Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Rating: 2/5 Stars
Hardcover, 227 Pages
Published May 2014
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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.

I've heard so many great things about this book, but after reading it I just feel...meh. That's pretty much all of my thoughts on this book summed up into one word. I'll try to define meh and how it makes me feel.

(First off - this review in no way expresses my opinion towards E. Lockhart as a person or even as an author. This book just wasn't my cup of tea. It happens. I didn't hate it. It was okay. And I certainly don't hate her.)

This book, summed up in a sentence, is about a girl named Cady who comes from this rich, white, perfect American family, except for the fact that all of the mothers are divorced and everyone's racist and crazy and oh yeah, she hit her head.

(That run-on sentence was intentional.)

So, like I said, that sentence up there is pretty much the entire book. For the longest time I felt like I didn't feel any sort of plot evolving whatsoever. I felt like I was just following Cady and her crazy family for 227 pages of pure rich-people crazy.

One thing that really, really bothered me was the really random line breaking. All of a sudden
the book
would go like this and
it had absolutely no
rhyme or reason
And
I couldn't
take 
it.

Like, what? I really didn't understand. There wasn't anything significant about those lines or the specific breaking up of them. It was cut off at random parts. For artistic affect, maybe? But I wouldn't call that artistic. More like mildly irritating.

The end of this book, however, it really screwed me up. Big time. I was left with a giant question mark above my head. I'm a logical person, so naturally I want answers. Things about that ending just didn't make any sense at all.

****THE NEXT PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS. SCROLL DOWN UNTIL I GIVE THE ALL-CLEAR IF YOU WANT TO AVOID THEM.***

My biggest question about the ending is how did she get away with that? Clearly Cady is crazy and imagined the ghosts of Gat and Mirren and Johnny. I get that part. But throughout the book during that summer, she had distinct conversations with her mother and family about the three of them. Spoke of them. Spoke to them. As far as I can remember (and I finished this book yesterday, so I'm pretty sure I remember), everyone acknowledged their existence. Nobody acted like they weren't there. And Cady never got caught talking to "herself" or doing stupid stuff by "herself." I just feel like you can't get to the end of the book and all of a sudden be like "LOL yeah they're the crazy girl's ghost friends" without any evidence of it earlier in the book. Even subtle evidence is important. But I can't recall a single second of that book where there was any proof whatsoever that they may have been ghosts. Or just that something was up in general. Did I just happen to miss anything? I don't think so.

***OKAY, YOU'RE ALL CLEAR NOW. :-)***

So yeah, the ending messed with my head a little bit. And totally didn't make sense to me. But like the summary said, I'm supposed to lie about the ending and not tell you anything. So if you read it already, feel free to scroll back up and check out what I had to say. If you didn't, DON'T! There's a definite shock factor with this one that you'll enjoy if you go into the book having no idea how it ends.

All in all, We Were Liars felt like a book with such a small plot to me, nothing important happening and nothing being elaborated. This book just wasn't my cup of tea, but that doesn't mean that somebody else may not enjoy it! I encourage everyone to pick up this book and give it a try. It's gotten raving reviews alongside some "meh" ones. It all depends on where you stand. I'm still glad I picked up this book and gave it a shot. I just wish I felt differently about it.

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