What I Saw and How I Lied

Bad...no, Really Bad!

Eww! This book was terrible! It had no plot and was only interesting in maybe, the last 50 pages. I would've put it down so quickly if it wasn't so short. The characters are stupid and pointless. The main character, Evie, falls in love a 20 something year old man, when she's only 15! So, the romance was stupid. You got no connection to any of the characters. Evie's so eager to grow up, she turns into someone like her mother, who's a total slut! (HEr mom is secretly dating the same man Evie thinks she's dating, and her mom's married to her current step-father!) When something serious happens to her family, she finds out secrets that her dad stole from Jews in the war, and that's how they have the money to live. And, that her mom's a two-timing w***re. Evie herself tends to take after her mom. Just, take my advice, don't waste your time reading this!!!!

12 out of 21 people found this review helpful.

Not as good as I expected....

What I saw and How I Lied wasn't as good as I thought it would be. All the reviews online made me interested and excited to read this book, but all in all it was a let down. The first few chapters make you excited to see what's going to happen, but as the story progresses you know exactly what's going to happen and when. I really wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, unless they were going to get it to read from a library... Don't waste your time or money.

6 out of 9 people found this review helpful.

Decent Read

This is a really good book.The title alone is intriuging enough to make you curious about the story. The beginng is is a little slow but then picks up. This story will hold your intrest from cover to cover with its adultry,blackmail and homicide. I HIGLY recomend.

5 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

A Good Book if I Ever Saw One

This book first caught my eye about a year ago. It sat on my bookshelf, like many other books I have read and thoroughly enjoyed, for a very long time. I picked it up and began reading it and I was blown away. This book was good. There aren't too many books out there that I have found that portrays this period of time (after WWII). It was well-written, carefully planned, and, although the reader did sort of know what was coming for the characters, we still should be able to enjoy the book. Evie reflects us all: although we might not fall in love with an older man necessarily, we do become blinded by love at some point and sometimes, the outcome of that love is devastating. This was a fantastic book and I would recommend it to all of my friends.

4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

a must read.

Tugging me along with the 1940's, Judy Blundell's novel What I Saw and How i Lied told a perfect tale through an innocent 15 year old, Evelyn Spooner. Joe, her stepdad, helped force the family back into normality with the homecoming from serving in World War II. When the war started following Joe home every night with a strikingly handsome young ex-GI, Peter Coleridge, he decides to uproot Evie and his glamorous, blonde-bombshell wife Bev from their home in Queens to a vacation resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Being caught in the middle of a nightmare of lies, Evie must pick her way through the mess and decide whats truly important too her.


I strongly recommend this book for anyone that enjoys a twisted plot and an oblivious main character. This hard to put down novel continued to draw me in until the very end. The ending also was extremely pleasing and wrapped everything up perfectly. Judy Blundells way of describing is simply captivating and makes you feel as if you were right there experiencing everything as it came at Evie. What I Saw and How I Lied is a must read that will keep you engaged until the last page.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Highly Recommended (to Teens and Adults)

Billed as a young adult novel, this coming of age story is an incredibly in-the-monent depiction of life post World War II. The mystery element borrows a shade of hard-boiled feel, and the themes--murder, adultery, and questing for truth--have as great a chance to appeal to an adult audience as to the teens the book is marketed to. <BR/><BR/>For some further discussion, feel free to visit my blog: http://alanajoli.livejournal.com/94298.html

3 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

Reasons to read this book.

This was a brilliant book—these are the reasons why:

1. Evie and the other characters. Evie's the narrarator and you can really feel her; she's awkward, shy, hopelessly naive, lovestruck dumb. The author really managed to flesh her out into a real human being, tangiable and real. Evie in turn does the same for the other characters: Peter, her mother, Joe.

2. This sounds like it was written in 1947. She uses the slang and language of the era, the feel: the glamour, the grit, the hopefulness and the hopelessness.

3. The plot. I honestly got this because I thought I would get a love story. But there's so much more. It's not just a whodunnit, it's a whodunwhat. And there's no happy ending. It ends with Evie, content but not happy, innocence gone, illusions shattered, old and young. It's real.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

LOVE IT!

