your dad he’s a terrible cook, very difficult to let your parents know that their arguing makes you anxious, and almost impossible to reveal to the boy you have a crush on that you have a crush on him. Priya is about to experience this reality every hour of the day.
It has predictably calamitous results.
And yet, rising from the ashes, Priya finds a level of empowerment by being upfront with people. People respect her more. They’re more considerate of her needs and feelings. About halfway through the book, it seems like she’s sorted. Then it all starts to go wrong.
This is where the clever part of the book lies. (No pun intended!) Priya starts to tell too much of the truth. Where before she hid everything, she started sharing everything, most notably truths that weren’t hers to share. She begins to realize that some of the lies she was telling were to keep her more selfish side from surfacing. Yes, she was under pressure, but she was only thinking about herself—protecting herself.
Through the bangle and the support of her friends, Priya comes to realize that the truth exists in many forms. It’s not just the words we say but also our thoughts and interactions with others.
Priya’s journey is told with a fresh and readable prose style. The book is filled with relatable characters who have recognizable experiences. Radhika Sanghani packs in some heavy stuff about the nature of truth into a breezy readable story. Navigating truth, lies, bullies, parental disagreements, and the host of other things that come with being a school child is hard work. Priya’s story is a window into all of that and will offer comfort to readers who find themselves in a similar position.
If you would like to pick up a copy, The Girl Who Couldn’t Lie is available here. (Affiliate Link)
If you enjoyed this review, check out my other book reviews.
I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.
