We Were Liars in Around the World in 80 Books

Mar 09, 2014 Astrid Lim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: puzzle, young-adult, tragedy, america, twist, secret-santa, summer

Either you will love this book or hate it. Either you will think this book very pretentious, trying too hard and unoriginal, or you will love its bravado, crazy twist and unpredictable scenes.
The story revolves around the Sinclairs, prominent East Coast family with old money and private island for summer holidays. The Liars, consisting of 3 cousins and 1 friend of family, were bonding during their summers, from kids until their teenage days. But one day, a sad, dark tragedy ruined their lives.

T ...more

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Nov 02, 2014 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was ok

Shelves: angst, lotsa-buzz, beach-cover, childhood-love, unreliable-narrator, young-adult

This keeps showing up in Best of lists for 2014, so I had to read it and find out for myself.

To my surprise, I read it in just a few hours.

I am not the intended audience for this book.

I'm a 47 year old mom who enjoys reading YA sometimes. Books like The Hunger Games, Daughter of Smoke & Bone, and Harry Potter, have cross over appeal for all ages. This book? Does not.

This is an excellent book if you're young, maybe between maybe 13 to 15 years old, maybe a little older. I think I might have love This keeps showing up in Best of lists for 2014, so I had to read it and find out for myself.

To my surprise, I read it in just a few hours.

I am not the intended audience for this book.

I'm a 47 year old mom who enjoys reading YA sometimes. Books like The Hunger Games, Daughter of Smoke & Bone, and Harry Potter, have cross over appeal for all ages. This book? Does not.

This is an excellent book if you're young, maybe between maybe 13 to 15 years old, maybe a little older. I think I might have loved it at that age. It is full of angst and imagery and melodrama and repetition and short dramatic sentences and none of it worked for me. Also, I saw the twist coming. Instead of gasping, I kind of rolled my eyes at the characters' stupidity and sighed a little. I feel really bad even bashing this a little. It was so earnest. It tried so hard.

Also, the title really bugged me. Early in the book, we get title: "we were Liars" because that was the nickname used for the four cousins each summer ... but we are never told WHY. What made them "Liars"?? This was just more ridiculous, manufactured drama.

The writing is exceptionally florid, in that angsty melodramatic way of subpar teen books, complete with short, choppy sentences and bizarre line breaks for extra drama:

I leaned in and kissed him.
He touched my face. Ran his hand down my neck and along my collarbone. The light from the attic window shone down on us. Our kiss was electric and soft,
and tentative and certain,
terrifying and exactly right.
I felt the love rush from me to Gat and from Gat to me.
We were warm and shivering,
and young and ancient, and alive.
I was thinking, It’s true. We already love each other.
We already do.

and another example of the over-the-top imagery that is used inconsistently throughout to convey ... what? ... how dramatically tortured and fragile our heroine is? The whole bit about hearts spilling out and veins opening and blood dripping was ridiculous:

Every time Gat said these things, so casual and truthful, so oblivious—my veins opened. My wrists split. I bled down my palms. I went light-headed. I’d stagger from the table or collapse in quiet shameful agony, hoping no one in the family would notice.Especially not Mummy.

Gat almost always saw, though. When blood dripped on my bare feet or poured over the book I was reading, he was kind. He wrapped my wrists in soft white gauze and asked me questions about what had happened.

This just isn't the book for me. ...more

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Jul 31, 2014 alana rated it it was ok

Shelves: young-adult, addicted-to-ya-2014-books, mental-health

I found We Were Liars to be overly angsty and predictable. A young girl has lost her memory due to some trauma relating to her summer holiday's on her posh family's personal island. She finally returns to the island, and her memories start to return. Sad, disturbing things happened, but the foreshadowing is heavy making the mystery easy to unravel.

I really didn't like the lapse into poetic prose. Also, the whole upper crust debate over family inheritance seems more like a mythic American culture ...more

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Oct 30, 2014 Sarah rated it really liked it

Shelves: recommend-to-friends, young-adult

Pick up this book for the mystery - the only description is that there's a twist. But stay for the beautiful writing. As far as the mystery goes - I will say only this. It wasn't that suspenseful. I think the book is marketed as "THERE IS A TWIST AT THE END OF THIS BOOK" because otherwise, the book itself doesn't really build suspense. I kept turning the pages because I loved her writing, but not because I was so desperate to see what happened. That said, the twist did come as a surprise to me a ...more

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Aug 27, 2014 Katie rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult, female-author, kindle

As others have said, it is hard to say much without giving the plot away, but I enjoyed this book. Some of the teen romance was a bit much at times, but not enough so to be really annoying.

A nice quick read, just what I was looking for. After spending weeks reading the same book, it is always nice to be able to finish one off in a day.

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Jul 04, 2021 Ann marked it as dnf

Dnf-ed 2 chapters in. Chapter 1 - author patted themselves in the back via the first-person narrator for using the word "suffer" in different ways. Chapter 2 - inserted poetry writing styles. ...more

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