Book Review: We Were Liars






Author: E. Lockhart
Published: 2014
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Number of Pages: 240
My Rating: 3.5/ 4


Summary from GoodReads.com:
   A beautiful and distinguished family.
   A private island.
   A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
   A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
   A revolution. An accident. A secret.
   Lies upon lies.
   True love.
   The truth.
We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart. Read it. And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.






        Where to start... Honestly, the first thing I want to talk about is the ending, BUT, considering I don't have spoilers in my reviews, I suppose I will just start at the beginning. 

        We Were Liars is a Young Adult novel about an upper class, white, well-educated family who spend their summers on a private island with maids and cooks. Rough, right? But if you are anything like me and assume that it's going to be a candy-coated, bubble gum type of story about a spoiled rich girl then you will be totally caught off guard by what you read. 

        The book begins with a map of the island and a family tree, which I completely loved. I am a huge visual person so I enjoyed being able to see what the island looked like and how the people were related. I felt that while this was a positive, it also caused the author to throw a lot of people at us right away without really digging deep into the characters at all. I found myself flipping back to the family tree quite often in the beginning trying to keep the relationships straight, but I suppose that was the whole point of it. 

        I know from other reviews that I have read that some people were annoyed with the writing style, but I truly enjoyed it. It reminded me of the to-the-point, no bull style that Jeffrey Eugenides showed us in The Virgin Suicides and I felt that it really suited the story well. The main character, Cadence, loves the island where her family summers, and values spending time with her cousins, Mirren and Johnny, and his friend Gat. Things are adventurous and happy, until... they aren't. 

        And that is all I am going to tell you. I don't want to ruin the book at all as just jumping in and reading it is the best way to enjoy it. I had literally no idea what this book was about when I picked it up and I suggest you do the same. Don't read any more reviews. Just read it.  I can't wait to hear your jaw hit the ground... 





-Busy Brunette


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