✨ jami ✨'s Reviews > We Were Liars

"We are liars. We are beautiful and privileged. We are cracked and broken.

☆☆☆ full review now posted ! ☆☆☆


Everyone raves and raves about this book, so much so I pretty much bought it blind when I saw it. (And then promptly left it on my shelf to collect dust because who actually reads books when they buy them?)

Anyway, a friend of mine offline read this book and loved it and told me how I had to read it right now because that infamous plot twist could not be missed and so I finally got my shit together and read We Were Liars and was ....... pretty disappointed.

Maybe it's just because the hype has been so extraordinarily high for this book that I felt let down but .. this book didn't feel like anything to me? I didn't care about the characters or the plot or their complaints at all. HELLO you're in the 1% living on an Island please shush it's not that bad. Maybe it's because Gat compared himself to Heathcliff and my eyes rolled so far into my head I saw my brain (which is because I hate Wuthering Heights, not because it was a bad comparison)

Honestly this book was just a whole lot of eye rolling for me. Everything felt fake deep. Even the writing felt like it was trying to be way more meaningful and metaphorical then it was. It makes sense John Green blurbed this book.

There were moments I genuinely liked. Some of the scenes between the teenagers were nice, and I liked Gat and Cady together. I liked the way the mystery slowly unfolded and I liked that this was quite short but still packed a punch. But mostly I was just .. waiting for the plot twist to hurry up and come so I'd know what the fuss was about.

(x)

CHARACTERS

One of the main issues I had with this book is that I didn't feel particularly connected to the characters. Even a week after finishing this I couldn't remember their names until I googled it. The only one I felt strongly about was Gat. I found Gat the most compelling of the characters, mostly because of the exploration of the way his ethnicity (Gat is biracial Indian/white) plays into his experience with the other Liars. I thought the Liars were fine, but I didn't feel strongly about them and so ultimately the final section of this book didn't really effect me emotionally at all.

I really, really didn't care at all about Cady and I think that was the main problem. The majority of this story is about her discovery and her growth and I just couldn't connect to her so I didn't feel any personal investment in her arc at all. It was hard to connect to her and sympathise with her which definitely prevented me from really enjoying the plot.

I also found the family tree and relations so confusing and I was unsure which kid belonged to who and which Aunt was which and that definitely detracted from my reading experience.

THEMING
I didn't care at all for the issues of these people. I didn't care to sympathise with their racism, their "woe is me I'm not going to get the biggest mansion" attitude. I found Gats take on the racism within the family interesting, but since it's all through Cady's perspective it's not exactly a great way to represent all that.

Despite how I didn't care about 90% of this book though, I did find the mystery element interesting and that was really what propelled me forward. The mystery unravels slowly which I really liked and does come to a pretty shocking conclusion (I did say "what the fuck" so a star for that?). I think e.lockhart did build up the suspense pretty well, and took this book in a direction I wasn't expecting.

WRITING

I found the writing really annoying at times. While some of it is nice, some of it seemed so fake deep. I didn't understand the necessity of some of the metaphors used, especially since they were just describing ordinary things. I felt like so much was thrown it because it sounded nice or was a nice aesthetic without it being important.

Admittedly, aesthetic is important to this book so I can't fully hate on it for that I just didn't love it. I did like that this book is short though, it makes it way easier to read and it's really easy to say this book didn't drag or meander at any point.

ABELISM

This book uses a lot of ableist language. I can't count how many times "crazy, insane, mad, deranged, invalid" were all used. Just as a psa.

“He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. I could have looked at him forever.”

I don't know, maybe this book is more of an it's me, not you issue but I just can't bring myself to care or feel strongly about it. I feel like I've definitely missed something with this book? I mean sure, it's fine and I didn't 100% completely loathe it, but I wouldn't point it out in a store to a friend and go "oh wow yes you HAVE to read this one"

Do you know what I mean?

This book just felt like a blackhole of nothingness, and I lost a few hours into the hole and it was okay but I didn't get anything back out of it, event hough I feel like I should have because everyone else seems to have got something out of it

I will stop rambling and making no sense now.

“See the world as it is, not as you wish it would be”