We Were Liars
by E. Lockhart
Published: May 13, 2014
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Format: Hardcover (240 pages)
Source: Purchased
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 subtitle for We Were Liars should be, “I Can’t Remember the Really Stupid Thing I Did Last Summer.” I read this book because there was a lot of hype around it. “Crazy Twist Ending! Must Read!” is what everyone said. I don’t normally read contemporary YA books, but I decided this one might be fun because of all the hype around it.
My first impression of We Were Liars was that there was a map at the beginning. I LOVE MAPS. Are there more contemporary books out there with maps? Because if there are, you need to tell me so I can read them all.
The short sentences and broken lines made the writing feel very poetic. It also showed the broken mind of the main character, Cadence. To me, I didn’t enjoy the reading experience as much as I could have because it felt like I was impatiently waiting to get to The Twist. The Twist was pretty cool and unexpected but it’s not like a twist that has never been done before. Ironically, I read this because of the hype about the ending but because I knew there was a crazy ending I couldn’t enjoy it all the way.
The biggest questions I had while reading this were: “What happened to Cadence?” and “Why does she keep giving her things away?” The first question is eventually answered, but I felt like the second question was left up to me as the reader to decide. Cadence’s attitude towards things and objects was really interesting.
“…the accumulation of beautiful objects is a life goal. Whoever dies with the most stuff wins. Wins what? is what I’d like to know.”
– E. Lockhart, We Were Liars pg 46
Overall, it was an interesting read with beautiful writing but the over-hyped ending left me a little disappointed.
Content Rating: High, for strong language.
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About E. Lockhart
E. Lockhart is the author of We Were Liars, Fly on the Wall, Dramarama, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and the Ruby Oliver quartet: The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book, The Treasure Map of Boys, and Real Live Boyfriends. How to Be Bad was co-written with Lauren Myracle and Sarah Mlynowski.
Disreputable History was a Printz Award honor book, a finalist for the National Book Award, and recipient of the Cybils Award for best young adult novel. We Were Liars is a New York Times bestseller.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
My name is Jessica. I love to read Young Adult and classic literature. I’ve been a book blogger for six years and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. I’m a very curious reader. Writing about all the questions and thoughts I had while reading a book is the best hobby ever.
I have been wanting to read this one like really, really badly for a while now, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet and it sucks! I think I’ll go get it at the library because soon I’ll have read a spoiler and then I’ll never be able to face it.
Great review. So far, yours gives the most information :)
I just finished audiobooking this one today and I didn’t really like it. I also don’t like contemporary YA and thought this book was a snooze fest. I didn’t like all the weird imagery like in the beginning where she said he dad shoots her, or that a wave crashed over her on the boat. I would get excited that something real was happening, and ended up disappointing.
I too knew there would be a “big twist” at the end. And it was a good twist, but not worth reading the whole book.
I remember the part about her dad shooting her and i had to keep re-reading it because I didn’t realize it was imagery. I liked some aspects of this book, but I think the ending is way over hyped.
I guessed the ending pretty quick, so I wasn’t too impressed with this book. I thought it was slow. I loved the map at the beginning too! I also liked the geneology chart.