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Book 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.
Disclaimer: I've read the book in Polish translation. Translation can always affect my overall opinion of the book.
After closing this book I was like... did I really just read what I think I did? I have very mixed feelings about it. At first I was a bit sceptical after reading some unflattering reviews so I was surprised to discover I kind of like the author's writing style. It was my first Lockhart's book and I'm willing to give her another shot. It was a fast and pleasant read. What I didn't like were the attempts of making the text more dynamic and expressive by dividing it into short lines. The other thing that didn't really hit the mark for me was rough language used to describe Cadence's headaches.
If you don't have any idea what this book is about then... well. It's about a very rich family with a private Island and numerous of houses. Cadence, Johnny and Mirren are cousins who spend every summer there. The money and prestige talks don't really appeal to them. In the year fifteen Cadence had an accident - and she doesn't remember what had happened. After a short break she returns to an island to discover some things have changed and she promises herself she will discover what happened to her and why her cousins and boyfriend Gat haven't uttered a word to her since the tragedy.
Maybe I was clueless enough not to see little tips throughout the book but I was completely startled by the ending of this book. If you'll guess what's going on there then you probably won't like this book as much as people as baffled as I was. Although the idea itself wasn't necessarily original (I've seen an American movie with similar ending long time ago - won't reveal the titlte to not spoil you the fun) it was definitely a strong point of We were Liars.
I would totally recommend this book for those who like a twisted mystery, astonishing endings and are willing to cope with rich and wealthy environment. If you let this seemingly plain story talk to your sensitivity you may also find some universal truths lying beneath.
- with a minus
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ReplyDeleteI read this book some time back after all the great reviews and it being the winner of Goodreads Choice Winner 2014. But, I found it like OK. I guessed what was going to happen and where it is going midway in the book. May be I have read so many mystery books that I have an amazing Detective vision ;) :D
ReplyDeleteBut, as always great review!!
Thank You! I think this surprising ending made me like this book. If it didn't hit me that much I don't think I would enjoy it this much :)
DeleteI read We Were Liars about a year ago and I fairly enjoyed it. I wouln't say it's a masterpiece, but the twist in the end was excellent! What really put me off, for the most of the time was the writing style of E. Lockhart. Very small sentences and most of them didn't even have a verb. If this wasn't the case I believe I would have enjoyed it even more.
ReplyDeleteAeriko @ http://thereadingarmchair.blogspot.com
The ending was so good it outweighed these little things that were getting on my nerves! :)
DeleteI still have yet to read this. I've got a physical copy and it's just collecting dust on my shelf for now. Although, I do feel like there was just too much hype about this book. A lot of people gave it 5 stars. Great review! :)
ReplyDeleteBlessie @ Mischievous Reads
I really liked We Were Liars too. And I thought the writing style was actually really beautiful, so I too was a bit surprised to see so many others hating on it. I randomly guessed what the twist was, which was a shock in itself for me because I was just being silly and didn't actually think I'd be right, haha. Great review!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how you felt about this, but this book was so hyped up and everybody was saying that there was a twist and I felt like that was kind of a spoiler for the book. I mean, I absolutely loved it and it's one of my favorites, but since everybody talked about how unbelievable the twist was, I was looking for it already from page one. I wouldn't blame it on booktubers and bookbloggers for hyping it, because there were even blurbs that said "unforgettable twist" or something like that. I mean I've read other stories with the same twist but where I had no idea there was going to be one, and the twist was then perceived differently. I don't know, I just think that many were spoiled just because they knew there was gonna be a twist.
ReplyDeleteI liked the use of the fairy tales. I think they were clever.
Great review btw :)