I’ve had a pretty good streak of wonderful books here, but I guess it was bound to break.
I HATED this book. It was a truly awful waste of time, which became abundantly clear as early as the first chapter. I’d been on such a good Young Adult kick so when I saw how highly rated this book was, I was looking forward to a nice quick read to squeeze two books into one week. Flew a little too close to the sun (imagine Buster Bluth’s delivery for that line).
There is genuinely nothing good to say about this book. It was super sloppily written, changing style frequently and infuriatingly and with totally extraneous interludes of fake fairytales. The characters were all SO unlikable. The descriptions were lazy and pretentious- I don’t know who E. Lockhart is (and I don’t blame him/her for not wanting to attach his/her full name to this total atrocity) but it’s pretty clear that this is a person who spent zero time on development of any kind. At one point, the main character refers to her super wealthy grandfather as “doing business I never bothered to understand.” Pathetically lazy- just give him a job description!
Most of all, the “amazing twist” that I was promised was the WORST. The book went absolutely nowhere, even with this allegedly exciting ending. (I won’t spoil it, but I also think I’d roll my eyes too many times to be productive while writing out the explanation.)
I did read some reviews before writing this post because I wanted to understand what led me to read it in the first place and I am SO upset to report that other people actually enjoyed it! This includes John Green of a previous post, who is an absolutely incredible young adult writer. I am wondering if I read the wrong book somehow. Maybe not the single worst book I’ve read in my entire life (that honor has long belonged to Watership Down, the bane of my sixth grade existence), but it’s up there. I’m frankly disappointed that with 150+ books on my wish list, I bothered with this book. I won’t waste any more time on it- absolute do NOT read.
You’ll like this if: you like lazy, sloppy and pretentious books that are painfully awful through and through. No, really. I don’t understand who would like this book, so you’re on your own here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Happy reading!
Buy We Were Liars (but don’t)
carlyreads 