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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.
I'm not sure there is anything new to say about this book. It's been talked and written about so much since it hit shelves last May. But, just in case you haven't heard of it yet, here are my thoughts.
I've read E. Lockhart's work before, but didn't realize it until after I read We Were Liars -- none of her other work has stuck out to me. But this book was everywhere this year, so I put my name on the list for it at the library and waited behind more than ten people.
It's a short, quick read. It focuses on the teenage children of some very well-off New Englanders and their relationships as they grow and change during summers shared on the family island (yup, family island -- I told you they were well-off). They call themselves the Liars. The narrator, Cadence, suffered an injury a couple summers before the telling of the book that caused her amnesia, and she spends her summer trying to unravel the truth behind her injury and trying to discover what her family isn't telling her.
While the circumstances of these teens' lives make them difficult to relate to (again, family island), most of the emotions in the book were familiar to me.
I shot through this book -- it's only a couple hundred pages and easy to read. And then I wanted to read it again immediately. I didn't (because I only had it for a couple more days from the library) but I will want to reread this one eventually. When Cadence finally figures out what her family isn't telling her, it leaves you wanting to go back through to see if you can pick up the clues she was missing.
The hype on this book is HUGE -- and I think this might be a case where it does the book a disservice -- hard to not be looking for the twists, and hard to live up to the hype. But it was a good book, and I recommend it! I gave it three stars.
I've read E. Lockhart's work before, but didn't realize it until after I read We Were Liars -- none of her other work has stuck out to me. But this book was everywhere this year, so I put my name on the list for it at the library and waited behind more than ten people.
It's a short, quick read. It focuses on the teenage children of some very well-off New Englanders and their relationships as they grow and change during summers shared on the family island (yup, family island -- I told you they were well-off). They call themselves the Liars. The narrator, Cadence, suffered an injury a couple summers before the telling of the book that caused her amnesia, and she spends her summer trying to unravel the truth behind her injury and trying to discover what her family isn't telling her.
While the circumstances of these teens' lives make them difficult to relate to (again, family island), most of the emotions in the book were familiar to me.
I shot through this book -- it's only a couple hundred pages and easy to read. And then I wanted to read it again immediately. I didn't (because I only had it for a couple more days from the library) but I will want to reread this one eventually. When Cadence finally figures out what her family isn't telling her, it leaves you wanting to go back through to see if you can pick up the clues she was missing.
The hype on this book is HUGE -- and I think this might be a case where it does the book a disservice -- hard to not be looking for the twists, and hard to live up to the hype. But it was a good book, and I recommend it! I gave it three stars.
Have any of you read We Were Liars? What did you think?
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2 comments:
Totally agree that the hype is huge, but somehow I missed the main part so I still didn't guess the ending. But I am absolutely terrible at guessing endings of any book ever, so there's that.
I have this book on my wish list because I saw it on numerous lists saying that it was a must-read. So, one day. One day.
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