Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Series: Standaolone
Publication: May 13th 2014
Genres: Young Adult, Mystery
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.
The best way to start this book is by going in blind. No reviews, spoilers, etc. but since you're reading this, it's probably too late so I'll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible.
Cadence gets into an accident that causes amnesia and she spends the summer trying to uncover the what happened during the accident. We get some flashbacks to memories of Cadence and the Liars, 3 other kids that visit the island in the summer, from different occasions they spent the summer together so the story is told in a non-linear fashion.
This is one of those books that you have to read for yourself to know if you like it or not. The writing technique might be disrupting and annoying for some, but after a while, I got used to it and it wasn't a problem for me.
I discovered the big reveal at around 50%, so I wasn't completely mind-blown by the ending. I didn't connect with the main character, which is why I didn't feel sorry for her. I just wasn't invested in the story. There are some plot-holes, but they didn't bother me much.
That being said, the story is interesting and thought-provoking. This is different than other YA mysteries, so I applaud Lockhart for that. Overall, I wasn't wowed with this book, but others might like it so I say give this book a chance.
One note about the title: apparently there was a scene that explained the title, but they took out it for whatever reason, so we never learn why they were called liars. They could have changed the title or name, but they didn't so now there's this confusion about the name. A little lazy if you ask me.
