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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
Oooooooookay. This book wasn’t on my radar until Jamie from The Perpetual Page-turner absolutely raved about it on Twitter. Then the positive reviews came flooding in, all boasting of a mind-blowing thriller with an ending the reader will never see coming.
So of course I needed to read it. I love a twist ending. But you know what? I was disappointed.
I liked the first 60% of this novel, albeit it was a little hard to care about the characters. We Were Liars centers around the influential and well-off Sinclair family. They’re your typical rich, white New England liberals so steeped in privilege it’s practically oozing from their ears. I’m not saying that people like this have invariably easy lives or that they live with no hardships – I just mean that it’s kind of hard to care about them when the adults are fighting over the family patriarch’s estate and the grandmother buys illegal ivory.
The writing was also kind of vague and distant. It was hard to get a read on any emotions from any character except for the main character, Cady, since it was a first-person narrative. I’m sure that some of this had to do with the way the Sinclairs are taught to always be “normal,” to hide their feelings, and to never cause a scene. And I get that. But a lot of this detachment was also because of the simplistic sentences and dreamlike structure of the entire thing.
Now, around the 2/3 mark, I figured out what the twist ending was. I don’t know if that’s because it was simply written or if it was because I’ve read a TON of books with this particular device. But the clues were there, sprinkled within the text the entire time and I thought it was kind of obvious. However, this is definitely worth a reread and will be interesting to see how everything pans out, knowing how it ends.
So I wasn’t all that impressed with We Were Liars. That’s somewhat because I’ve seen all this before just because of the books I like to read (i.e., psychological thrillers.) It could also be because of the hype surrounding this. Seriously, I can only think of one person who actually disliked it. I recommend giving it a read though – it’s definitely worth it, and it’s just short enough to not be a total time-waster even if you don’t like it. I’m not sure what I should rate this; my feelings about it were all over the place. So I’m just going to go with a neutral rating. I didn’t dislike it, but it wasn’t everything I hoped it would be.
So of course I needed to read it. I love a twist ending. But you know what? I was disappointed.
I liked the first 60% of this novel, albeit it was a little hard to care about the characters. We Were Liars centers around the influential and well-off Sinclair family. They’re your typical rich, white New England liberals so steeped in privilege it’s practically oozing from their ears. I’m not saying that people like this have invariably easy lives or that they live with no hardships – I just mean that it’s kind of hard to care about them when the adults are fighting over the family patriarch’s estate and the grandmother buys illegal ivory.
The writing was also kind of vague and distant. It was hard to get a read on any emotions from any character except for the main character, Cady, since it was a first-person narrative. I’m sure that some of this had to do with the way the Sinclairs are taught to always be “normal,” to hide their feelings, and to never cause a scene. And I get that. But a lot of this detachment was also because of the simplistic sentences and dreamlike structure of the entire thing.
Now, around the 2/3 mark, I figured out what the twist ending was. I don’t know if that’s because it was simply written or if it was because I’ve read a TON of books with this particular device. But the clues were there, sprinkled within the text the entire time and I thought it was kind of obvious. However, this is definitely worth a reread and will be interesting to see how everything pans out, knowing how it ends.
So I wasn’t all that impressed with We Were Liars. That’s somewhat because I’ve seen all this before just because of the books I like to read (i.e., psychological thrillers.) It could also be because of the hype surrounding this. Seriously, I can only think of one person who actually disliked it. I recommend giving it a read though – it’s definitely worth it, and it’s just short enough to not be a total time-waster even if you don’t like it. I’m not sure what I should rate this; my feelings about it were all over the place. So I’m just going to go with a neutral rating. I didn’t dislike it, but it wasn’t everything I hoped it would be.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Entendí lo que la autora quiso hacer pero descubrí muy pronto lo que ocurría. En ciertos puntos dejó de transmitirme emoción. Supe muy bien que Gat moriría pero no pensé que el resto también, tampoco esperé que Cadence fuera la "mente maestra" detrás del incendio
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
to be very honest i read this book slowly, and the ract and it just ended when she found out they were dead seemed a bit too less towards the conspiracy everyone had been building up, if i had read it in a span of just 1 ir two days then it wouldve been a grasping novel for sure, but like this it seemed too less
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-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:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-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:
Yes
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I’d give it a solid 3.75 simply because I finished it in about 5 hours. I saw the ending coming, but I was still entranced with the story. The fragmented sentences and short chapters made it easy to fly through, and I do love a good unreliable narrator. Overall enjoyable for what it is.