Review: Lies We Tell Ourselves

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release Date: September 30th, 2014
Source: Edelweiss
Date Read: 9/25/14 to 9/29/14
304 Pages
Rating: ✰✰✰✰

In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever.

Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily.

Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town’s most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept “separate but equal.”

Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.

Boldly realistic and emotionally compelling, Lies We Tell Ourselves is a brave and stunning novel about finding truth amid the lies, and finding your voice even when others are determined to silence it.

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Thank you Edelweiss for letting me read Lies We Tell Ourselves, because all I can say is that it was 100% awesome.

I actually have had this digital copy for about 3 months now, and I only picked it up a couple days ago just because I am a procrastinator. BUT I MADE IT. Lies We Tell Ourselves is out today! And I will make you buy a copy! Just kidding.

No but seriously, I haven't read such a good historical fiction since my elementary school days. And do you know what's amazing about this one? It has LGBT. Yeah that's right.

Lies We Tell Ourselves introduces us to desegregation in the South, and boy is it rough. Sarah Dunbar has her life already all planned out. Graduate from Johns, and then go to university in Washington D.C.. But when desegregation finally passes, her family volunteers her and her sister to attend school at Jefferson, which used to be the all-white school.

It is brutal. The author definitely captures that aspect. Actually, this book made me really mad. PEOPLE ARE MEAN. I didn't like how the white people bullied and taunted the colored. Teachers would either turn away from what's happening, or ignore it on purpose. It was not fair, but this is how it was back in the day when the law first past. The author really opened my eyes to the whole situation, and even though I knew it was bad, it was made even worse where I grew attached to all the characters.

Though there wasn't much emphasis on the side characters, I loved Sarah Dunbar. Linda Hairston, not so much. Throughout the novel, Linda is conflicted about her feelings of desegregation, saying that she hates it and that the colored people ruined everything. Of course, she has been influenced by her idiotic father, who she loathes and tries to impress at the same time. In the end, I grew attached to her, because she overcame everything she was brought up on.

Also, both of them are adorable together gah. 

Even though Lies We Tell Ourselves tells a historical story, it's also a contemporary romance. And I really loved that part about it. The romance was slow, and more of it "Is this right? Why do I feel like this?" sort of thing. But it worked out perfectly in the end.

With that said, the ending resolved itself very quickly, I felt that the pacing at the end of the book was very different from the beginning. But still, the ending made me very giddy and happy, which is great because I was wondering how the author was going to end this novel.

Overall, Lies We Tell Ourselves was fantastic, brilliant, and completely fresh and original topic from what I have been reading recently. I loved it!