We Were Liars

Lockhart, E. (2013). We were liars. Delacorte Press. New York Times Bestseller. This fictional novel is about a teenage girl, Cadence, and how she spends her summers on a private island in Massachusetts with her family and a friend. Many summers are chronicled by her age. The main focus is on Summer Fifteen, which Cadence does not remember. An accident clearly happened, but now she has no memories and only migraines to show for it. We see her relationships with her family and friends. It was a shocking moment when it was revealed that her three best friends, her cousins and boyfriend, were actually killed in a house fire that she helped set. The story was a little choppy and hard to follow at times. Young adults will enjoy the friendship the cousins forged when they only see each other for summers. Cadence and Gat have an undeniable bond that is hard to continue when her grandfather does not approve of it. The family dynamic as a whole is pretty messed up. The cousins are great friends, but the rest of the family doesn’t appear to like each other very much. We finally see the greed and that is ultimately what destroyed the family. The cousins decided to take matters into their own hands and tragedy occurred. The plot was unique in a way that we knew bits and pieces of the story, but had to be patient as the author filled in the rest of the blanks. An unexpected twist is always a favorite of mine, and it definitely occurred in this novel when it was revealed that the cousins and boyfriend were dead, and had been dead the entire novel.