We Were Liars

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, 225 pages
A 2015 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults Book

Prior to the release of this book, most of the reviews mentioned that the reveal was a huge, never-see-it-coming type of twist. Normally whenever I see multiple sources mentioning something like that, I get a little skeptical. I've read enough YA by now that usually I can figure out, or at least make a really good guess about, what's going to happen at the end. Not so with We Were Liars. It lived up to its twist-ending hype, and a lot of that has to do with how well E. Lockhart has crafted this story. Cady is the first grandchild of a very prominent, very rich New England family, the Sinclairs. Every summer, the entire family descends upon Beechwood Island, not far from Martha's Vineyard. The Liars - Cady, Johnny, Mirren, and Gat - are finally back together. But the summer the Liars are fifteen, things change. Eight months before, their grandmother dies, and their grandfather seems shakier and less himself. Right at the start of summer, Cady's father reveals he's been having an affair and leaves. Gat, whose uncle Ed is dating Cady's aunt Carrie and has been coming to the island since they were eight, feels even more like an outsider when he and Cady start to fall in love, and her grandfather shows increasing disapproval. Things seem more and more tense, until one night, something happens. Cady takes a swim in nothing more than her underwear, deep out into the ocean, and is found huddled on the beach with little to no memory of what happened. Taken to the hospital, they can't find a whole lot wrong with her, but she must have hit her head at some point because she begins to suffer horrible migraines. She constantly asks her mother what happened the day she must have hit her head, and her mother finally tells her that she has to remember on her own, that she can't tell Cady anymore because Cady always forgets. So the summer she's seventeen, she finally returns to Beechwood Island, ready to remember. And what she remembers might finally stick, might change her irrevocably. Cady is a perfect unreliable narrator, and Lockhart does a fantastic job taking the reader along as Cady works out the puzzle that is her memory and the changes to her behavior and the rest of her family's behavior. Despite being the epitome of the snooty rich family with secrets behind the perfect façade, the Sinclairs never feel like a caricature or a satirization. A perfect, twisty mystery that will likely gut-punch you with the truth in the end. Definitely not one to miss.

(Read as part of YALSA's Hub Reading Challenge.)