Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Book Title: We Were Liars

Author: E. Lockhart

Release Date: May 13th, 2014

Publisher: Delecorte Press

Genre: YA/Contemporary

Standalone

Book Link: Goodreads

Pre-Order Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

Synopsis from Goodreads:

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.

Disclaimer: I received this e-ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Review:

This book has been very highly regarded among my fellow bloggers so when I was granted access to this title, I was excited. I had very high hopes for this book. Upon finishing it, I felt let down in a big way.It wasn’t this amazing book that had reduced me to tears. It was a pretty “meh” book for me overall.

From the beginning, I knew that this book was going to be different. I hated the writing style. It was lyrical and it bored me. I thought the male love interest was a colossal jerk and I couldn’t understand what Cady saw in him. Also I really didn’t like Cady all that much. At times, I felt sympathy for her, but I never really warmed up to her the way I wanted to.

Through the first 70% of the book, I was bored. It seemed like the book was too long for not much to happen. Maybe it had to do with the insanely slow moving plot that only picked up in the last 30% of the book. Maybe it had to do with the characters. There seemed to be too many of them and not enough time was devoted to really developing them the way I would have liked.

Now the last 30% was like someone completely different wrote the book. The writing was less lyrical and more straightforward and the feels were there in a way that they hadn’t been in the first seventy percent. It was like it was a totally new book. That was really disconcerting to me.This book lacked fluidity throughout.

I’ll admit that in the last 30% I teared up. I didn’t full on sob like a baby, but tears were produced. In the interest of not spoiling things, that’s all I’ll say about the ending. Oh and that things aren’t always how they seem.

If I was rating just the first seventy percent of the book, it would get only one star. If I was rating just the last 30% of the book, it would be getting 4.5 stars. I’ll average it out to three stars. I hated the first seven-tenths of the book but I loved the last three-tenths of the book.Overall I didn’t hate the book, but I didn’t love it either.However, I know many other people loved it, so some of you may as well.

Impostor (Variants #1) by Susanne Winnacker

Book Title: Impostor (Variants #1)

Author: Susanne Winnacker

Release Date: May 23rd, 2013

Publisher: Razorbill

Genre: YA Mystery/SciFi

Series: Book 1 in Variants series

Book Link: Goodreads

Purchase Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Can Tessa pose as Madison . . . and stop a killer before it’s too late? 

Tessa is a Variant, able to absorb the DNA of anyone she touches and mimic their appearance. Shunned by her family, she’s spent the last two years training with the Forces with Extraordinary Abilities, a secret branch of the FBI. When a serial killer rocks a small town in Oregon, Tessa is given a mission: she must impersonate Madison, a local teen, to find the killer before he strikes again. 

Tessa hates everything about being an impostor—the stress, the danger, the deceit—but loves playing the role of a normal girl. As Madison, she finds friends, romance, and the kind of loving family she’d do anything to keep. Amid action, suspense, and a ticking clock, this super-human comes to a very human conclusion: even a girl who can look like anyone struggles the most with being herself.

Disclaimer: I received this e-book from Razorbill via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Review:

The synopsis looked awesome and so I requested it all the while crossing my fingers for it. Surprise, surprise, I got it. I was excited when I started it.Unfortunately, I didn’t end up enjoying it much.In fact it narrowly escaped being a DNF for me. Which I hate.I mean c’mon, awesome abilities and romance. How can it go wrong?

Well it can go wrong with the protagonist being a very immature sixteen year old. It can go wrong with her obsession over Alec taking over EVERY part of the book. It can go wrong when Alec is talked about in terms of his hotness. And people wonder why teenage girls are so shallow. They are shallow because the writers make them that way.

I thought Alec was an idiot too. I mean I felt terrible for his girlfriend Kate. She was not painted in a good light and I think that was because we were supposed to shun her and root for immature Tessa and moronic Alec.

There was no character development which is a biggie for me so I was really disappointed about that. I was screaming at Tessa to just grow the eff UP. But that didn’t help at all. She remained as teenage-ry as possible. The writing was just very simplistic and that really bothered me. I mean I don’t need something like J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy but geez, sometimes the writing reminded me of a high schooler writing fanfiction.

Overall this had a lot of promise but definitely was not executed well. The characters were flat, the writing was blah. So unfortunately I will be giving this book one star. Clearly I seem to be in the minority but this book just wasn’t for me.

Review: Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott

Book Title: Heartbeat

Author: Elizabeth Scott

Publish Date: January 28th, 2014

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Genre: YA/Contemporary

Standalone

Book Link: Goodreads

Pre-Order Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Synopsis from Goodreads: 

Life. Death. And…Love?

Emma would give anything to talk to her mother one last time. Tell her about her slipping grades, her anger with her stepfather, and the boy with the bad reputation who might be the only one Emma can be herself with.

But Emma can’t tell her mother anything. Because her mother is brain-dead and being kept alive by machines for the baby growing inside her.

Meeting bad-boy Caleb Harrison wouldn’t have interested Old Emma. But New Emma-the one who exists in a fog of grief, who no longer cares about school, whose only social outlet is her best friend Olivia-New Emma is startled by the connection she and Caleb forge.

Feeling her own heart beat again wakes Emma from the grief that has grayed her existence. Is there hope for life after death-and maybe, for love?

Disclaimer: I received this book from Edelweiss in exchange for my honest opinion.

Review:

Grief manifests itself in so many ways, and sometimes it’s hard to feel pity for someone who uses their grief as an excuse to treat people like crap. There is no reason to treat people like crap. 

That was my biggest issue with Emma. She’s grieving the loss of her mother to the point where she treats her stepfather like crap.He’s clearly hurting as well but Emma doesn’t see it. All she sees is the decision to keep her mom on life support until it’s safe for her baby brother to be born. She doesn’t even consider the probability that her stepfather and her mother had already had that “what if” conversation.

I get it. I get feeling like no one else knows her mother like she does. I feel the same way about my own mother. But  what I don’t understand is why she is so angry at Dan. He didn’t kill her mother. Yet Emma blames him completely for it.

Emma was horribly selfish all the way through the book and it frustrated me to no end.I felt worse for Dan actually. He was trying to talk to her. He was hurting and he was scared for the baby.Yet Emma turned a deaf ear to him. He was the only family she had nearby and he still loved her and needed her in his life. Emma was so angry that she didn’t see it.

The thing with Caleb was weird too. I didn’t buy that they could be in love by the end of the book. That was a relationship formed out of convenience. Caleb and Emma understood each other, but a couple has to have more than just a shared experience of watching someone they love die.While a truamautic experience can and often does change people, this was just too much. She didn’t even know Caleb before her mother died and suddenly just because she dies, Emma notices him? Yeah, call me skeptical, but that’s not how it works.

The only portion I liked was the bit with Dan about 3/4’s of the way through it. Emma finally got all her feelings out and Dan was allowed to get his out too. However, I don’t think the instant forgiveness thing worked here.Given how angry Emma was throughout the book, it’s just not plausible that she’s suddenly not angry with Dan for his decision. 

The premise was good and I was super excited for it. However the execution of it fell flat. The only character I actually liked was Dan, the rest of them were boring and obnoxious.Editing-wise the book was great.This book will be getting 2 stars. I didn’t enjoy this one all that much.