Mentira, by Care Santos, is one of the best-known books for teenagers. They even send it in many institutes as compulsory reading in which they then have to make a summary of the Lie book.
If you are on top of the children and want to know first of all what this book is about and what you should expect your children to learn, then we will give you a summary with its characters and plot.
who wrote lie
Source: What-to-read
The author who wrote the book Mentira is Care Santos. It is a Spanish writer and critic who began her literary career in 1995, with a volume of short stories, Citrus Tales.
She has a degree in Law and Hispanic Philology from the University of Barcelona. She began working as a journalist in the Diario de Barcelona although she has also published in ABC or El Mundo.
Has received multiple awards for their stories, and even one of them, closed rooms, was adapted into a miniseries on TVE in 2014.
About Lie, published it in 2014 and it was a revelation for many teachers who saw a topic that was very aimed at young people and that worked on a modern history and where adolescents could be identified. This novel received the Edebé Prize for Youth Literature.
What audience is it intended for Lie
As we have told you before, the book Lie by Care Santos is usually one of those that are sent as compulsory reading in high school. But for what age? According to the publisher itself, the book is intended for boys and girls from 14 years old. That is, in full adolescence.
If we take into account that it narrates a story very much in keeping with what children do at that time, we can see how it is one of the books in which they can best be identified.
Now, it does not mean that it is not possible to read at a younger age; Everything will depend on the maturity of the boy or girl. And you can also read it when you are 15, 16, 20 or 30 years old because it narrates something that can happen at any time.
what is the synopsis of the book
Here we leave you the Lie synopsis so you can see a little of what is going on.
Xenia struggles to get the best grades, driven by the illusion of entering Medicine, but lately her performance has been falling. And it is that Xenia has fallen in love with her, although not with a boy from her environment, but with a ghost, with a voice that emerged from the Internet with which she shares her passion for reading. As Xenia is determined and her virtual love refuses a date, she sets out to surprise him, so she starts to investigate her with the little information she has.
And everything turns out to be false, a lie, neither the photo nor the name are real. Who is really his soulmate? She, sorry for abandoning her studies, confesses everything to her parents, sure that she has been the victim of some unscrupulous person. But soon an unexpected package is going to reveal to her the identity of the boy with whom she shared her most intimate emotions. It comes from juvenile prison and contains the story of a murderer.
Lie book characters
Among the characters you meet in Mentira, the undisputed protagonist is Xenia Buck, a young woman whose dream is to study medicine. She tries to do her best to get good grades and everything goes well for her until she enters a book forum and the comment of a certain Marcelo, which she has left in The Catcher in the Rye, catches her attention. And from there they begin to know each other.
Of course, Xenia's "couple" is this Marcelo, a boy who uses the Internet to establish a relationship with the protagonist and with whom there seems to be a great connection, to the point that both "fall in love". But he doesn't want to meet her, and besides, her messages aren't very long or detailed, nor are they daily.
In addition to these two important characters, we have some others (it is a novel that does not have many). Thus, we can highlight Ben, "Marcelo's" cousin, Kevin, Ben's friend or Marta, a high school classmate.
Lie book summary
Finally, whether you are a teacher or a mother or father who wants to know what Mentira is about, you have a summary of the book Mentira so you can decide if it can be a good read for your children.
lie begins with Xenia, a high school girl who wants to get good grades to be able to enter Medicine. However, these have begun to decline because he spends more time on the Internet than studying. The reason for this is Marcelo, a guy she met in a reading forum with whom he has connected to the point of wanting something more with him.
The problem is that, no matter how hard Xenia tries, Marcelo doesn't usually answer in long sentences or talk about his private life. So when she works up the courage to ask him out on a date, he turns her down. Faced with this situation, Xenia begins to suspect and, with the little information she has, she sets out to find Marcelo and find out if he is the person she claimed to be or not.
His investigation ends with a lie: discover that both the photo and the name are not real and, regretful for having thrown away her future because of a "lie", she decides to tell her parents so they can help her "catch" that unscrupulous person and so that there are no more victims like her.
Thus, she completely cut off her relationship with him, and after three months, receives a package with a diary from the person she knew as "Marcelo", although his real name is Erick. In it he tells the whole story, the real one, where we will see that Erick's life is not so idyllic.
And it is that he has lived in a dysfunctional home, with a truck driver father and a prostitute mother who abandoned him. Thus, he has lived with his uncle and his cousins, but without being able to count on them, except for Ben.
The "friendship" between them is such that, faced with a murder committed by Ben, he decides to incriminate himself to prevent his cousin, now of legal age, from going to jail, and in exchange he goes to a correctional facility.
Given this, Xenia makes the decision to inform her parents and, accompanied by her mother, she goes to the correctional facility to meet Erick in person. But, also, to gather evidence to show that he was not the real murderer.
As a conclusion we can tell you that it is one of the books in which more values and teachings are told to the readers. In addition, it talks about a topic that worries parents and adults, and it is the exposure that adolescents have on the Internet and the dangers and risks they face, sometimes in silence, suffering for them.
Not only that, but also speaks of murders carried out by minors, something you often don't want to talk about.
And, at the same time, it supposes a transformation, both on the part of Xenia and «Marcelo».
Have you read Lie? Do you have a summary of the Lie book that can provide more information?