{"id":7752,"date":"2011-09-06T06:30:28","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T11:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=7752"},"modified":"2011-09-06T06:30:28","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T11:30:28","slug":"book-review-what-i-saw-and-how-i-lied-by-judy-blundell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2011\/20110906-7752.htm","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: &#8220;What I saw and how I lied&#8221; by Judy Blundell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Evie is fifteen, her stepfather has returned from the war, and life is good.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, so they still live with her step-father&#8217;s mother, who doesn&#8217;t <i>quite<\/i> get along with Evie&#8217;s mother. So Evie&#8217;s step-father is drinking more. So Evie&#8217;s parents are fighting more often.<\/p>\n<p>But Evie&#8217;s main concerns are that her mother won&#8217;t let her wear grown-up clothes and that she can&#8217;t seem to attract the attention of her crush.<\/p>\n<p>Then her stepfather decides to take them on a vacation to Florida&#8211;and Evie meets (and falls in love with) the dashing young Peter (who had served with her stepfather in the War.)<\/p>\n<p>Awash with the headiness of a new environment, new clothing (one of her mothers&#8217; new friends insisted), and new love, Evie thinks of little but how she can next see Peter. Then a hurricane hits and Evie&#8217;s world comes crashing down.<\/p>\n<p>I added <i>What I saw and How I lied<\/i> to my TBR list on the basis of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.semicolonblog.com\/?p=8982\" target=\"_blank\">Semicolon&#8217;s review<\/a> (I think), but by the time I&#8217;d gotten around to picking it up from the library, I&#8217;d forgotten the review and had no idea what to expect. (Even if I&#8217;d read Semicolon&#8217;s review more recently, I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;d have known what to expect. Sherry does a good job of not giving spoilers.)<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, I read with only the book&#8217;s title to clue me in on what was happening&#8211;and that kept me guessing for a good long time.<\/p>\n<p>I knew something was wrong, that something wasn&#8217;t adding up in Evie&#8217;s idyllic world&#8211;but I couldn&#8217;t quite put my finger on what it was. What&#8217;s more, if Evie (the narrator of the book) had <i>seen<\/i> something, why wasn&#8217;t she telling me? What had she seen? And how had she lied?<\/p>\n<p>I was almost upset with her for not sharing&#8211;but I kept reading in the hopes that she would at last reveal.<\/p>\n<p>And reveal she did, with a punch that left me gasping for air.<\/p>\n<p>Other reviewers have called this a coming-of-age novel, and that it is. It&#8217;s about a loss of innocence, a loss of trust. It&#8217;s also a story about stealing, lying, adultery, and murder. As my grandmother would say, it&#8217;s a story of sex and violence.<\/p>\n<p>But a well-told story.<\/p>\n<p>This is definitely not a children&#8217;s book. But the sex and violence found in this book is not the gratuitous or experimental raciness of a typical YA novel. It&#8217;s tasteful (mostly) and integral, contributing to Evie&#8217;s awakening to the world of lies and truth, deception and integrity, lust and love. <\/p>\n<p>I very much enjoyed reading this novel and recommend it for discerning, mature readers. <\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>Rating:<\/b> 4 stars <br \/>\n<b>Category:<\/b> YA-Coming of Age Novel<br \/>\n<b>Synopsis:<\/b>Evie grows up rather quickly after a winter in Florida where she encounters lust, lies, deception, and discrimination.<br \/>\n<b>Recommendation:<\/b> I think <i>thoughtful<\/i> readers are likely to enjoy this, while those looking for either escapist or sensational fiction will be disappointed. I personally enjoyed it a great deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Evie is fifteen, her stepfather has returned from the war, and life is good. Okay, so they still live with her step-father&#8217;s mother, who doesn&#8217;t quite get along with Evie&#8217;s mother. So Evie&#8217;s step-father is drinking more. So Evie&#8217;s parents are fighting more often. But Evie&#8217;s main concerns are that her mother won&#8217;t let her &#8230; <a title=\"Book Review: &#8220;What I saw and how I lied&#8221; by Judy Blundell\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2011\/20110906-7752.htm\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Book Review: &#8220;What I saw and how I lied&#8221; by Judy Blundell<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[36],"tags":[48,269,633,1218,1240],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7752"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}