Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Title: We Were Liars

Author: E. Lockhart

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.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Review: Okay, I literally just finished this book so this is my initial, unaffected opinions! I'm gonna keep the non-spoiler part of this review to a minimum because I really do think the less you know about this book, the better. But anyhow, I swear I could not stop hearing about this book. It was everywhere I was on the internet and I couldn't help myself. I gave in. I got the e-book and finally read it. And it was beautiful. I am slightly disappointed after all the hype it got but I definitely did love it a whole lot, not as much as the book community had me expecting. Nevertheless, it's a super easy read (I read it in a few hours) and I think anyone could enjoy it, so I'd definitely recommend you all check it out!

And now we go on to spoiler talk. Please, if you haven't read this book, DO NOT CONTINUE. This book is really so much better having no prior knowledge to it.

Okay, so first and foremost, I want to address how well this book is written. At first, I was a bit put out by the writing style but after I started to get used to it, I really found there was just a gorgeous ease to how Lockhart executed this story. It was really simple writing but some lines honestly just blew me away. Particularly how she uses metaphor to describe events. Like, when she talks about her Dad leaving and he pulls a hand gun on her. I understood that to be a metaphor of her pain but it just had so much power and assurance to it that it shocked me. And I loved that the simplicity of the writing and the vague way some things are described makes you feel like you can't quite one hundred percent understand what's going on and that fit nicely to how Cady felt. This also made the book feel a lot longer than it was. It still astounds me how much story was in so little text.

Now onto the 'big reveal'. After saying how much the writing sometimes made me take a back step, I wish I could say that finding out all the Liars had died was a shock to me. But, honestly, it wasn't at all. Not long into the book, I found it really obvious to tell what was going to happen. The fact that only Cady ever saw them, no one ever liked mentioning them like they never liked mentioning other people who had died or had gone in some way, the scene with Cady and her Granddad and she was pointing out missing things from her house and when she mentions the Liars names among them and he says 'Stop mentioning things that are gone' (or some variation of that) but she didn't realise he was referring to them as well. I'm not sure why, but it all just seemed blaringly obvious to me. The only thing that I didn't predict was the fire, but that made a lot of sense. For most of the book, I thought they'd all gone cliff-diving in some crazy weather and the memory of her swimming alone was something she'd formulated herself and forgotten that the other Liars were there. Though having said all that, it was a good and tragic twist and I've heard of many people who didn't see it coming at all.

Also, let's talk about the fire alone. Can we all agree that that was possibly the worst thought out plan in the world? It just seemed so ridiculous when I was reading that they thought that would work. Why would you not have communication between each other? And why did you have to be on different floors? I get that it isn't really important because either way, it happened, but it just seemed like such a ridiculous arson attempt. It was a grand attempt at making a statement but it frustrated me at how terrible it was. And also, the dogs. Why did the dogs die? Why do you have to do that? I think that was the most emotional part of the book for me.

Actually, I'm lying (heh). What really made me emotional was Candence's Mum. One of my favourite things was how she continued to remind Cady that she loved her. And thinking about her Mum having to tell her over and over again about what happened. Wow. And by extension, I really adored how we got to see the parallels between the Aunts and the Granddad before and after the accident. It's heartbreaking to think that such a horrible event had to occur for them to realise how petty their feuds were, I really loved that we got to see them overcome that and, through grief, learn to love their family again and forget about the wealth.

Lastly, just some random points. Is anyone else a bit confused by the 'Liars' thing? I never really understood why they called themselves that. I've sort of made up my own idea why they did, but I wish it'd had been explained in the book. Also, the Liars – ghosts or hallucinations? I always thought they were just figments of Cady's imagination but I feel like everyone read it differenly. What'd you guys think?

Anyhow, that's my review on We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. I really did like this book and think it's a bit over-hyped but it's mostly deserving of it. Let me know your thoughts on the novel in the comments!

Until next time!

Jess, xxx