Rebecca Stead’s third novel, Liar & Spy, represents a departure from her usual storytelling style, for it is her first story that is not a science-fiction mystery. For those readers who are familiar with Stead’s previous works, however, the author slyly use the trend of her past works to imply that the mystery Safer invents for Georges and himself might actually be real. In this way, Georges’s eventual revelation about the imaginary nature of “Mr. X’s” suspicious activity is intended to be just as much of a surprise to the reader as it is to Georges. Additionally, Stead has been praised for her realistic depiction of bullying and middle-school life and is frequently credited with highlighting the small-scale, everyday ways in which children are often harassed and demeaned by their peers. Instead of crafting an incident of obvious and horrific bullying, Stead’s novel depicts a pattern of insults, invasions of personal space, and other minor yet persistent forms of harassment that take place in plain sight but are consistently overlooked by teachers and administrators, even those who mean well.

Stead characterizes her novel within in the

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