BEST BOOK IN THE WORLD!!!!!
Took a slow start,then the book really pulls you in.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Ewww boy fruits

Ok so i like the post-war setting and 50s glam of the book but that was it. A fifteen year old falls in love with a man in his late twenties, who sees her as a child (until a part near the end where they do the nasty...) this girls mother (who is married) has an afair with the same man... basicaly she is a hussy. The daughter fids out and in her rush to be mature, seduces and does the nasty with a hotel worker she barely knows. The husband kills the man out of jelousy and the girl has to lie to keep her parents out of jail. Btw i got this book at a middle school book fair.... 0_o

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Wasn't what i expected

When i read all the reviews i was happy to read this book. Although when i started to read this book it started to bore me. I wanted to put it down but i forced myself to read it. I just wasted my money and time on this book. So i don't really recomend this book, but if you want you can risk your time and read it. Just check it out from the library.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Predictable Story, Terrible Ending :(

I've heard good things about this book, so I was excited to read it. I started as soon as I got my hands on it, but was quickly disappointed. The story was a little stale and the characters were not likable. Blundell is a good writer, but the plot was so PREDICTABLE. The worst part of the story was the ending. Never have I been so frustrated at a book ending. I could've spent my time reading a better book.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Wrong, this book was just wrong. It had this little romantic sto

Wrong, this book was just wrong. It had this little romantic story with the same guy who's Evie is in love with and her mother who was a w***re secretly dating the man that her daughter loves. This was very disturbing to me, my daughter read this at her school and she's 12. Disgusting, don't waste your time reading it.

PLEASE HELP

So is this book appropriate for kids?????? Reply to Carmen.

Hooks ya in

I read his book fir a book club andit just grabs you. You should read this wih a group or a friend becaus it gets you thinking and wanting ti talk about it. You should read!

Hey

Have not read it but my friends fell in love with it i am not going to buy i am geting from the library though

okay i thought this book was really good i found this in my scho

okay i thought this book was really good i found this in my school library and it caught my eye so i checked it out and i absolutely loved it but one thing i was sad about was peter found dead and the mother being such a slut -.- oh well anyway the book was really great (:

Quite good.

I found this book interesting from the get-go, and it got even better! I enjoyed the saucy-ness of the plot, the sudden twists that lifted the already high rating. If you think that me only giving it four stars isn't enough, keep in mind that i've only ever giving one book five out of five stars, and i read a book every two days and i rate them all. The only thing i didn't like about What I Saw and How I Lied is that it was too short in my opinion and it could've made the realationship between peter and evie longer that a week, so that his death would've had a bigger impact on her emotionally, cause lets face it: she will meet someone else. She can't mope around for the rest of her life over her first realationship. I think any ADULT would agree. Obvisly teens who have just lost there first love would highly disagree, but you'll have alot of boyfriends/girlfriends, so get over it.

Oh haha

The model for the cover is the same model that is on the covet of some of the clique books

I absolutely loved this book! I read it when I was twelve, and a

I absolutely loved this book! I read it when I was twelve, and a year later, I still love it! I only have one complaint- one of the scenes
in the book is rather dirty, and another is, but to a lesser degree. Although I had no problems with the 'girliness' of the story, most
boys would probably not like that. This book is good for anyone 12 and older.

from missprint.wordpress.com

Every good book should start with a good story. In the case of What I Saw and How I Lied (2008) by Judy Blundell, it actually starts with two. This is Blundell's debut novel although, under pen names, she has written many other titles. In a School Library Journal article, Blundell said that this was the first book that felt like it was hers. How wonderful then to also have it win the National Book Award for Young People's Literature and receive accolades from all over. (Plus, the book was edited by David Levithan, himself a YA author/editor extraordinaire).

But that's just the backstory. What I Saw and How I Lied also has an excellent actual story.

The year is 1947, the place Queens, New York. For fifteen-year-old Evie Spooner, it feels like life has gone back to normal. Her step-father Joe is back from the War, Evie's blonde bombshell mother Barb is back to playing housewife, and Joe's mother is annoying everyone. All everyday, mundane things.

That changes when Joe announces suddenly that the family is going to take a trip to Florida. When Peter Coleridge, a dashing ex-GI who served with Joe, finds the family, Evie knows that things will never be mundane again. The close Evie gets to Peter, the more secrets she finds--not only Peter's but also secrets surrounding her own family.

As the events of the novel come to a head Evie has to face these secrets and the lies told to keep them. The more she learns about the truth, and the lies, the more Evie wonders if truth has anything to do with loyalty.

The first thing that drew me to this book was the cover with its heroine steeped in shadows. It is the epitome of film noir (hardboiled fiction when in written form), a fitting choice since this novel is nothing if not noir.

The writing here is taut, fraught with tension and even a bit of suspense right from the beginning. Every word here matters. If ever I met someone who suggested that writing was not an art, this book would be part of my argument to the contrary.

Sometimes novels told in retrospect, which is basically the case here, can be boring because the narrator keeps complaining about the things they didn't know. Evie is made of stronger stuff. Instead of bemoaning the things she missed the first time around, she simply lays out the events as they happened. This makes Evie's perspective on things look a bit naive. At the same time it also gives the book a certain honesty because, like Evie, we learn that everything is not as it seems as the story progresses.

Blundell also uses a lot of foreshadowing in her novel. In the wrong hands foreshadow is another writing technique that can go horribly wrong. In What I Saw and How I Lied it only adds to the suspense and complexity of the writing--writing that is both poignant and beautiful (while evoking the atmosphere and mood of 1947 in both New York and Florida).