Even When You Lie to Me

Fans of John Green's Looking for Alaska as well as Lauren Oliver and Sarah Dessen will embrace this provocative debut novel, an exploration of taboo love set against the backdrop of a suburban high school.

What a lie!

Probably one of the disappointing books I've had my hands on this year. I couldn't stomach it. The main character, Charlie, was exceedingly immature (even for a teenager) and pathetic. She focused excessively on the fact she wasn't as pretty as her friend and she didn't have a swarm of guys fighting over her. This was brought up constantly. She was so jealous of her friend Lila for being beautiful that I don't see how their friendship was even possible.

Being in her head was beyond frustrating. Her issues went way beyond low self-esteem, every few pages I felt like yelling “would someone please get this girl into therapy!”. Of course everyone wants to feel attractive and admired but there are so many other things to concern yourself with: family, school, friends, crushes, books, music, movies, other hobbies, social causes. She led a privileged life, she had loving parents who were supporting her to go to the college of her choice (her mom a little intense and annoying but it still doesn't justify her characterization), she had friends and an exciting extracurricular activity. It doesn't make any sense why being attractive was that important to her and why this would spiral into such an abysmally low self-esteem. Why was she so messed up in the first place?

And then she goes and develops this sickening obsession with her teacher until the point of stalking him and throwing herself at him every chance she got. Her teacher turned out to be a sick bastard and eventually gave in to those advances. And then he ran away before anyone found out about it. He was a terrible teacher even before the “encounters”, so terrible that I find it hard to believe he would've still had his job after his behavior around students in general, the way he talked to them was far from appropriate. I am all in for a “cool teacher”, a cool teacher has to convey professionalism nonetheless.

What was the point of this book exactly? It barely even suggests that what happened between them was wrong. The guy suffers no consequences. And Charlies doesn't come out of this experience any different. What. Was. The. Point? The book was provocative alright, but just for the sake of it. I couldn't detect any deeper meaning to it.