"With ease and grace, Riggle walks the fine line between sentimentality and comedy, and she has a sure hand in creating fun, quirky characters. Humorous and humane storytelling makes this much better than the standard cancer tear-jerker." "A moving and accomplished first novel about a family coming to terms with change." "A compulsively readable, rip-your-heart-out portrait of a family in crisis. These characters live and breathe, making you feel as wicked as if you'd reached through Mirabelle's window, peeled back the dusty curtain, and had a good spy. Powerful, complex, utterly unforgettable." "In Kristina Riggle's moving debut, Real Life and Liars, she poignantly portrays the inner workings of a family faced by crisis. Funny, sad, and utterly believable, these are characters that seem like old friends. Pull up a beach chair and grab your towel. Kristina Riggle is poised to become the Luanne Rice of the Great Lakes." "This book has heart, and makes you keep turning the page long after you should have turned out the light. The Zielinski family becomes your own. But it's afterwards, when you put it down, that you realize the truth of the old saying: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Kristina Riggle gets it exactly right in this wonderful and heartwarming debut." "In her wondrously affecting debut novel Real Life and Liars, Kristina Riggle accomplished something authors almost never do anymore: she made me care about her characters - and what a wide-ranging cast of characters they are! She made me want good things for them. A must-read for summer 2009." "Kristina Riggle makes a dazzling debut with Real Life and Liars. A beautiful exploration of the intricacies that draw families together even while pulling them apart, her masterfully drawn characters, deeply moving plot, and eloquent prose will have readers demanding more, and quickly, from this confident new author. Real Life and Liars is a must read." "Written with grace, passion, and insight, Real Life and Liars is a deeply felt novel that draws a vivid portrait of a family in transition, and examines the very real fear of leaving behind all you hold dear." "A poignant tale of a family made up of real and flawed characters, which reveals the tangled ties that connect generations and siblings. A deeply moving novel, written with sensitivity, that touches the human spirit." "Real Life and Liars is a complex and masterfully layered family saga with a sassy, pot-smoking protagonist facing breast cancer in her own feisty way at the center, who I couldn't help but adore and cheer for. But every character in Kristina Riggle's page-turning novel is equally compelling and every page is written with compassion and honesty and psychological insight. This is a debut writer to watch." |