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johannakandf's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
cami_roach's review against another edition
4.0
Honestly, I loved we were liars. It´s such a strong book because of the strong characters it has. The fact that the ending twist is so deep and breathtaking just leaves you wanting to cry. It´s a messy book, it starts up with a perfect rich family which seems like it has no problems at all when actually, it's horrible. Candy is just a cute, perfect girl and a few pages later she's just broken. It's amazing how E. Lockhart managed to do so. I absolutely loved the book because even if it's not what I expected it's awesome. I took quite a long time reading it because I wanted to enjoy every word and feeling. Seriously, read it.
embers_bookshelf's review against another edition
2.0
i don't remember anything about this book. nothing registered.
ccm512's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
daae's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
ptstewart's review against another edition
1.0
Some revered books--consider anything by Faulkner--more closely resemble vessels of profundity than a storyline, and we not only consider those incredible pieces but teach them to our youth. If the likes of Faulkner can write novels full of drivel that lack both tension and likable characters, and we, as the public, consider his work phenomenal because it is so boring and awful to get through, on top of being utterly incomprehensible (which, for the record, does not equate to profound), why not extend that grace to We Were Liars?
It would be unfair to not mention that I have hated this book for years, despite never reading it. I have seen it in bookstores since its publication, intrigued every time, and read the back a hundred times. Every time, I have been furious that the choice by the publisher or the author was to give absolutely no information whatsoever about the book in the summary. Rather, we are treated to a tantalizing hook meant so plainly to pull us in as readers that it I have resisted it out of spite for years.
Upon beginning the novel, I slowly understood why the book flap was designed to be such a hook: the story itself doesn't have one. Broadly, this is an example of a pattern: the writing, like the book flap, tries really, really hard, and the content, like the book's set up, just never really meets the ambitious intent of the writing. (I would discover later that the reason there is no information on the book flap is because there is no story in the book).
The first issue, obviously, is the writing. Some excerpts, for those interested:
He is bounce, effort, and snark...she is sugar, curiosity, and rain.
This means nothing. It really does. But, oh, Paige, it’s poetic! Sure, maybe, if you want to give undue credit. But you know what it doesn’t do? Explain even a little bit about who this character is. What does it mean to “be effort”? To be bounce? And I’ll give it dignity, if you want, I won’t even make fun of how useless that is as a description. No jokes: this is just nonsensical. How in the fuck are we supposed to get an understanding of a person who is sugar and rain? Give it poetic points, crown it flowery, do whatever you want to validate these as acceptable character introductions, but I’m here to tell you: if this is the information we are given about each character when we meet them, this is a failure of characterization. It means nothing, and it does nothing. To top it off, these descriptors come one after another; this mirroring of sequential sentence structure is a pattern throughout the novel, and personally, it could not have pissed me off more.
We were warm and shivering; we were young and ancient.
The first part has a little bit of meaning, and the second clause is poetic nonsense. Especially coming from a sixteen year old who cannot fathom what “ancient” means (not to say anyone can, but she’s definitely not close).
We had been in the attic before; also we had never been in the attic before...every curve of his face was familiar, and also, I had never seen him before.
Shut up shut up I’m going to kill myself stop it. I understand the point here, okay, I’m not a moron. I understand it’s the trope of “I’m seeing things through a new lens,” or “Suddenly, I saw so-and-so in a whole new light,” or “My childhood home looks different now that I see my own children running around in it.” I get it. These are contrasting descriptors that are fundamentally meaningless and are designed to convince the reader that they are profound and important and deep. These mutually exclusive things exist because I am coming of age so hard and I am so deep. This stylistic choice is a misjudgment of that which makes writing actually poetic or flowery, and the misjudgment is made all the more glaring because it is pretty clear the whole time that the speaker does not have the mental wherewithal to hold two contrasting truths in her reality (she’s shallow, team, and impressionable [and stupid but that is a whole other can of worms]).
My understanding from other reviews is that the physical book’s sentence structure is often disjointed and in stanzas, which is a style that would have made me stop on page three (I did the audiobook). Central to the problem with the writing is that this is not a poetry chapbook or collection. This is a novel, and it needs to do novel’s work. If the characters won’t receive personalities individual enough to distinguish from one another, we need actual descriptors, and if they do receive personalities individual enough to distinguish from one another, the descriptions we receive need to match them. Not once did Mirren speak and make me think: “Hmm, rain.” Often, in contrast, I had no idea if we were in reality or hyperbole as the line between novel and extended poetry or magical realism or what-have-you blurred continuously.
Now, let's forgive the protagonist for being rich and privileged, and, therefore, forfeiting relatability and sympathy. Let's forgive her for having a condition we deem mild and she treats dramatically. Let's forgive her for being sixteen and subsequently whiny and obnoxious to those of us who have real problems. If we take her as she is, we are left with someone whose identity is rather limited. She is a Sinclair, she is a Liar (by the way, why, at ten, this group was deemed “the Liars” is never made clear and pissed me off the whole time), she is in love with Gat, she is incredibly impressionable, and in the scenes with the Liars, we get a sense of her really just trailing mournfully behind them, begging to contribute while they all talk about absurd and mundane shit like the sunscreen industry and Gat’s biggest wish about his funeral being that no one preach about a god in which he does not believe. When was the last time we spoke to teenagers in the real world?
