Books & Chocolate

Where to start with this book... I'm between a 2.5 and a 3. Since I liked it more than some of the 2's I rated recently, I'll go with a 3. 

I enjoyed this book.

I didn't enjoy this book.

Sorry, but I had to do it. I started to write more, but I just can't make myself go there. I think style is my ultimate complaint about We Were Liars. I didn't like it at all. It sounded pretentious, but maybe that's what Lockhart was going for since Cadence was a Sinclair. Even though Cadence was 'different' than her mummy (and who actually says this in America?) and aunties and didn't want her grandfather's money, she sounded like a spoiled snob. It's not that I didn't like her, I just couldn't connect enough to care anything about her or anyone else. That's why I say the style is what made this book not work for me. 

It wasn't just the "We were there. We were never there at all." Or something like that, anyway. It was also the over-the-top dramatic descriptions of everything she felt. The first one that got me was:

"My father put a last suitcase into the backseat of the Mercedes (he was leaving Mummy with only the Saab), and started the engine.

Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed..."

At first I was, "What?? He shot her??" Then when it got to the heart in the flower bed part I realized it just the author's way of describing that Cadence's heart was breaking over her father leaving.

This over-the-top dramatic writing might win some awards or impress professors, but for this reader it made me want to laugh. It was written as though it actually happened, not stating that that's how it felt - and that for me was just too much of a distraction to actually have the effect that the author probably wanted me to have. 

I will say that I did not guess the ending. I'm usually pretty good about figuring things out, but not this time. Maybe it's because I was so disconnected from the characters that I wasn't really trying all that hard to solve the mystery. Either way, that's what bumped this up to a 3 for me. I like when a book can surprise me.

The rest I'll have to review as a spoiler. So if you plan to read We Were Liars, don't read the rest of my review. It really is best to go in blind. I'd suggest reading the sample of the book and if the style doesn't bother you then go for it.