NerdyBirdie

Hi guys, I hope you all are having a great day, and this is my review to E. Lockheart’s We Were Liars.

This book is about a rich family with the last name Sinclair. This book is also told from Cadence’s point of view. She is the eldest grandchild of Harris Sinclair and Tipper Taft. The Sinclair family has this sense of “traditional, beautiful, powerful, perfect, and etc that your mind cannot think of because it is not as amazing as our family.” (I am obviously exaggerating.) All these families have different lives, but once, every summer, they all meet up on their private island. They each have their own houses built, where they stay for the whole summer. And the three eldest children of the family: Cadence, Johnny, and Mirren are part of the friends. But they also have Gat, who is Johnny’s friend. These four are the Liars. So basically, we pick off right where Cadence Sinclair Easton is damaged after drowning in the water during her fifteenth year that summer when she went to Beechwood Island. She hasn’t been with her Liars for two years. In “Summer Seventeen” she wants to go back.

This book is really hard for me to review. While reading this, I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not. I also wasn’t really sure if I picked up a suspense novel. For a “suspense” novel, the beginning is Cadence coping and us seeing her experience like this. Then, she goes on the island, and everyone acts as if everything is okay. I found a tiny part in the middle of the book not even going along with the story. But the ending was extremely interesting. Now, if the entire book was like pages 151 to the end, I would’ve most definitely given this book a five star rating.

I mean, there were some things I figured out. So that wasn’t much suspense, but the ending I did not know. So that’s what made pages 151 to the end more interesting for me.

The problem was, I would be reading a certain part in the book, and it’s like this flow of how you follow the story, and then something weird happens that threw me off completely.

“He had hired moving vans already. He’d rented a house, too. My father put a last suitcase into the backseat of the Mercedes (he was leaving Mummy with only the Saab), and started the engine.

Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest.

ME:

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.

It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps to the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.”

ME:

And this is what frustrated me with the writing style. I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen, and I had to go back and read again. Then you realize this is how she describes her emotions during that time. This threw me off, and kind of got me alert on like every page I read and it disturbed that flow that I was in while reading this.

This book had some flaws, but I wouldn’t call it a failure. It was pretty smart and sophisticated, and for some reason, it reminded me of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. Damaged girl goes back to a place she grew up in where she hasn’t seen anyone or anything in a long time, faces her past, and all that stuff.

This book was an okay-read for me. But overall, I would recommend this to anyone that kind of likes suspense, and try to see if this book suits you. This book didn’t really go up to my expectations, but it was okay nonetheless. This book may not suit everyone, but still give it a try.

Thanks for reading this review, and until the next one! :D