Rating- 4 stars
Synopsis-
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 New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.
Wow. Just… Wow.
It's really hard to describe this book and the feelings I have for it. This was the kind of story where you needed a day or two to really process it and figure out if you liked it or not. It was absolutely stunning. And the writing was incredible.
The narrator's name is Cadence, and she comes from a very sophisticated, very white, family. They own a little island off the coast of Massachusetts, and all come down during the summer. We've got Grandad, his 3 daughters, and then the 7 grandkids. Of those 7, theres the 4 Liars. Cadence, Johnny, Mirren, and Gat. It didn't bother me with how oblivious and spoiled everyone was. I knew people had issues with connecting or feeling sorry for Cadence because of how privileged she was, but for me it was more then that. The way Lockhart wrote this story made me aware of how wealthy they were, but in such a blatantly obvious way that it faded to the background. I was more concerned with the issues this family had.
All that I can say without going into details and spoiling people is that it was not what I expected. Which isn't a bad thing, since I was pleasantly surprised when I finally did finish it. I had just thought it would have been more… glamorous. The writing at some points was very dramatic, which leads me to the few things I didn't like about this book. It was so dramatic and startling that at points you didn't know if it was really happening or not. For example-
"Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
It tasted like salt." (pg. 5)
When I first read that I jerked straight up, completely confused. Like, WHAT???? But then she goes on about her mother telling her to get her self together and you realize, oh she's just super dramatic. They're many more scenes like that, but some of them are apparently true (I read a bunch of other reviews to see what people thought about this issue). Which was the only problem I had with this book, cause I can't tell if they are real or not. They don't divulge into more detail on the episode, verifying if it really happened or not.
Besides that I had no other issues with this book! It was beautifully tragic and well written and just all around fabulous. I highly recommend this book, and kudos to anyone that guesses the huge plot twist at the end.
Favorite Quotes
"That first night, I cried and bit my fingers and drank wine I snuck from the Clairmont pantry. I spun violently into the sky, raging and banging stars from their moorings, swirling and vomiting." (pg. 16)
""Can I hold your hand?" he asked.
I put mine in his.
"The universe is seeming really huge right now," he told me. "I need something to hold on to."
"I'm here"" (pg. 21)
""All right, " he says, stops jumping. "After lunch."
We stare at each other for a moment,
"I'm going to run away now," says Gat. "Don't take it personally."
"Okay."" (pg. 87)
"I looked at her. My lovely, tall mother with her pretty coil of hair and her hard, bitter mouth. Her veins were never open. Her heart never leapt out to flop helplessly on the lawn. She never melted into puddles. She was normal. Always. At any cost." (pg. 173)
(SPOILER)
"We burned them all.
On a night when Grandad and the rest had taken boats across the bay,
when the staff was off duty
and we Liars were alone on the island,
the four of us did what we were afraid to do.
We burned not a home, but a symbol.
We burned a symbol to the ground."
(Image and synopsis from Barnes and Noble)
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