Review | We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

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 National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

“We are liars. We are beautiful and privileged. We are cracked and broken.” 

Unreliable narrators are one of my favourite tropes in fiction, and We Were Liars didn’t disappoint in that regard. Cady’s mysterious “condition” and selective amnesia made it hard to decipher what was true and what wasn’t – especially when the writing was rife with vivid imagery and beautiful metaphors that were often indistinguishable from reality.

Unfortunately, it was rather difficult for me to connect with any of the characters. The beautiful, privileged “Liars” live in a world where wealth and power are synonymous and money can solve any problem. As a result, the first portion of the book seemed to be filled with petty #richpeopleproblems, making it difficult to sympathize with any of the characters. The relationship between the Liars wasn’t very well demonstrated – in fact, I didn’t even know why they were friends, other than the fact that they were near the same ages. I didn’t know much about Cady as a person, and even less about Gat, her love interest, so suffice it to say that that was a ship I wasn’t on board with.

Overall, We Were Liars was a beautifully written, mystery-driven story. While it wasn’t as mind-blowing as everyone says, since I managed to partially guess the twist, it was certainly an enjoyable read.