Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: May 13, 2014
Source/Format: Library / Hardcover, 227 pages
Opening Sentence: “Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family.”
Author Website | Goodreads | Amazon
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.
There has been so much hype around We Were Liars since even before the book came out. I had read the synopsis before the hype started and decided I totally had to read the book, but then all these people came around saying how good and awesome it was and then I was just like “OHMAHGAWD, I HAVE TO READ IT!”
I feel like it took me forever to read this book. I mean, for as awesome as people said it was I was having some problems getting through it. It wasn’t bad, per se, but it was definitely slow. In my mind there are two types of awesome book. 1: the awesome book that’s awesome from beginning to end. 2: the awesome book that you have to make an investment in, but eventually it proves how awesome it is.
I don’t really feel like We Were Liars was either of those. It was definitely an investment book, but it fell sort of short in the “awesome” category. It was a good book, but I don’t know… I was expecting more. Maybe the hype got to me.
Don’t get me wrong! The story was good and I definitely don’t regret reading the book. I would probably recommend it to people, but I don’t know that I would read it again. It’s one of THOSE books. Good once, but that’s it.
I’ll give it this, though: The story was absolutely original and interesting. I loved the story, but I like it more looking back on it then I did while I was reading it. I don’t know what it was, but something was keeping me from loving the story (and the book as a whole) as much as I could have.
If you like books that keep you wondering and have poetic writing you’ll probably want to give this one a try. I suggest jumping into it with as little knowledge about the story as possible. It’s fun not knowing what to expect. Why are they liars? No idea. That’s part of the fun.
Lisa Likes Books 
3 responses to “Review: We Were Liars – E. Lockhart”
I’ve read a lot of bloggers say the same thing, that it was a good mysterious read but not as amazing as the hype suggested, it certainly does sound intriguing and the poetic writing sounds great! Glad to hear you still enjoyed it even though it didn’t meet your expectations 🙂
I didn’t fall in love with this one either! Glad to see I’m not alone!
That’s really how I felt too! It was interesting but I think the hype got to me too. It wasn’t really my style of writing and not really my kind of setting either!