Review: Lie

Title: Lie

Author: Caroline Bock

Series: None

Release Date: August 30^th, 2011

Number of Pages: 224

Publisher: St.Martin’s Griffin

Source: NetGalley

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Everybody knows, nobody’s talking. . . .

 

Seventeen-year-old Skylar Thompson is being questioned by the police. Her boyfriend, Jimmy, stands accused of brutally assaulting two young El Salvadoran immigrants from a neighboring town, and she’s the prime witness. Skylar is keeping quiet about what she’s seen, but how long can she keep it up?

 

But Jimmy was her savior. . . .

When her mother died, he was the only person who made her feel safe, protected from the world. But when she begins to appreciate the enormity of what has happened, especially when Carlos Cortez, one of the victims, steps up to demand justice, she starts to have second thoughts about protecting Jimmy. Jimmy’s accomplice, Sean, is facing his own moral quandary. He’s out on bail and has been offered a plea in exchange for testifying against Jimmy.

 

The truth must be told. . . .

Sean must decide whether or not to turn on his friend in order to save himself. But most important, both he and Skylar need to figure out why they would follow someone like Jimmy in the first place.

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I’m seriously not sure about this book. The thing is, there was too thing that annoyed me to really enjoy it.

I think the subject is something we should talk about. Racism, white-power.... It is still present, even if we don’t hear much about it anymore. I just think theirs is better way to present it.

One of the things that really got on my nerves was the multiple points of view. There was too many of them. I couldn’t follow at some point whose point of view I was reading. I would have liked it a lot more if it had been Skylar and Sean’s point of view only, because they were the one I really wanted to know about. The girlfriend and the accomplice. It would have been interesting to know what was going on in Jimmy’s head too, but I didn’t really care about knowing about the parents, coach, and principal. It was simply too many.

Lisa Marie really annoyed me. I wanted her to just disappear. She seemed so brainwashed by Jimmy. Even Skylar isn’t as brainwashed as her.

I had trouble reading it. As much as I was curious and excited about reading it, I simply couldn’t get into the story. Maybe if it had been longer and it didn’t had that many points of view.  For me, the point of the book was more about the consequences of telling Lies to protect someone. Someone who’s guilty. This is what disappointed me. I really thought it would focus more on the White Supremacy movement. After all, I feel like Jimmy and his father were all for white power. It just happens that they were mainly hating Hispanic people.

If you don’t mind the multiple points of view, you may enjoy with. For me, it didn’t cut it.

If like me, you were looking for this kind of story, you should check out American History X. It deals with white supremacy. It is an excellent movie starring Edward Norton and Edward Furlong.