We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

(3.5/4 stars)

We Were Liars

Published: May 13th 2014

Synopsis from Goodreads: 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 finally gave in to the hype that this book has been receiving on social media. I can't say too much without ruining the book, so forgive this review for being a little bit vague! When I finished We Were Liars, I had the same sort of feeling I had when I finished Entangled by Cat Clarke.  Contemplative, a little bit enchanted, but mostly confused. First of all, the blurb is obviously intended to be eye-catching and mysterious and it works for that purpose, but that's what also makes it a little misleading. 

I'm not sure We Were Liars can be described as a romance but more of a family drama and dark teen angst with, of course, secrets. This is my first E. Lockhart book, so I'm not sure if this is her usual writing style, but I did like it. It was very dialogue and character driven, which I found myself drawn to despite my love of flowery, descriptive writing. Having looked back through the highlights I made on my version of the book on Kindle, I really did enjoy the writing style at some points. Our protagonist, Cadence, isn't exactly in her right mind, so the choppy dialogue and jumbled thoughts were true to her character and confusion. As a reader you are swept along with her roller coaster of emotions throughout the novel, constantly questioning the truth.

I loved the characterisations, even if at first the character names were kind of hard to keep up with, it all fell into place as the characters came to life in their own right. Mirren and Johnny, however, were very much on the back burner, with Gat being centre stage. While I liked Gat, I wanted to get to know Mirren and Johnny better, even if I understand why Gat was of course more prominent.

I also really liked how We Were Liars challenged values about money, class, race, and mental health. Most prominent are money and class, with the Sinclairs being a rich family who were all very used to having so much money that they can afford to spend it on useless things. Cadence, being the first born into the wealthy family (and watched over by her patriarchal grandfather) has to come to see that she is very privileged, and I liked Gat's role in helping her to get to that point. As Cadence's mother and her two sisters fight over property and who will inherit what, their father (Cadence's grandfather) holds all of the power over them – something which Cadence begins to challenge.

My only problem that I can think of with We Were Liars is that I did feel a little unsatisfied at the end, but that could be because I had guessed most of the secrets from the start, so the ending wasn't as enjoyable for me. Sometimes the writing was a little too choppy, but other parts made up for it.

If you like books about secrets, complicated characters, some hard-to-swallow parts, and lots of twists and turns with sprinkles of romance, I would definitely recommend We Were Liars! 3.5/4 stars simply because I wasn't totally drawn in. However, I am going to read more of E. Lockhart's work.

"The universe is seeming really huge right now," he said. "I need something to hold onto."