Shelly's Book Blog

What I Saw and How I Lied, by Judy Blundell, is another from School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 list. This YA novel is part mystery, part romance, and part historical fiction because it is set in 1947. Fifteen-year-old Evie narrates the story of how she and her parents (mother Beverly and step-father Joe Spooner) take her from Queens, New York for a vaction in Palm Beach, Florida. There, the family meet Peter Coleridge, who evidently served with Joe in the war, and Evie falls for him almost immediately. He is so charming and good looking, and he treats her like a grown-up. Why wouldn't she like him? Things are not always what they seem, though, and Evie learns some hard life lessons before the book is over. This one is a page-turner, and I enjoyed it. I can't see recommending it to my own teen boys, who would denounce the book as "chick lit," but I think this dark, complex story is a cut above other books written for teen girls. Evie interacts primarily with adults, rather than with other teens, and the decision she is forced to make at the end seems to be one that will not necessarily have a positive effect on her future.