ARC Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

 Title: We Were Liars | E. Lockhart | Random House Children’s | Stand Alone | 240 pages | Contemporary Young Adult | 5 Stars | Source: Netgalley
Release Date: 13th May 2014
Goodreads

Goodreads Synopsis 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

Review:

We Were Liars follows the story of Cadence Sinclair. She is a member of the prestigious Sinclair family that consists of the grandfather, grandmother, three daughters (Carrie, Penny and Bess) and their offspring. Every year all the family congregates at Beachwood Island where Cadence’s grandfather has built a house for each daughter. The synopsis for this novel is incredibly cryptic, and this review will probably follow suit.

To tell you too much about this novel would ruin everything. Now I have read the book, I can see what everything means but before hand I might as well have gone in to this novel blind. To be honest, I urge anyone who wants to read this to do exactly the same. The novel begins by describing the Sinclair family.  I love how this was done because in one phrase it showed what they were to the world, prestigious and perfect and in another phrase it showed how flawed they were. The first few pages constantly contradict themselves.

At the start it tells us of an accident that has happened to Cadence. It is obvious that this has been a defining moment in her life. From that point onwards, a lot changed. Her father leaving in her 15th summer on the island (they refer to it as summer 15) also did a lot of damage. This novel is how she gets along after these events. The characters are presented in three different groups: The Aunts (the three mothers, the daughters of the grandfather), The Liars (Cadence, her cousins:  Mirren and Johnny) and Gat (Johnny’s step dad’s nephew) and The Littles (the youngest of The Aunts children). The Aunts are constantly squabbling over their fathers estate and The Liars could not care less about it.  It is obvious from the start that The Liars are different kinds of people compared to their mothers and aunts. One of the themes of the novels is The Liars dealing with The Aunts and their different way of thinking.

The ending was absolutely fabulous. A lot of people said they called it. I never could have. However, having finished it and looked back,  all the small of details pointed to it. I would recommend this to anyone. Such a dark and gripping contemporary about a family being destroyed by money and materialism and then coming back together again.

Goodreads Average: 4.08/5  out of 1134 ratings.

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