(A Brief Interlude to Shit on Gat: You have to be so fucking pretentious to believe you’re the representation of a Brontë novel. Not that you relate to a character’s experience, not that you see yourself in them, but that you are the representation of that character. Also, do everyone a favor, and stop making your woes the only woes allowed. I’m the first to say I don’t care a lick about Cady’s headaches, but she’s allowed to complain about them while you continue to be the only POC on an island full of white people. That doesn’t mean her experience is worse than yours; it just means she’s allowed to feel her own pain, and she’s allowed to want pity for it just as you are. Gat talks to his friends about inequalities, for sure, and calls them out for being somewhat complicit in those inequalities as they exist in the world and the Sinclair family. But he rarely does this in a way that facilitates actual, normal growth and understanding. Rather, he accuses them of deep privilege and being uninformed and out of touch, all while maintaining a tone of ~you could never understand how hard I have it~. I don’t know if you’ve ever been ignorant before, let alone ignorant and well intentioned, but this is a method that makes most people want to smack you as an individual, not learn to be a genuinely better person.)
SPOILERS FROM HERE
SPOILERS FROM HERE
Finally (not finally. I have many more complaints, but I fear I could bitch about this one forever), we must acknowledge that at sixteen, as someone who had not and still has not committed arson, if you had asked me where to light a fire first if I wanted to burn down a house from the inside out, I would have said as far away from the door as possible. Am I supposed to believe that any one of these morons was supposed to get into Harvard? They split up to burn down a house that was a representation of the problems in their family and considered neither an exit strategy nor an order of operations. And I’m, what? Supposed to feel sad? Supposed to be surprised? To feel grief for these characters who were either very boring or very annoying, and never realistic? Not to mention: how was this the first solution to the problem? How did we jump from inaction as a means of defiance (not going along with their mothers’ efforts to sway their grandfather for their inheritance) all the way to arson? Never, even when I had serious mental health issues—albeit not schizophrenic related—did I think that burning down a home to make a point was the first and best idea. I also know that based on the twist I am supposed to apply all that information backward and find that everything makes sense! There were so many signs! (There were, actually; I guessed it around the 60% mark.) But if I apply the absolute stupidity of their choice backwards I have to acknowledge that any shred of profundity or intelligence I may have noted in these characters at one point was nonexistent. She poured gas in the only exit of the house and then all fucking over the first floor and then didn’t wait for her friends, who were upstairs, or her boyfriend, who was in the basement, to meet her and LEAVE THE HOUSE before setting it on fire. She just fuckin’ did it. Already knowing she’d be risking trapping herself. And at the end, it’s like, well this was avoidable but this could have happened to anyone. And I ???? NO IT FUCKING COULDN’T HAVE?? ARE YOU ON CRACK??? This book belongs in that fire.
It would be unfair to not mention that I have hated this book for years, despite never reading it. I have seen it in bookstores since its publication, intrigued every time, and read the back a hundred times. Every time, I have been furious that the choice by the publisher or the author was to give absolutely no information whatsoever about the book in the summary. Rather, we are treated to a tantalizing hook meant so plainly to pull us in as readers that it I have resisted it out of spite for years.
Upon beginning the novel, I slowly understood why the book flap was designed to be such a hook: the story itself doesn't have one. Broadly, this is an example of a pattern: the writing, like the book flap, tries really, really hard, and the content, like the book's set up, just never really meets the ambitious intent of the writing. (I would discover later that the reason there is no information on the book flap is because there is no story in the book).
The first issue, obviously, is the writing. Some excerpts, for those interested:
He is bounce, effort, and snark...she is sugar, curiosity, and rain.
This means nothing. It really does. But, oh, Paige, it’s poetic! Sure, maybe, if you want to give undue credit. But you know what it doesn’t do? Explain even a little bit about who this character is. What does it mean to “be effort”? To be bounce? And I’ll give it dignity, if you want, I won’t even make fun of how useless that is as a description. No jokes: this is just nonsensical. How in the fuck are we supposed to get an understanding of a person who is sugar and rain? Give it poetic points, crown it flowery, do whatever you want to validate these as acceptable character introductions, but I’m here to tell you: if this is the information we are given about each character when we meet them, this is a failure of characterization. It means nothing, and it does nothing. To top it off, these descriptors come one after another; this mirroring of sequential sentence structure is a pattern throughout the novel, and personally, it could not have pissed me off more.
We were warm and shivering; we were young and ancient.
The first part has a little bit of meaning, and the second clause is poetic nonsense. Especially coming from a sixteen year old who cannot fathom what “ancient” means (not to say anyone can, but she’s definitely not close).
We had been in the attic before; also we had never been in the attic before...every curve of his face was familiar, and also, I had never seen him before.
