Reviewing: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

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.

You know how I loved the prose and writing style of Shatter Me but couldn't stand them in Mind Games? This book kind of falls in the middle.

I think it was supposed to be haunting, but it fell short and hit something like wow this main character is seriously mentally unstable. Which, she is. There's no questioning it, not even by people who whole-heartedly loved this book. (I think. I haven't asked all of them). 

You know how the blurb tells you nothing? Yeah. I went in blind, and I had no idea what I was reading 99% of the time. Who is who??? How are they related??? Why do all of the houses have different names??? 

Not only that, but just... the main character's family is absolutely terrible.

Not terrible as in horribly written, but terrible as in insane, as in what the heck are they thinking.

Half the time while reading this book, I didn't even know what I was thinking.

The writing style was also kind of emotionless. Don't get me wrong-- the words are big and beautiful and descriptive. But they never describe how Cady feels. She just says: He is warm. (Which is so creepy out of context, my bad.) She talks about everything like she is an onlooker, not like she's actually experiencing it.

Also,
everything in
the book
is written like
this.

Okay, not everything. More like half.

And the book wasn't all bad! I've only said negative things so far, but there were some things I loved about this book, like:

• The plot twist.

But I didn't quite like how it was further explained later. It was still confusing. You get like three different versions of what happened. One at the beginning, two at the end. Only one of them is true and it's the WORST ONE EVER. (by worst, I mean depressing)

• Jonny.

Yeah, nothing more to add. He was just fabulous. I nearly laughed at some of the stuff he said, and believe me, this is not a laughing book.

• How the book shows the affect of their parents' craziness on the Liars and their struggle to fight it.

It just felt so real. The hate and anger-- I mean, I'd probably be just as crazy as most of the people in this book if I was raised like them. 

• The fairytale sections about the king and his three daughters.

I loved how it linked in to the following chapters.

Now, more about the plot twist.

It was delivered in such a way that I had to stop reading for a second just to think Wait, what did I just read? Did that seriously just happen? How is that even possible? DID THAT SERIOUSLY JUST HAPPEN.

And, yeah.

I cried at the ending.