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. ;)
