Ugh, that goodness that's over. 
 Initial Impressions 4/5/14:Why did I think this was a mystery? It was really nothing up until the second half of the book. The first half was basically a naive 15-year-old girl thinking she was in love with a 23-year-old (weird) and then nothing happened until the second half when everything turned into a giant soap opera. So disappointed in this book. 
 Review originally posted on The Book Addict's Guide 5/9/14:I'm always looking for more YA mysteries so when I stumbled upon What I Saw and How I Lied, I was curious about this post-WWII mystery/thriller-type read. It had been on my list for quite a while before I finally got around to it, noticing my library had an audiobook available. The audio went by pretty quickly but... it also seemed to drag on forever. 
 WHAT I SAW AND HOW I LIED is the story of 15-year-old Evie Spooner. She lives with her mother and her step-father Joe and when Joe comes back home from the war, the family takes an impromptu vacation, leaving from New York to head down to Palm Beach, Florida. What happens there changes the lives of everyone in Evie's family as mystery, hijinks, and good old fashioned backstabbing occurs. 
 I was excited for the mystery aspect of this book, but I wished it had been introduced MUCH MUCH earlier. It wasn't until about 55% of the way though -- over halfway!! -- that I felt like things were finally starting to take shape and the whole mystery of the book was evolving. The whole first half was essentially all about Evie -- her friendships, her relationship with her mother and her step-father, and her new giant crush on ex-GI Peter Coleridge. It was really hard to listen to Evie's narration for the whole first half of the book without this mystery present because Evie came across as very naive to me. She's only fifteen, sure, but she feels even younger and her puppy-love crush on Peter was just so unbearable to listen to. I felt so embarrassed for her (oh yeah, he was 23, by the way) so the whole book just felt really young. 
 As stated previously, I wanted soooo much more from the mystery-aspect of the story. I think if those little hints at conflict were introduced earlier in the book, I might have been more interested and more inclined to focus on that instead of how much I was not enjoying listening to Evie. Once the mystery finally did start to unravel, I felt like things were revealed much too quickly and easily and then things took a turn for the worst. Everything got extremely melodramatic for my tastes and it felt very soap opera-y. I just couldn't get on board with the way things ended up working out and it all just felt really silly and over the top. 
 Another thing I had an issue with -- which this is actually a totally personal issue -- is that I think I'm just not connecting with pre and post-WWII era novels. I loved books like Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein, but I think that's because the reader is in the action and I also felt like I learned so much about time period as I was reading it and exactly what was going on in the world. Historical fiction novels have more of a focus on romance, relationships, and how the people are "supposed" to act according to the times... They just don't pull me in and hold my attention as much as historical novels with action and adventure do. I also feel a sense of innocence in a lot of historical fiction and I think I need a lot more bold! That was part of the thing that turned me off too Evie... She was young but she was almost 16 and just felt a little bit too naive for me to really get a long with her.