We Were Liars
We Were Liars
Once upon a time, there were the "Sinclairs. Beautiful. Privileged. Damaged. Liar. We live, least in the summertime, on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts. Perhaps that is all you need to know.”
Once upon a time, there was a stupid girl who started We Were Liars on the night before Thanksgiving at 11:30PM. A girl, who just intended to read the first page. Once upon a time, at 1:08 AM I stopped reading....the last page...and BOOM, except there was no boom, no one else around, but the characters in the book, they were still there and so I sat and waited to fully comprehend what just happened. The world was still intact, no earthquake, but for awhile, after I was done everything felt so different, I was sure something earth-shattering had happened; it was just the end of the story. The ending was perplexing, puzzling, and overwhelming all at once. I cannot say more it will spoil it but the end, the end, just WOW!
The book is remarkably well written, fast paced and engaging. I felt so connected with Cady, and her voice that stopping in the middle of this book was impossible! I was surprised by this because a white privileged rich kid who summers in an expensive mansion and attends private schools is completely foreign to me, yet I was completely able to relate to her. While her story, at first feels like, a dumb spoiled rich kid ala Pretty Little Liars, except, it isn't that black and white. Yes she is white, privileged, rich and sheltered. However she is also insightful, brilliant, flawed and tragic.
Whole the whole novel is phenomenal; the addition of the fairytales, as a part first seems like an innocuous addition, yet when you turn the last page, you want to go back and reread her first thoughts about the "real fairy tales": the idea of three little pigs, three fairies, et al and then reread and savor every word of the fairytales that Cady writes about in her notebook all that summer.
I will tell you my heart broke as I turned the last few pages, and in spite of all I believe, the author brought a level of Verisimilitude to the book that left me thinking just maybe it was not all a hallucination; just maybe "There are parallel universes in which different events have happened to the same people. An alternate choice has been made, or an accident has turned out differently. Everyone has duplicates of themselves in these other worlds. Different selves with different lives, different luck Variations.” ― E. Lockheart
