Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Published May 13th, 2014 by Delacorte Press
Published May 13th, 2014 by Delacorte Press
Genre: contemporary/mystery YA
Rating: CONFLICTED! D+ or C-
Rating: CONFLICTED! D+ or C-
Goodreads summary:
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
No worries, everything here is spoiler free! People who haven't read We Were Liars are safe to read my thoughts of things to know before starting the book (nothing plot wise!) and readers who read it can know what I thought and we can discuss!
We Were Liars is a hard book to review because its best to read it without knowing anything plot wise. So I can't talk about details but I will say that I read it early on when all the review were very positive and a positive review could just consist of "JUST READ IT!" and that would be sufficient BUT I didn't love We Were Liars. I thought it was good but I had my problems with it.
We Were Liars is short. A short book is not a bad book but We Were Liars was underdeveloped, the characters weren't that complex and things the summary mention? Brilliant girl? Passionate boy? Group of FRIENDS? TRUE LOVE? I didn't get any of that from the book. I have no idea why the liars are friends (or why they're called liars), I won't comment on the true love thing because NO, and again, the book and character were not developed so I can't really say that Cady is brilliant. Everything was surface level with a whole lot of telling and not enough showing. For instance, Cady gets migraines. She tells us she had a migraine but we don't see it. We don't see how it effects her or any of that. She had a migraine. She told us. Moving on.
The writing is beautiful. But since I was losing interest as I read on instead of gaining it, the writing just got on my nerves. I liked it but I was also getting irked by it (bipolar much?!). It got to the point where I was reading just so I can get to the end and see what the whole deal is.
On one hand, I understand why this book was kept short and sweet so the mystery won't be given away but I still think the character development needed to be much more complex and I believe that could have been done while still maintaining the suspense of the story. I was definitely surprised and shocked by the Big Reveal so that was nice but it wasn't enough to get me to change my whole perspective on the book.
Would I recommend We Were Liars? Yes, because so many people loved it. But I've also seen people who also believe that the book and characters were underdeveloped so keep that in mind if you decide to read it. The beautiful writing and mystery might be worth the read but I wish the characters had more substance because then I would have definitely loved this book as much as all the fans. I'm thinking about rereading it and maybe picking up on things I missed out on the first time that might make me enjoy the book more but who knows.
One thing for sure though is that this book is an awesome book to discuss. There is a lot of positive and negative things I have to say and I can even discuss with people who completely loved it because I do think this book has ALL the potential but thanks to the underdevelopment of characters, it fell flat for me. But otherwise, this book has an AWESOME set-up, beautiful writing, and a big reveal. I just wish the characters were more developed and I would have loved it for sure. Anyways, I would love to discuss the book with you if you've read it and if you haven't read it yet, I would love to discuss it with you after you read it!
Rating: [Not sure. Between a D+ or C-] Could have been a new favorite book if it wasn't for the underdeveloped characters.
Now go check out Sharon's review! We had different thoughts!
Now go check out Sharon's review! We had different thoughts!
First:Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family.
Teaser:Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters.
Teaser:I love him, but I am not sure I like him.
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