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A review by caerrie
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
1.0
I read this in a day. Not because I loved it, but because it's pretty short, and the, ah, layout choices often make it even shorter than it looks.
The way the book is told is clever, in a way. At least I think it is. The book sure thinks it is. It does build suspense. You want to find out what happened - unfortunately, I mostly wanted to find out because I wanted this novel to give me a reason to care about it, because the characters weren't doing it for me. They're either very cookie-cutter or despicable or both . And not despicable in an interesting way, you know, like Littlefinger or Dorian Gray or some cool villain. They're just rich and greedy and self-centred jerks (some with bonus racism! also colonial shit!) who quibble about who will inherit a bunch of real estate, while our protagonist whines about how hard she has it on this private island with the staff whose names she doesn't know. (Admittedly, towards the end of the novel you realise you're supposed to hate them, and Cady, the protagonist. But the problem with that is, I was still annoyed for roughly 85% of the book... even if that was the point, I choose to still hold that against the novel. I get it, but I was mostly vaguely annoyed the whole time and I didn't like any character in this book, and was too annoyed to forgive them after the twist, and all that for a lesson I don't really find all that enlightening and revolutionary.) The love interest is sympathetic, but because he's only described to us by our hormonal teenage narrator, he's unfortunately also just a bunch of ya-love interest tropes in a trenchcoat, so he's not much of a saving grace, either. (Also, on the back of the book this promised me a "brilliant" girl leading the narrative - I am yet to find her. If they meant Cady I don't know where anyone got that idea from.)
If a book was only as good as its plot twist, I'd give this book two or three stars. I don't think it's as great a twist as a lot of people have told me it was, but it's... fine. But the whole story essentially exists just so the twist can happen. Maybe I would mind that less if I had liked the story better, but I just didn't connect to any of the characters and honestly, I'm just happy I can move on to read a book with likeable people in it.
The way the book is told is clever, in a way. At least I think it is. The book sure thinks it is. It does build suspense. You want to find out what happened - unfortunately, I mostly wanted to find out because I wanted this novel to give me a reason to care about it, because the characters weren't doing it for me. They're either very cookie-cutter or despicable or both . And not despicable in an interesting way, you know, like Littlefinger or Dorian Gray or some cool villain. They're just rich and greedy and self-centred jerks (some with bonus racism! also colonial shit!) who quibble about who will inherit a bunch of real estate, while our protagonist whines about how hard she has it on this private island with the staff whose names she doesn't know. (Admittedly, towards the end of the novel you realise you're supposed to hate them, and Cady, the protagonist. But the problem with that is, I was still annoyed for roughly 85% of the book... even if that was the point, I choose to still hold that against the novel. I get it, but I was mostly vaguely annoyed the whole time and I didn't like any character in this book, and was too annoyed to forgive them after the twist, and all that for a lesson I don't really find all that enlightening and revolutionary.) The love interest is sympathetic, but because he's only described to us by our hormonal teenage narrator, he's unfortunately also just a bunch of ya-love interest tropes in a trenchcoat, so he's not much of a saving grace, either. (Also, on the back of the book this promised me a "brilliant" girl leading the narrative - I am yet to find her. If they meant Cady I don't know where anyone got that idea from.)
If a book was only as good as its plot twist, I'd give this book two or three stars. I don't think it's as great a twist as a lot of people have told me it was, but it's... fine. But the whole story essentially exists just so the twist can happen. Maybe I would mind that less if I had liked the story better, but I just didn't connect to any of the characters and honestly, I'm just happy I can move on to read a book with likeable people in it.