Title: Seven Ways We Lie
Author: Riley Redgate
Genre: YA, Contemporary, Romance
First published: March 8th 2016
Publisher: Amulet Books
Finished reading: June 30th 2016
Pages: 352
“I stand there looking after him with the feeling that – just like that, in one careless moment – I might’ve ruined somebody’s life.”
I have heard mixed things about this book in the past, and now I’ve read Seven Ways We Lie myself I’m not sure what to make of it. Sure, this novel by Riley Redgate is a fast read, the prose mostly reads easy and is quite entertaining in general. Sure, I liked the idea of the seven deadly sins incorporated into the story and reading about the different characters and their problems and lies. But those seven different POVs did make it harder to focus on the story, get a proper feel for the characters and the plot and properly enjoy this book in general. I was quite confused by the all the different names in the beginning and it took me a while to really tell them apart… And the deadly sin references weren’t as obvious as I thought they would be. Seven Ways We Lie was without doubt a good enough and fast read, but the whole ‘lying teenagers with secrets’ theme was not that original. Also, I liked some characters better than others and especially Juniper’s chapters felt a bit forced ‘artsy’ and started to annoy me. My favorite characters would probably be Olive and Matt, although I liked Valentine and Lucas as well with his whole pansexual angle. In short, it’s a nice enough YA contemporary novel if you enjoy the genre, but not as good as I thought it would be.
Seven students at Paloma High School are each resisting the allure of one of the seven deadly sins, and all have their own secrets. Each of the students tells their story from their own point of view, and slowly their lives are starting to intertwine more and more… What do a thespian, closeted pansexual, neurotic genious, the perfect girl and a few others have in common? Nothing obvious, until the rumors of a student-teacher affair hit the fan and suddenly the whole school wants to find out the identity of the guilty couple. But aren’t all students guilty of something in the first place? The perfect girl might not be so perfect after all after her secrets comes out, and it’s up to the other six sinners to keep her secret safe. But can they resist their temptations?
To be honest, I’m having a hard time rating Seven Ways To Lie. In a way, I quite enjoyed reading this story and it was a really fast read, but I also had some minor problems with it that made me enjoy the story less. The biggest issue would probably be the fact that there are many different characters and POVs, which makes it hard to properly connect to the story. I also would have liked seeing more of the seven deadly sins incorporated in the book… But all in all it is still an entertaining enough read if you normally enjoy reading the genre.
All of the different POVs was so annoying in this book for me and because of that I couldn’t really connect with the characters and it made it really hard to really enjoy the book; especially when I couldn’t connect to the characters and care enough about them.
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That was probably one of the main problems I had with this book as well… I enjoyed it a little better than you did, but it did annoy me that I couldn’t get a real connection with the characters.
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I can see where you are coming from with the 7 POV issue but I felt like Redgate did a good job seeing as there were seven POVs to handle! I think I liked the book because it surprised me by how entertaining it was 😀
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I’m glad you enjoyed it better! I did find it entertaining mostly (except for Juniper’s chapters), but I still wish I could have connected to the characters more. The prose was really good though, and I loved Matt and Olive (and Lucas).
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Yeah Juniper’s chapters were weird to read I admit. The Lucas chapters were one of my favourites- loved his characters!
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His character was one of my favorites as well!
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Great, well-balanced review. So far, I’ve only seen positive reviews of this one, but I did wonder. Seven POVs is a lot!!
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Thanks! It’s still quite an entertaining read despite the multiple POVs, so I can definitely understand why so many reviews are positive. 🙂
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