We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

I feel like I’m the last person in the book blogging world to have read We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. It was all the rage two summers ago, if I remember correctly. Some people loved it, some felt it was predictable, others merely jumped on one bandwagon or the other. It was kind of an ‘it’ book of the moment – one I knew I’d read, but maybe once all the hub-bub had died down.

We Were Liars is set at the holiday vacation place of a well to-do East Coast extended family. Yet there is something our protagonist, a 15 year old girl, can’t remember due to an accident the previous summer. And that is all I’m going to say about that.

We Were Liars is a young adult novel. A lot of people out there say that doesn’t make a difference, but it does. It shows in the writing quality. It also means I blew through the novel in a couple of hours, and sometimes that’s a good thing. There is also a twist that ‘everybody’ saw coming. I did not. It might be because I don’t read a lot of YA novels. I was surprised and it was a great twist.

Who would like this book? I read We Were Liars beside the pool in Tenerife and it was perfect for that type of situation. It was a quick read, unchallenging, but kept me turning the pages. It definitely reads as YA, despite of what people may say, but it is a fun lark. Kind of like watching a ridiculous teen movie – good for what it is. But I would hesitate to recommend it to a serious reader.