We Were Liars by E. Lockhart Published by Delacorte (5.13.2014)
Genres: Contemporary, Mystery, Young Adult
Format: Audiobook, 242 pages
Length: 6 hours, 27 minutes
Narrator: Ariadne Meyers
Source: Library
A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.
My thoughts
Wow. I’m sorry to say that I absolutely hated this book.
It’s got a pretty low rating on Goodreads, but I didn’t let that stop me because there are a few books I rated 4 or 5 stars that have a low average rating – sometimes my little black sheep heart works in my favor. Sadly, I was not the black sheep this time.
This book is just…not good. I don’t like to say books are bad – I would much prefer to say it wasn’t for me – but I literally do not have one single nice thing to say about this book. The characters were awful. The writing is choppy and awkward. The dialogue is even more awkward, and even bordered ridiculous quite often. Who the fuck talks like that? I listened to the audio so I couldn’t mark examples, but a few of the ones that annoyed me off the top of my head were:
- A teenaged boy saying a situation was “suboptimal”
- A teenaged girl repeatedly saying “we had sexual intercourse” – nobody fucking says that. Teenagers would simply say “we had sex.” I would would have accepted a childish euphemism over sExUaL iNtErCoUrSe
- Saying “natter natter” when talking about someone nagging. Multiple people used this term, both teenage and adult
There were plenty of other examples. The dialogue was just terrible overall and didn’t feel genuine.
I didn’t vibe at all with Lockhart’s writing style, it’s very awkward. I feel like this book tried too hard to be literary and deep, but it talks about heavy issues without actually resolving any of them. There’s no moral at the end to make up for it, and the characters don’t change or grow. Speaking of characters, there was not one single likable character in this entire book. Gat might have been passing fair if he didn’t have the personality of a wet rag. At least he seemed to be a rather decent person. All of the rest of the characters in this book are assholes with grossly overstated white privilege.
Why in the everloving fuck is this book called We Were Liars? More like We Were Idiots, or We Were Assholes, or View Spoiler ». There’s not any lying going on, except maybe by the main character to herself. I would think it was because they lied about View Spoiler »
I should have DNFed this book. I would have, if it weren’t for the fact that I knew going in that there was going to be a crazy ass twist at the end. I’ve heard lots of people raving about the end of this book, so I decided to stick it through. Unfortunately, I ended up disappointed. View Spoiler » However, I wasn’t shocked at all. I didn’t gasp, it didn’t blow my mind…in fact, I felt pretty bland and meh over the whole reveal. Which is a shame, because it would have been a great twist and I probably would have loved it if I didn’t hate the rest of the book so much.
Thank god this audiobook was short and had a decent narrator.
Overall Assessment
Plot: 1/5
Premise: 3/5
Writing style: 2/5
Characters: 1/5
Pace: 2/5
Feels: 0/5
Narration: 3.5/5
Cover: 1/5
Overall rating: 1/5
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