What I Saw and How I Lied Review

What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Release date: November 1, 2008

Source: Gift

When Evie's father returned home from World War II, the family fell back into its normal life pretty quickly. But Joe Spooner brought more back with him than just good war stories. When movie-star handsome Peter Coleridge, a young ex-GI who served in Joe's company in postwar Austria, shows up, Evie is suddenly caught in a complicated web of lies that she only slowly recognizes. She finds herself falling for Peter, ignoring the secrets that surround him . . . until a tragedy occurs that shatters her family and breaks her life in two.

As she begins to realize that almost everything she believed to be a truth was really a lie, Evie must get to the heart of the deceptions and choose between her loyalty to her parents and her feelings for the man she loves. Someone will have to be betrayed. The question is . . . who?

Review:

What I Saw and How I Lied was an exciting, well written novel. I haven’t read a lot of historical fiction lately and that’s one of my favorite genres, so I was really excited to read this. The summary gave a basic idea to what the novel was about, but there was so much more going on. This was a perfect spiral of romance and mystery. Evie was a character that really changed throughout the novel. I was surprised at how easily Evie latched onto Peter, but from the beginning she seemed more like a follower than a leader. Always lurking behind her best friend. I liked how by the end of the book she was able to stand up for herself and take control. Although Evie made some bad choices, she learned a lot of important lessons. One of the most important lessons she learned was how important it was to be honest. Her whole family was tangled in a web of lies and they had to deal with a lot to understand the importance of honesty.

The plot was original and I loved the mystery and suspense at the end. You never find out what really happened, but the reader goes along with the family as they deal with what happened. There were a lot of great historical facts tied in and the details were fantastic, but for some reason I could never really get attached to Evie. She was an interesting character, but there was nothing about her I could relate to and at times I couldn’t respect her or her decisions at all. I would recommend this book solely because the plot was original and exciting, but don’t expect to adore Evie. The plot line, a young girl falling in love with an older man, is one reason I would recommend this only to people 13 and up. There were several sexual situations that were described in quite a bit of detail, but if you’ve read Anatomy of a Boyfriend or Forever this was nothing. All in all, What I Saw and How I Lied was a creative and well written novel that kept me reading, especially at the end which was very well done. Once I reached the last couple of chapters it was especially hard to put down, although at times Evie drove me crazy and made me want to throw the book down, I’m glad I read it and the plot made it worth it in the end.

Oh and I just want to add- the cover is really cool. The girl’s (who I’m assuming is Evie) lipstick really pops against the black background.

Overall: 4 out of 5 stars