We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Hello all! Welcome to my very first blog post. I’ll be reviewing an amazing book I just finished, We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. 

 

This is my second E. Lockhart book, the first was The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks which I also really loved (it was genius and had an awesome protagonist) but let’s talk about We Were Liars. In fact let’s NOT talk about We Were Liars because the best advice I can give you where this book is concerned is DON’T READ BOOK REVIEWS, JUST READ THE BOOK.

 You’ll see the entire book reviewing community is split on this one. Half the readers found it mind-blowingly good while the other half found it just ‘meh’. It’s a book you have to read yourself to decide whether you like it or not. Plus book reviews tend to have this not-so-subtle foreshadowing that might just ruin the entire story for you.

The story is about Cadence, a girl who suffers from amnesia and severe migraines after a mysterious accident. She belongs to a rich, white, Democratic family which hides tensions and rivalries under a façade of happiness.

Cadence is a very real character. She has her imperfections and discrepancies but I actually really like her. Gat is equally vibrant, if not more so. He makes the selfish group of privileged children think about important stuff. But although I loved Cadence and Gat’s relationship, I felt that the writer didn’t really focus enough on the Liars as a group. I mean, I would’ve loved to know WHY they were called the Liars in the first place and what kind of awesome stuff they did when they were all together. However, over the course of the book we just see the Liars hanging around in the beach house or we see Cady and Gat spending time together while Mirren and Jack are off doing their own thing.

The book is also dotted with these short fairy tales Cadence makes up which reflect the things going on around her. The symbolism in these tales is spot on and I generally just found them beautiful and entertaining.

Another minor fault with the book: there’s lots of purple prose. The narrator has a tendency to dramatically describe situations using lots of weird imagery that might sometimes completely confuse the reader.  Example? Here you go:

A witch has been standing there behind me for some time, waiting for a moment of weakness. She holds an ivory statue of a beautiful goose. It is intricately carved. I admire it only for a moment before she swings it with shocking force. It connects, crushing a hole in my forehead. I can feel my bone come loose. The witch swings the statue again and hits above my right ear, smashing my skull. Blow after blow she lands until tiny flakes of bone litter the bed and mingle with chipped bits of her once-beautiful goose.

That is Cadence describing a migraine

There are also lots of short disjointed sentences that fragment off for no apparent reason like:

I can see the base of Beechwood island and                                                                                           my arms and legs feel numb but my fingers are cold. Slices
of seaweed go past as I fall.
And then I'm up again and breathing.
I'm okay,
my head is okay,
no one needs to cry for me or worry about me.

The author also makes excessive use of adjectives. While I normally can’t stand writing that tries to be poetic but fails, in the case of We Were Liars I was so engrossed in the story I barely noticed. But if this is the kind of thing that completely ticks you off, you might not like the book that much.

Overall though, this is just a really awesome book which ya all should just go on and try!