What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell

"When Alice fell down the rabbit hole, she fell slow. She had time to notice things on her way down — Oh, there’s a teacup! There’s a table! So things seemed almost normal to her while she was falling. Then she bumped down and rolled into Wonderland, and all hell broke loose. I’d noticed things on the way down, too. I’d seen it all —  the way he took off his hat, the way he lit her cigarette, the way she walked away, her scarf trailing in her hand. Flower petals and a pineapple vase. Now I had to look at it again. This time without me in it, wanting things to go my way."
Evie is a fifteen year old girl who just can't wait to be an adult. She wants to be able to wear Revlon's Fatal Apple lipstick, walk like she knew she was pretty, and have the attractive older Peter Coleridge the ex-soldier that served with her step-father Joe. Before I get into Joe I should talk about her mother. Her mother is what people would call a bombshell. She has curly blond hair and is just beautiful. All the guys look her way and Evie wants that. Next to her mother she is just plain. She is pretty protective of her. She is all she had before Joe and well during because like I said with Peter - he was an ex-soldier. Evie's father left and being only seventeen her mother had to struggle. She had a lot of boyfriends who were screw-ups. No good but then Joe came in with flowers and gifts. He treated her mother like a queen and her like a daughter. He left for the war. World War II to be exact and came home acting different. It's expected. They don't talk about the war. He wants to leave on vacation to Palm Coast(or Beach. I can't remember.) even though it's still the school year for Evie. That's where they meet Peter who Joe doesn't like but offers no explanation but he notices her and could he even love her?
Evie sounds like such a teenager when she is talking about Peter. Well she is one.. but still. She sounds so unreasonable. She hardly even knows him. She was a bit naive but I have to say I was too reading this because I didn't expect some things. This whole book is what I really didn't expect because the summary on the flap sounds so much more interesting and mysterious but it didn't play out that way to me. It was definitely a good mystery. It ended with me wanting to know more. It's just not what I expected and I've got to say it wasn't better than I expected. But there was still some good things. Evie changed at the end of the book kind of for the better but what she did was unsettling. I was actually thinking tp be more cruel with the way she handled things. Peter was such a dog. I didn't like him at the end because you knew all that charm meant nothing. The book had some things about Jews in World War II. I didn't know that some places they were not allowed. That was so stupid. I don't get it like with a lot of things in our history. Anyway it was an okay kind of good book. It took me awhile to read it. It just didn't hold my attention like I thought it would but it was still a good read anyway. 

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