Book Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Seriously, I actually don’t know how to start writing my review for this book. I don’t know how to put my feelings into words. You see, not like my usual reading time (usually about a week or two to finish a book), this book, I finished it for only few hours. Well, thanks to my friends who urged me to read this on a very short notice. My friend from Pages Unraveled, Lawrence, lent me his precious copy just so that I would read it, because he wants to have someone he can talk to and share all his feelings after reading the book. Ha! Well, that’s what friends are for. So yeah, I set aside all my currently reading books to make way for this one. Too good, it’s only a very quick read.

We Were Liars revolves around the story of The Sinclairs – a wealthy family who owns a private island in Massachusetts. The Sinclairs spend their summers on their private island, Beechwood. On those summers, there built a group of four friends – the main protagonist Cadence, her cousins Mirren and Johnny, and their friend Gat – they’re known as the Liars. 

I didn’t expect to finish this on a whim. I expected it to be a long read regardless of its few pages because on the first few chapters, I actually got bored. Well yeah, I was really confused with all the happenings — maybe because of too much metaphor being used (?) or maybe because I started reading the book during my class so I had to split my concentration for the book and the class discussions. lol

But well, I didn’t lose hope on the story just basing from its few chapters so I still continued and bam! Good thing I continued reading the book!

So, this is a kind of story where you can’t put it down after starting it. It is where even if you’re all tired, you still want to go on and finish it to find out what the hell is going on already (well except for me, I just can’t give up my sleep. I fell asleep while in the middle of reading. lol). I really like E. Lockhart’s writing style. She’s not beating around the bush but at the same time she’s keeping you thrilled through out the story. Everything is happening so fast and you end up guessing what will be the ending or the plot twist.

Maybe you’re now wondering why is this book categorized as thriller, as to when you put it, it’s like only a normal family story, right? Okay. So one summer gathering of The Sinclair family, there was an accident. An accident that changed the whole Sinclair family. An accident that will keep you thinking, questioning, guessing and wondering what really happened on that accident.

It’s also then that made me think about the title of this book, We Were Liars – it made me confused. It kept me thinking what really is the meaning of that title. I even had my own guesses of the endings, but I didn’t expect what happened next. Such plot-twist.

The ending made my heart ache so much. I’ve never felt my heart tighten this much since Tuesdays with Morrie. I cried, yes.

So those are my thoughts about this book. This book is beautifully written and very unexpected.

Do you want to know what happened? It’s for you to find out. Once you ask me, I will only tell a lie.