【Book Review】We Were Liars

We Were Liars

    Now I decide to start a new type of rating system. In the past, I always only gave a general rating of a book, but now I will start to split the ratings into different categories such as character and plot, and I will give each of them a rating, and, of course, there is still going to be an overall rating. So here is the first book that I start to use this new rating system.

Overall Rating: ★★

Characters: ★

Plot: ★★★

Writing：★★

    To be honest, We Were Liars is probably one of the worst books I have ever read in the year of 2016. The plot of the book is quite difficult to summarize without a spoiler. Basically, the story happens around a beautiful and superior family that actually has some dark secrets. The protagonist Cadence is going to unfold these dark secrets and find out the dreadful event that takes place two years ago. OK, now I have to dive into the spoiler section, or I will have nothing much to say.

-Spoiler Alert!!!!-

    Now, I have three very huge problems about this book.

The first one is its writing style.

E. Lockhart tends

to separate sentences

into short lines

which I am not

very comfortable with

period

I definitely understand the fact that some people may like this type of writing style dearly. However, I am not a huge fan of these short weirdly separated sentences. And that is my first and the smallest problems of this book.

The second problem I have is the plot. Seriously, the plot is so cliché that I don’t even want to summarize it. A group of teenagers are having coming-of-age problems and why-we-are-so-rich-and-superior-than-others problems. Then, more importantly, I was extremely confused by the plot. Initially, I thought I was reading some teenage romance story, then I realized that it should be a coming-of-age story just like The Catcher in the Rye. However, through my progression of the book, I thought it is supposed to be a family drama type of book, and then I thought it should be some kind of crime or mystery novels. And FINALLY, I figured out that this is actually a SUPERNATURAL story, with GHOSTS in it! I do accept some people’s arguments that Cadence is just going through a mental illness, the three figures of the liars are probably virtual and have never actually existed. I am OK with this explanation, but I am still really confused with the book. Also, if they are only just the manipulation of Cadence’s mind, how can everyone else never cares about Cadence strange behavior when she just talks to nobody through thin air? It doesn’t MAKE sense!

And now, here is the biggest problem that I have toward this book. I HATE everyone in this book, I cannot feel related to anybody. I would like to say that if you don’t like any of the characters, why do you keep reading the book? The only thing that I am relieved about is that this book is actually quite short, or it will just be an endless torture. Now, I want to talk about the protagonist of this book. I cannot express how I hate her, but she is definitely one of the worst female characters I have ever encountered. There are several reasons for that.

I have millions of complaints about her. She is overdramatic and holds these bizarre thoughts that I can never understand in the course of my entire life. She is such a huge hypocrite that I will automatically recall her name whenever I see the word hypocrite. She hates her grandeur family, and she wants to escape the island. She gives away her stuff, and she tries to do charities and criticize her mother’s relentless to be kind to others. At the same time, she also never pays any attention to the people who work on their island. She doesn’t even know their names! She depends on her family’s wealth, but hates it at the same time and pretends to be some kind of saint who is too divine to pay attention to economic affairs. HYPOCRITE.

She also confuses me so much. At the beginning, she describes how she is shot by her father, which literally makes me feel that she is actually wounded. But then I realized that all her descriptions are somewhat unreliable when I read the part where the blood starts to spray from her mouth or something. I have no clue she is hurt or not throughout the entire book. Why can she not act like Holden Caulfield since they are all unreliable narrators? I have to say that Holden is one thousand times better than Cadence. At least, he doesn’t accidentally burnt his close friends to death. Here is another part that is beyond my comprehension. How can Cadence just wants to do some kind of fire burning experiment and accidentally burn her friends ALIVE!?? I don’t understand it! I really don`t. She is either so stupid and possess great egotism or her mental illness already takes place before the accident (My other guess is that she is drunk. Duh). That is the only explanation I can come up with concerning her stupid behavior. Now I am more convinced by the manipulation theory, because if I am one of the dead liars, I will probably so angry that I want to kill Cadence as soon as I see her instead of being a nice and gentle ghost friend.

Overall, I am so disappointed by this book. Maybe I just have too much expectation toward it. Personally, I will not recommend this book to others since I had a hard time reading it. But if you are a fun of E. Lockhart or a fun of mystery and protagonist-has-mental-illness-problem type of book, then you will probably enjoy this book more than I do.

Now after reviewing this book, I can try to get rid of it:)