You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

102 reviews

dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
emotional mysterious sad
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Things I liked: 
  • Read in under 24 hrs… super quick and fast-paced with an interesting writing style.
  • Motifs when explaining mental and physical pain
  • The fairytales that broke up the story a bit
  • The twist? At the end? …?!
  • Gat - he was interesting, waaaay more interesting than Johnny or Mirren… (Someone said, “He is self-aware. Too self-aware in the pretentious way that teenagers can often be, but his character feels authentically teenaged.” And I completely agree.)

Things I didn’t:
  • The characters, the ‘Liars’, felt underdeveloped, especially in their relationships with one another. I never really felt a kinship or grew to love or even like Johnny and Mirren. And, whilst I found Gat interesting, not a single part of me was invested in or believed in the YA love between Cadence and Gat—again, underdeveloped.
  • I did love her descriptions of them, like Mirren being ‘sugar' and 'rain’ and Gat being “… contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.
  • Otherwise, in one page I would hate them and their attitude, and in the next, I would think they’re annoying… it was confusing.
  • Everyone else? The family? The grandpa??? Hated them. All of them. Annoying, immature, and materialistic. Every. Single. One…

But I guess it doesn’t take away from the reality of the ending… Even if I don’t care for the characters, I care for that ending. Overall, glad I read it, would recommend. But, I definitely agree with the sentiment that you're better off if I tell you nothing about this book.
 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Summary of my review: Short chapters, interesting story line, fast- to medium-paced, nice writing style, showing us readers how the book was planned (first sketches, scenes, etc.), weird romance, all story parts felt so different from the previous ones, disappointing ending, explanantion as to why they are called 'liars' were only mentioned in the afterword instead inside the story 

When I saw that the book has 87 chapters I was like: What
But guess who's happy now for getting short chapters to read :D

Writing style was, well, interesting. I mean sometimes it was out of place and I was confused or preferred if it wasn't written down some parts, but some of them were really cool. Especially the beginning of the book. The eerie feeling was great!

The original hand drawn things, poems, and 'how I wrote We Were Liars' were really cool. Most authors don't include this, even though I think it's good to see the progress of a story for people who might plan to write their first one themselves. 
(Also kinda glad the name 'Let's do and say we didn't' was changed to 'we were liars')

Despite everything I still liked the story. The plot. What happened. It didn't turn out like I hoped for, but it was still interesting to read. And honestly I wasn't triggered by anything. 
Also, thanks for the spoiler warning for the #0 book as I wanted to actually start this one and didn't know that it would spoiler the other one 😅



All parts of the book are so different. The beginning gave me eerie and kinda spooky feelings — I was totally invested.
The middle part was medium-paced and gave me standard thriller vibes. 

The romance was so weird. I used to find it cute at the beginning but it turned out to be more dramatic than necessary and both their decisions weren't really great and I think only hurt their relationship more than doing good. 

The ending was disappointing. I had many theories how it would go and this wasn't one. So one could say the ending wasn't predictable, which I usually love, but I wished for it to be something else actually. I thought the story is perhaps about grief and the whole gory things were metaphors for being sad inside and needing to supress it as everyone in this family does it. I mean they don't even want to talk about people that passed. And the eerie vibe at the beginning made me think that it includes perhaps a bit of horror. 
I had so many theories and so many great ideas for an ending, I even thought it was a Shakespeare re-telling of King Lear. What a disappointment.

I think the explanation at the end of the book why they were called bad liars was great, but it would have been better to include the scene of origin for this in the book so that we readers don't feel confused about it the whole time while reading.

Afterword
Before anyone says that the whole book copied other books (as one can see in her sketch for the book) I would disagree, as she only got Inspiration for a few aspects and didn't copy everything. I would call it Inspiration. And inspirations are great, they help you to get a better picture of how the story is supposed to be and might even motivate you. 

Her whole preparations are well organised and I very very much appreciate her for showing us them. It can help so many. Help them to start they own book one day. 

27. July 2024

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings