Book Review: We Were Liars

Title: We Were Liars

Author: E. Lockhart

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Publication Date: May 13, 2014

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.

My Review

We Were Liars is one of those books that you're either going to love or hate. Just trust me on that one. For me, I really enjoyed it, and I consider it to be one of the most shockingly great YA books that I've ever read.

Three of The Liars, Cady, Johnny, and Mirren, come from an old money family. Gat is one of Johnny's friends. The four of them have become accustomed to spending their summers on a private island off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. They are the Sinclairs, and their family is very well-known. Because of this, they are held to higher standards, and they are used to leading a charmed life. When things aren't perfect, they wish for them to be. At first, I thought that I was going to hate them, but I really loved this family because they are extremely flawed and completely realistic. The whole time I was reading We Were Liars, I felt like the Sinclair family slightly reminded me of the Kennedy family. They are regal. They are beautiful. They have secrets.
 
I will admit that I almost stopped reading this book after the second chapter because both the first and second chapters read like opening chapters to me. I was really a little annoyed by that. I was however intrigued enough to keep reading about this family that I would call spoiled. I kept reading, and I found out why pretty much everyone on my Goodreads friends list are reading this book.
 
There are five parts to the novel, and in each one, you learn a little bit more about Cady, the Sinclairs, and the Liars. I don't want to spoil anything, but some parts are either really predictable or they will catch you off guard. It just depends on what kind of a reader you are. More and more of the plot and past events are revealed in each part. You get to see the dynamics of the family, mostly how spoiled The Liars' mothers are. They are all middle-aged women who practically do nothing, and depend on their rich father's money in order to raise their own families. No wonder why The Liars are so angry with them. It's embarrassing to see grown women act that way.

I felt like I related with Cady, though because I also suffer from migraines. The reason for our migraines are very different, but Lockhart describes what it feels like to suffer from migraines in a truthful and realistic way. I was able to feel Cady's pain. Cady is an interesting YA character, and I was glad for that.

The book is shockingly bittersweet. It's definitely not what I expected from the title, and I really enjoyed how Lockhart was able to maintain a balance of shocking me and still letting me figure out how things would play out throughout the course of the novel. 

P.S. If you read it, remember to lie about the ending. ;)