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A review by unabridged_reader
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
1.0
"There is not even a scrabble word for how bad I feel" .
Yeah, sort of describes how I feel about this book right now too. I slowly lowered my rating from a 3 to a 1 over the course of a couple of hours because now that I actually think about how I feel about We Were Liars , the worse my thoughts become. The entire premise of the book is built on this privileged Caucasian family that has their own little island and everyone is supposed to pretend to be perfect, pretend to care, pretend to be okay. I was waiting for there to be some kind of resolution to end this awful ideology or at least something to tear the inheritance away but most characters were static and they remained a privileged family though battered with tragedies. The protagonist along with the "Liars" were all archetypes of rich rebellious kids that did not agree with their parents but never actually made strides to correcting their mistakes or setting their own precedents. Everyone in this book just basked in financial security. Everyone except Gat.
I liked Gat, he was one of the only relatable characters in my opinion especially because he was a person of color. One of the few POCs in the novel in fact. However, I felt that readers never had a chance to fall in love with him as Cadence had. She just kept referring to him as "my Gat". It was so clear that she loved him but Lockhart never gives readers a reason to love him. Their romance was so bland, in fact the interactions between the Liars were pretty dull in general. Lockhart never established a connection between readers and the characters she invented and so honestly, I could care less about their fates.
Unfortunately I was also disappointed in the writing. As others have mentioned, the book sometimes consists of
random choppy sentences
lacking punctuation for no
reason at all
and in that format as well, just hanging on the page. I also couldn't tell between flashbacks and times in the present frequently. The only attempts to distinguish those chapters were phrases like "Summer of Fifteen".. "Summer Sixteen". So perhaps I just got lazy and completely glossed over those sentences. However, my least favorite aspect of Lockhart's writing style was the overdramatic metaphors. She wrote:
Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
I stared at that paragraph for a good 30 seconds, my thoughts went from utter shock, to confusion, and finally to annoyance. Yeah, Cadence actually didn't get shot and after that I sort of wished she did. Probably would have made the plot more interesting in all honesty.
Yeah, sort of describes how I feel about this book right now too. I slowly lowered my rating from a 3 to a 1 over the course of a couple of hours because now that I actually think about how I feel about We Were Liars , the worse my thoughts become. The entire premise of the book is built on this privileged Caucasian family that has their own little island and everyone is supposed to pretend to be perfect, pretend to care, pretend to be okay. I was waiting for there to be some kind of resolution to end this awful ideology or at least something to tear the inheritance away but most characters were static and they remained a privileged family though battered with tragedies. The protagonist along with the "Liars" were all archetypes of rich rebellious kids that did not agree with their parents but never actually made strides to correcting their mistakes or setting their own precedents. Everyone in this book just basked in financial security. Everyone except Gat.
I liked Gat, he was one of the only relatable characters in my opinion especially because he was a person of color. One of the few POCs in the novel in fact. However, I felt that readers never had a chance to fall in love with him as Cadence had. She just kept referring to him as "my Gat". It was so clear that she loved him but Lockhart never gives readers a reason to love him. Their romance was so bland, in fact the interactions between the Liars were pretty dull in general. Lockhart never established a connection between readers and the characters she invented and so honestly, I could care less about their fates.
Unfortunately I was also disappointed in the writing. As others have mentioned, the book sometimes consists of
random choppy sentences
lacking punctuation for no
reason at all
and in that format as well, just hanging on the page. I also couldn't tell between flashbacks and times in the present frequently. The only attempts to distinguish those chapters were phrases like "Summer of Fifteen".. "Summer Sixteen". So perhaps I just got lazy and completely glossed over those sentences. However, my least favorite aspect of Lockhart's writing style was the overdramatic metaphors. She wrote:
Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
I stared at that paragraph for a good 30 seconds, my thoughts went from utter shock, to confusion, and finally to annoyance. Yeah, Cadence actually didn't get shot and after that I sort of wished she did. Probably would have made the plot more interesting in all honesty.