Tuesday, May 13, 2014

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Source: Netgally
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.

In We Were Liars, E. Lockhart presents engaging character, a brilliant plot, and bare, but beautiful writing with a lot of originality and an enchanting setting. I adore this book, because of how brilliantly it was written. First off,  there is a huge cast of characters. Each one had something about them. Cadence or "Cady" is damaged by her accident and I found that part to be very interesting.  Mirren was a great balance of intelligent and girly. Johnny always made me laugh. Gat is mysterious and also Cady's love interest. I loved their interaction and dug into the book wanting more. The plot of this book is masterly crafted. Like I did not expect the ending and I think is what made it such an impact that I didn't guess what was happening. I haven't been surprised in a book in so long. This was also a fairly quick read for me. I found it addicting and didn't want to stop reading this book. E. Lockhart's writing is gorgeous in this book. I have enjoyed her previous books, but the writing in this book is spectacular and magical. I kept on re-reading parts, because the writing was so magical. This book had a lot of originality and I want more books this. Part of the appeal came from the setting and the Sinclair family. If I had the chance, I would join them for the summer. Overall, I adored this book. You need to read this book, if you adore contemporary novels, but want an original and enchanting one. Actually, just read this book as soon as possible and pass it on.  

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Why We Really Need Diverse Books

Almost 4 years ago, I wrote a post on how I wanted to see books that had teens struggling with chronic illness. It is a part of my story and I obviously want to read more close to mine or different. I have taken the advice of some of the people and began to write these books.
I am just one of the many stories in the world. We each experience life in such a different way. We all have different childhoods. We each think about school in a different way. Some of use are Caucasian, African American, Asian, Hispanic, mixed-race, or a completely different one that I am missing. Some of us were born female or male and some have a different gender identity then what they were  born with or don't have one. There are also variances in sexual preferences and many more aspects of a person. These all matter, because people matter.
Since studying English in a formal university setting, I have learned that the cannon is created by the books that are written. We are able to see aspects of Greek culture, because of the Plays and Epics that they left behind. The same goes to Beowulf and many more pieces of work. They show us a piece of history. Hopefully we can leave the same for our ancestors, but like those Greek plays, many marginalized groups are being left out. I think that it is important to represent everyone well. If they are unable to do this, we are failing them, not as just readers, but also as writers. People need to be able to find ourselves and the people that we love in the pages of books. 

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