Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Series: n/a
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: May 13, 2014
Source: Purchased
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

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.

Oh gee, I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. I saw a lot of buzz for We Were Liars. I kept reading people say… “Go into this book knowing nothing!” That is hard to do when everyone is talking about it.

I wasn’t even sure if I was going to read it, but then my cousin posted on my facebook page telling me how she just finished it, and it was such a good book. So I went ahead and grabbed it. It was my turn to pick the buddy read with Jess, so I made her get it too so we could read it together.

We both loved it. It’s different and very beautifully written. I kind of figured out what was going on, at least to some extent, but that’s because I was looking for it. Had I went in blindly I might not have been quick to figure things out.

I’m not going to write too much about this one, because for one, Jen already reviewed it… and there really isn’t all that much I can say without spoiling, ya know? Plus it’s one of those books I’m still in awe over and not sure what exactly to say.

I really loved it and that's all I can put into words right now! lol. And now I feel like I’m going to have to check out more stuff by this author. I agree with other reviewers in saying, that if you can go into this without knowing much. That’s the best.

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:

Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Pinterest

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Labels: delacorte press, e. lockhart, reviews, we were liars, whoa

{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:

Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Pinterest

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

{Audiobook} Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Title: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Author: E. Lockhart
Narrator:  Tanya Eby Sirois
Series: n/a
Length:  6 hrs 9 mins
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Publication Date: June 20, 2008
Source: purchased
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club.
Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Laundau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind.

This is the story of how she got that way.

It's been a couple of weeks since I listened to this audiobook.  I didn't mean to wait this long to review it, but them's the breaks.  Still, days later, I don't feel any differently about my first E. Lockhart novel than I did when I first finished it, and I'm kind of worried about how We Were Liars will fare now.

You see, unlike most people out there, I didn't love this book to pieces.  Actually, I found it kind of annoying for the most part.  If I hadn't been listening to the book instead of reading a physical copy, I probably would have set it aside and moved on.  But it's always easier for me to finish a story I'm not enjoying immensely when I'm listening to it while doing other activities, simply because I'm not technically wasting my time. (Money, sure, but not my time.)  The narrator was average...nothing stands out about the narration but it was decent and easy to listen to, anyway.

Frankie Landau-Banks is a girl who just realized she can no longer stand by and be left out of the good old boys club at her school.  Her father was a member of the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds and now her super-hot boyfriend is a member.  And both are keeping secrets and lying to her about it.  I'm all for the girl who stands up for her rights and wants to be noticed.  (Don't we all?)  But the antics, the shenanigans, the lengths to which Frankie will go to be a part of this group, even without their knowing it, is entirely implausible and rather detrimental to the point she's trying to make, in my opinion.

First of all, I don't know any teenage girl with so little life -- or so much free time -- that she could plan the hijinks this group of guys finds themselves a part of.  There were some really well-devised schemes and pranks thought up by one Frankie Landau-Banks, but between friends, dating, and homework, where would a girl find the time to conjure up plans of this magnitude...and fairly regularly from the sound of it?  With any book, I allow for some suspension of belief because it is fiction, but when it's supposed to be realistic fiction, I have to draw a line somewhere, and this book overstepped it at times.

Especially the part where no one -- aside from her roommate the previous year -- seems to recognize Frankie after she had a summer growth spurt/transformation.  She's suddenly very pretty and developed and no one realizes that she's not a new student, that she attended Alabaster Prep with them the year before as a freshman.  I know some boys tend to be on the dense-side and that some makeovers really can transform a person, but the fact that she'd sat at the same lunch table as some of these guys, had actual conversations with them before, should have left some sort of impression, especially since they all knew her older sister before she graduated.  It just doesn't add up to me.

One thing I did enjoy about this story was the way it ended.  Teenage girls don't get their happily ever after at the age of 16, and I thought that even though things ended well enough for our heroine, she still hadn't made any friends with her choice to deceive and lead the Bassets astray.  I always favor realistic endings to those that are picture perfect, even if they do leave me less than satisfied.

I said I was worried about Lockhart's next novel, but that's not due to the writing.  I actually quite liked the writing style. It's the characters that bothered me, or more accurately, their actions.  I didn't connect with the characters, and I didn't like them, nor did I feel any inclination to do so.  But the way Frankie was portrayed, it seemed that had her father and boyfriend simply offered up some platitudes and a secret or two about their secret society, her whole plan may never have come to fruition.  The story seems like it's about feminism when really it felt like a study of Frankie's relationships with the two most important men in her life at the time.  In the end, did she finally get the respect she so desperately craved?  That's still up for debate.  Also, what was up with what happened with the ex?  Was that just some kind of initiation thing?  It was never fully explained.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks was not a bad story.  I'd just heard so many wonderful things about this book, seen it on so many favorites lists over the years, that I went into the book with exceedingly high expectations that just weren't meant.  I still plan to read my ARC of We Were Liars, and I hope that it can set me straight where this author is concerned, especially since I haven't read any reviews for it yet.  I have a feeling that fact alone will help the book withstand my scrutiny.

GIF it to me straight:

An eye roll-inducing fluff piece masquerading as something deeper, though not altogether unenjoyable.

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:

Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Pinterest

Read More

Labels: audiobooks, contemporary, disappointments, disney hyperion, e. lockhart, reviews, the disreputable history of frankie landau-banks

Waiting on Wednesday: We Were Liars & Bright Before Sunrise

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's WoW selection is...

Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Series: n/a
Publisher: Random House
Publication Date: May 13, 2014

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.

I am beyond excited by the premise of this book.  I haven't read anything by the author before, but I've heard the most wonderful things.  This one is supposed to be on its way to me, so we'll see if the story and writing hold up against what I've heard.

Title: Bright Before Sunrise
Author: Tiffany Schmidt
Series: n/a
Publisher: Walker Children's
Publication Date: February 18, 2014

When Jonah is forced to move from Hamilton to Cross Pointe for the second half of his senior year, "miserable" doesn't even begin to cover it. He feels like the doggy-bag from his mother's first marriage and everything else about her new life—with a new husband, new home and a new baby—is an upgrade. The people at Cross Pointe High School are pretentious and privileged—and worst of all is Brighton Waterford, the embodiment of all things superficial and popular. Jonah’s girlfriend, Carly, is his last tie to what feels real... until she breaks up with him.

For Brighton, every day is a gauntlet of demands and expectations. Since her father died, she’s relied on one coping method: smile big and pretend to be fine. It may have kept her family together, but she has no clue how to handle how she's really feeling. Today is the anniversary of his death and cracks are beginning to show. The last thing she needs is the new kid telling her how much he dislikes her for no reason she can understand. She's determined to change his mind, and when they're stuck together for the night, she finally gets her chance.

Jonah hates her at 3p.m., but how will he feel at 3 a.m.?

One night can change how you see the world. One night can change how you see yourself.

I thought Schmidt's debut novel -- Send Me a Sign -- was cute and clever and handled some tough subject matter with grace, and I'm excited to see what she does with this new story.  I'm a big fan of hate-to-love stories, so I'm pretty sure this is going to be right up my alley.  Also, how adorbs is that cover?!?

Now that you know what I'm dying to read, what are you waiting on this week?  Feel free to share it in the comments or leave a link so I can stop by!

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Labels: bloomsbury, bright before sunrise, contemporary, e. lockhart, must-read, random house, tiffany schmidt, waiting on wednesday (wow), we were liars