Author: E. Lockhart
Genre: Young-Adult, Contemporary
Pages: 242
Published: May 13, 2014
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Price: £5.59 (Paperback)
£12.11 (Hardback)
£2.99 (Kindle)
Series: Standalone
Source: Bought
Triggers (In book, review is safe): Death, Emotional Abuse, Blood, Serious Injury
About the book (Taken from Goodreads):
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.
My review:
This is such a weird book. Weird with its sentence structure, weird with its characters, weird with its plot and definitely weird with its ending. It's just very, very odd.
But weird is good... right? For the most part, I loved it! But, the first half was immensely boring. Which completely contradicts the whole 'I loved it' thing but just roll with it. The first half consisted of overly pretentious language and pretty shoddy character introductions. If you could tell me who each of the characters were, you'd be a better person than me.
One weird thing was the tendency to break away from the story so that Cadence, the main character, could tell us a fairy tale she'd written. They were about a king and his three daughters who acted differently in some completely different stories. I couldn't see any connection between them, but I might not have looked deep enough. They were actually really interesting! It's probably because they're the most famous fairytales smushed together. But, they were a God-send in the incredibly boring first half.
The way Lockhart structured some sentences was pretty weird too. There were a lot of short sentences, like, a lot. But they all worked? I don't know why but the massive amount of short sentences was everything. And sometimes the sentences
were written like this
for no reason.
Not going to lie, I loved that too.
The main Cadence is a bit of a drama queen. She has immense migraines that take her out for days at a time. But does she really need to use unnecessarily long and pretty nonsensical metaphors to describe them? Probably not. She's decided she wants to give something away every day. She gives away her pillow to a homeless girl, she gives away a picture of her grandmother with a piglet to a charity shop... I did tell you this book was weird (not the pillow, that was nice, just the picture, that was a tad odd). But, she did it not out of the goodness of her heart, but to make people feel sorry for her and to annoy her mum, or mummy as she calls her.No thanks.
I'll admit, a lot of Cadences problems are first-world, but after reading a lot of reviews for this book, I'd deem some of them a little unfair. The chronic pains she has isn't a first world problem. An abusive household isn't exactly a first world problem either. This was the reason for the majority of the controversy surrounding this book, and you're opinion may differ to mine. But even though Cadence can swim in pure gold if she so desired and go on a trip around Europe with her dad and have everything she's ever wanted, but, does it make her household any less abusive? No. The emotional abuse she has experienced in the past is not ok, even if she is rich. Yes, the family seems better when her POV is not a flashback, but that still doesn't excuse the past. She's bound to be a little mentally unstable and selfish with a family like that.
And for the other liars, they aren't as developed as much as I'd like. They each have a few key character traits and that's it. Johnny is the funny one, Miren is the bratty one and Gat is the pretentious one. That's pretty much it for Johnny and Mirren. That is their only defining points. Gat has a couple more because he's the love interest. They don't really lie, though. They don't really do much at all.
So, as you can imagine, the first half is ridiculously boring.
Then the second half hits you like a train.
There is so.
Many
Feels.
Before I knew it I was crying. I didn't even like the characters all that much, but as soon as she started piecing her memories back together the 4 bratty teens became my best friends and I cared about each of them. I don't know what literary magic E. Lockhart used, but it worked. I just couldn't stop crying. I'd tell you why, but it's a huge spoiler and people will attack me with pitchforks and fire. I'm still very confused as to why I got so upset. Am I more compassionate than I thought? Yet another reason why this book was incredibly strange.
So, if you want to read this, the weirdest book I've ever read, you're in for a wild time. Even with all its problems, and I'll admit, it's pretty problematic, I still love it. The main character is a spoilt drama queen, her friends are pretentious, just about everything is underdeveloped and the first half is just plain boring. If I can still love it with all those faults, it must really be a special book.
Have you read 'We Were Liars'? Love it or hate it? Read any more of E. Lockhart's work? Let me know in the comments!
Contact me! theintrovertswonderland@gmail.com
