Review: WE WERE LIARS by E. Lockhart

Title: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
Published date: May 13th, 2014
Summary: 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. 

Why I read it: This summer, I really started getting into book blogging/booktube. I started following a bunch of booktubers on YouTube, and ALL of them started talking about this book. And it was one I hadn't really heard much about until then, because I'm not usually a contemporary YA reader (although that is quickly changing.) But since all of booktube started raving about this book, I knew I had to read it. I bought it at Half Price Books one day and as soon as I finished Where She Went, I dove into this book. And since it's so short, I flew through it in a day and a half.

Thoughts: We Were Liars follows the story of Cadence, who spends her summers on a private island with her beautiful, rich family, the Sinclairs. From what I've heard, the writing style in this book is different than Lockhart's usual writing style in her previous novels, but it is hauntingly beautiful. The way sentences are broken up onto different lines. The intense descriptions of Cadence's emotions. Early on in the book, Cadence describes the day her father left her and her mother. She says "Then he took out a gun and shot me in the chest." And at first, I thought that he had really shot his own daughter. But then her mother tells her to be normal, pull it together, and they walk back into the house, so I realized it was just a metaphor for her emotion. This happens several times in the novel, and it's one of my favorite parts.

The narration switches back and forth between the present, and two summers ago, when the incident occurred. Through these flashbacks and present plot, we discover all of the Sinclairs' secrets alongside Cadence, whose memory of that summer has been impaired.

Though the novel is short, the character descriptions are so perfect and detailed, and by the end of the book, I loved each of the Liars so much.

The description is correct, though. Go into this book knowing as little as possible. It's a contemporary like I've never read before, and I absolutely adored it.

Rating: 5/5 stars