We Were Liars- E. Lockhart

The Blurb

A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.

Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

The Review

This time last year EVERYONE seemed to be reading this book.  I bought We Were Liars even though I knew nothing about it- because there was such a massive buzz all over my twitter timeline I felt I needed a copy.  And now I've finally read it I'm excited to share my thoughts.

Cadence, Johnny, Mirren and Gat are the four 'liars' of the title, family members that meet up each summer on Grandpa Sinclair's island.  They are exceptionally tightknit despite their mothers (who are siblings) squabbling over who'll get the family wealth.  Whilst the adults are bickering, the liars are enjoying teen life, running amok in their blissfully protected world.

However, when Cadence sustains a head injury during 'Summer 15' (the year the liars are 15 years old) and loses her memory everything changes.  Suddenly she's surrounded by secrets with no idea why, despite her pleas, everyone is hiding the truth.  I found Cadence an interesting character and wanted to dig deeper into her troubled mind.  Although she's the narrator, I still didn't feel I knew her that well by the end of the book and I wish I could have.  In some ways we learn more about Johnny, Mirren and Gat than we do about Cadence.

Much has been made of the 'twist', but I'd managed to avoid details of it before reading.  Whilst I didn't see it coming I wasn't surprised...and that's all I'm going to say because I don't do spoilers!

The biggest strength of this book was the gorgeous writing.  I absolutely loved E. Lockhart's writing style.  It was brisk, it was brusque and it was beautiful, and during the gentle lulls in the plot that's what kept me reading. 

If this is an indication of her other works I'm excited to read more!

We Were Liars is out now, published by Hot Key Books.