Book Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Title: We Were Liars

Author: E. Lockhart

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Pages: 242

Format: E-book

Published: May, 2014

Price: $12.43 -> Rp169.315 (Amazon)

Rating: 3½ / 5 stars

Date started: October 25, 2015 - Date finished: October 28, 2015

Synopsis:

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.

Review:

This book tells the story of a wealthy and powerful family called the Sinclairs.

Cadence Sinclair Eastman suffered a head trauma after an incident that occurred in the family-owned island during summer fifteen. Shortly thereafter, she was absent from summers after that and was only allowed to go back there when she was eighteen years old. When she went back to the family island she met the rest of the Sinclairs. Her grandfather, aunts, and cousins. But what she missed the most was The Liars, consisting of Mirren, Johnny, and Gat. Gat is the one Caddy loves but she grew distant from him (well from the others too actually).

Because of the incident on summer fifteen Caddy doesn't remember anything about that summer, she kept asking her family, especially her mother about what happened but they all said that it is better for Caddy to remember it by herself when the time comes. When Caddy reached the island, everything had changed. Not just from the main house, which was renovated, but the attitude of everyone too. They're so worried about the Caddy's health and think of her as a fragile girl. What kind of incident could change the Sinclairs to be so distant from Caddy?

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

Well, I must say I'm a little bit disappointed in this book. The hype of this book was just too high and it didn't deliver to its mega-hypeness for me. I was ready to be blown away and be in love with this book after I finish but it didn't happen. I'll admit this book was beautifully written and I can sense the aristocracy through the writing of E. Lockhart but as I was reading this book from start to finish I didn't feel "the feels" during my reading experience.

E. Lockhart has a way of weaving this story to keep the readers intrigued in reading until the end. During the middle part of this book I was like "when will the incident be revealed? ugh!" and when it was revealed I was like "WHOA WTF DID I JUST READ?!"

Always do what you're afraid to do.

...

I will prove myself strong when they think I am sick. 

I will prove myself brave when they think I am weak.

The characters the author has created was very, very dysfunctional and messed up. They're these characters who come from a wealthy line of family. From the outside it seems like they're perfect but people don't see what happens inside the Sinclair house. My favorite character would be Caddy's Grandfather, which name I've forgotten already. I like that he is an authoritative figure in the family, people know that he's the one who calls the shots, and he is respected by every member of the family. The grandfather is such a strong character, he knows he's in charge but he's not aggressive. I know he's not the main character but the main character herself (in terms of characteristics) I find very usual. She's the type of character who is born and raised rich and is sick of the richness of her family and wants to get out from it so she rebelled.

We are Sinclairs. Beautiful. Privileged. Damaged. Liar. We live, least in the summertime, on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts. Perhaps that is all you need to know.

I do agree that if you get into this story you should just dive in blindly. Don't read reviews of people who've read this book I'm afraid you'll get yourself spoiled. In fact, don't read this review if you haven't read the book yet and if you have read this review before reading the book then I'm sorry but I've warned you.

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