Shut up shut up I’m going to kill myself stop it. I understand the point here, okay, I’m not a moron. I understand it’s the trope of “I’m seeing things through a new lens,” or “Suddenly, I saw so-and-so in a whole new light,” or “My childhood home looks different now that I see my own children running around in it.” I get it. These are contrasting descriptors that are fundamentally meaningless and are designed to convince the reader that they are profound and important and deep. These mutually exclusive things exist because I am coming of age so hard and I am so deep. This stylistic choice is a misjudgment of that which makes writing actually poetic or flowery, and the misjudgment is made all the more glaring because it is pretty clear the whole time that the speaker does not have the mental wherewithal to hold two contrasting truths in her reality (she’s shallow, team, and impressionable [and stupid but that is a whole other can of worms]).
My understanding from other reviews is that the physical book’s sentence structure is often disjointed and in stanzas, which is a style that would have made me stop on page three (I did the audiobook). Central to the problem with the writing is that this is not a poetry chapbook or collection. This is a novel, and it needs to do novel’s work. If the characters won’t receive personalities individual enough to distinguish from one another, we need actual descriptors, and if they do receive personalities individual enough to distinguish from one another, the descriptions we receive need to match them. Not once did Mirren speak and make me think: “Hmm, rain.” Often, in contrast, I had no idea if we were in reality or hyperbole as the line between novel and extended poetry or magical realism or what-have-you blurred continuously.
Now, let's forgive the protagonist for being rich and privileged, and, therefore, forfeiting relatability and sympathy. Let's forgive her for having a condition we deem mild and she treats dramatically. Let's forgive her for being sixteen and subsequently whiny and obnoxious to those of us who have real problems. If we take her as she is, we are left with someone whose identity is rather limited. She is a Sinclair, she is a Liar (by the way, why, at ten, this group was deemed “the Liars” is never made clear and pissed me off the whole time), she is in love with Gat, she is incredibly impressionable, and in the scenes with the Liars, we get a sense of her really just trailing mournfully behind them, begging to contribute while they all talk about absurd and mundane shit like the sunscreen industry and Gat’s biggest wish about his funeral being that no one preach about a god in which he does not believe. When was the last time we spoke to teenagers in the real world?
(A Brief Interlude to Shit on Gat: You have to be so fucking pretentious to believe you’re the representation of a Brontë novel. Not that you relate to a character’s experience, not that you see yourself in them, but that you are the representation of that character. Also, do everyone a favor, and stop making your woes the only woes allowed. I’m the first to say I don’t care a lick about Cady’s headaches, but she’s allowed to complain about them while you continue to be the only POC on an island full of white people. That doesn’t mean her experience is worse than yours; it just means she’s allowed to feel her own pain, and she’s allowed to want pity for it just as you are. Gat talks to his friends about inequalities, for sure, and calls them out for being somewhat complicit in those inequalities as they exist in the world and the Sinclair family. But he rarely does this in a way that facilitates actual, normal growth and understanding. Rather, he accuses them of deep privilege and being uninformed and out of touch, all while maintaining a tone of ~you could never understand how hard I have it~. I don’t know if you’ve ever been ignorant before, let alone ignorant and well intentioned, but this is a method that makes most people want to smack you as an individual, not learn to be a genuinely better person.)
SPOILERS FROM HERE
SPOILERS FROM HERE
Finally (not finally. I have many more complaints, but I fear I could bitch about this one forever), we must acknowledge that at sixteen, as someone who had not and still has not committed arson, if you had asked me where to light a fire first if I wanted to burn down a house from the inside out, I would have said as far away from the door as possible. Am I supposed to believe that any one of these morons was supposed to get into Harvard? They split up to burn down a house that was a representation of the problems in their family and considered neither an exit strategy nor an order of operations. And I’m, what? Supposed to feel sad? Supposed to be surprised? To feel grief for these characters who were either very boring or very annoying, and never realistic? Not to mention: how was this the first solution to the problem? How did we jump from inaction as a means of defiance (not going along with their mothers’ efforts to sway their grandfather for their inheritance) all the way to arson? Never, even when I had serious mental health issues—albeit not schizophrenic related—did I think that burning down a home to make a point was the first and best idea. I also know that based on the twist I am supposed to apply all that information backward and find that everything makes sense! There were so many signs! (There were, actually; I guessed it around the 60% mark.) But if I apply the absolute stupidity of their choice backwards I have to acknowledge that any shred of profundity or intelligence I may have noted in these characters at one point was nonexistent. She poured gas in the only exit of the house and then all fucking over the first floor and then didn’t wait for her friends, who were upstairs, or her boyfriend, who was in the basement, to meet her and LEAVE THE HOUSE before setting it on fire. She just fuckin’ did it. Already knowing she’d be risking trapping herself. And at the end, it’s like, well this was avoidable but this could have happened to anyone. And I ???? NO IT FUCKING COULDN’T HAVE?? ARE YOU ON CRACK??? This book belongs in that fire.
paigestabler's review against another edition
2.0
I felt like the book was well paced and the twist was very shocking, but this book just wasn’t for me. I would give it 2.5 stars if I could.