Reviews with content warning for Animal death - We Were Liars Deluxe Edition

Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

We Were Liars Deluxe Edition by E. Lockhart

683 reviews

murve's review against another edition

2.0

Poor little rich girl

Content Warnings

sarah_280's review against another edition

2.5

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

Content Warnings

graciesreads's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This ending wrecked me my chin was on the ground.

Content Warnings

katiekt1216's review against another edition

4.0

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

redstringraven's review against another edition

3.5

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

i was kind of worried i'd have to give this book a lower rating; the first half of it felt slow, sometimes frustrating and confusing, but there was just enough to keep me interested and invested in getting answers. about three fourths of the way through, i got them. then it was a lot of "oh my god", some of the prior issues i'd had made sense, and i'd say overall the 'revelation' and ending was satisfying enough.

unfortunately, that first half of the book does keep the rating "lowish". the jumbled timeline might have been easier to keep up with if i'd had a physical copy rather than an audiobook, so i won't put too much pressure on that. i also struggled to care about the main 'pairing' for a number of reasons, so whenever the focus was on that, i was uninvested and ready for it to move on to something else.

if this were out of 10, it'd be a 7 (overall positive feelings, might come back to it just to re-read with the knowledge i now have). the narrator also did a fantastic job in the final chapters. like, she did great overall, but you could feel those last few chapters.

SPOILER TIME BELOW

things i liked:

i really loved mirren and johnny. my love for mirren was more or less immediate, but johnny took a bit more warming up to.
the twist genuinely took me off guard. i'd written down a handful of suspicions for what could have happened or why gat and cady couldn't be together. i was devastated along with cady when she remembered the dogs had died in the fire. so, when you get to that semi-final fairytale, and the witch starts handing out matches, there's this deep feeling of dread that starts to form in your stomach. it was effective, and a nightmare to think about.
the overall reflection toward the end of the book was very nice. i still can't quite tell if the liars were actual... ghosts that cady was interacting with, or if they were more something she was only experiencing in her own head. i guess it doesn't matter? i don't remember if she ever caused uncomfortable moments in the "present day" sections by mentioning she'd been hanging out with the liars to the other family members.
i liked the concept of writing phrases on the back of your hand. THAT was a "teenage thing" that felt nostalgic or familiar to me (bringing this up due to other things i'll mention below). and i like both that the book ends with her writing a phrase on her hands, and with a nice one as well.

what didn't jive:

like i said, the first half of the book felt... slow. and it was frustrating in the sense that so many scenes kind of felt like they went nowhere, and even with the perspective of how things end, i think the book could have been a bit tighter. the only thing that really kept me engaged WAS the possibility of answers being dangled in front of me like a carrot on a stick. again, i liked mirren and johnny well enough, but most everyone else fell quite flat. considering who's left in the end, i'm kind of bummed there was so little exploration of her relationship with her remaining family members. her only real relationships were with the liars. that being said:
i very much did not care about gat/cady. it made the moments where she'd be like "my gat" kind of exhausting or dramatic in that teenage life-or-death kind of way that, yes, i'll admit i never experiences and therefore can't really understand. i have so many notes in my journal consisting of variations of "go away, gat" or "shut up, gat". his behavior DOES make more sense once you get to the twist, but not enough so that i believe in how much they cared for each other or that they were in love or whatever. out of all the liars, her relationship with gat felt the weakest.
some of the prose was quite melodramatic on cady's end. albeit, i'm sure this could also be connected back to her being a teenager and my personal eye-rolling comes from that inability to understand, again. like, saying that she gets her blood everywhere as a way of just saying she's sad. it was... interesting? the first time, but i quickly got a bit irritated with it.

yep! that's all i can really think of right now. this one's been on my list for a while, and even though i was discouraged and kind of frustrated in the first half, i'm super glad i stuck it out and got to finish it. maybe i'll circle back to it and find that with Knowledge™, the earlier sections will be a bit less of a drag.

Content Warnings