{Audiobook} Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Narrator(s): Ariadne Meyers
Series: n/a
Length: 6 hrs 27 mins
Publisher: Listening Library
Publication Date: May 13, 2014
Source: ARC received from publisher, audio borrowed from library
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

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.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

What everyone says of this book is true:  the less you know about it going into the story, the better. I have to say that I enjoyed the writing style much more in this book than in the previous book I'd read of hers, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. If you're already a fan of the author's, I'm pretty sure you'll like this one, too.

The thing is, this book is twisty. There are tons of flashbacks. And it's full of the unexpected. I knew going into it that I should expect it to be unpredictable, and so I was watching for whatever it is I was supposed to watch for. At least, I was at first. Because the first half of the story was honestly kind of bland to me, I spent more time analyzing than I did enjoying the book. But then something changed, the story became engaging, and I forgot to be on the lookout for anything. Which is probably what was supposed to happen, but it still caught me off guard, and that BIG twist got me. I want to compare it to something, but doing so would give everything away, I think.

So, instead, I'll just talk about how fabulous the narrator for this audiobook was. Ariadne Meyers also narrated Bittersweet by Sarah Ockler, which is kind of perfect, because she brings the same type of narration to We Were Liars, by way of Cadence Sinclair Eastman. Cadence is a spoiled socialite who has a tendency toward whiney, but it isn't grating. It's just who she is. She's also very visual in her descriptions, and Meyers brought those descriptions to life. Again, I can't say much more without spoiling anything.

I do wish the "liar" aspect had been explored a bit more, but in the end, I get it. Too much would have meant less mystery, and honestly, the not knowing what's going to happen is the best part of this book. I usually find contemporary novels all too predictable, but not this one. This one WINS in that respect.

GIF it to me straight:

About the author:

E. Lockhart is the author of a number of teen novels. She has had nine official boyfriends, if you count the boy who asked her to go with him at a 7th grade dance and then basically never talked to her again. She has never been on a sports team of any kind and got excused from gym class by going to ballet lessons. She has a tattoo, cuts her own hair, and has worn the same perfume since high school (Kiehl's Chinese Flowers). In her office are two Betty & Veronica dolls, a photo of a particularly fat bull dog, an official business card from “Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective,” and the 1920s flapper dress she wore to the prom.

Find Emily:

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Labels: audiobooks, contemporary, e. lockhart, must-read, mystery, random house, reviews, summer, unreliable narrator, we were liars