We Were Liars

“Live in the moment because life is short” - advice young people frequently hear. But is living in the moment always the right decision? If you're constantly living in the moment and making impulsive choices, couldn’t your actions spiral out of control like a tornado ripping through a town, destroying everything in its path? It’s important to consider the consequences of your actions before doing them because when the dust settles, you can see what you’ve truly done…how do you go back? In We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, Cadence Sinclair, the main character, wishes she asked herself questions like those before making one of the worst decisions of her life one summer at her beach house. E. Lockhart develops the characters so they each possess a distinct and unique personality, and the plot keeps the reader intrigued and on the edge of her seat throughout the book...until the surprise conclusion… The Sinclairs had a perfect little family that vacation on a perfect little beach, Beechwood, during the summer. They were athletic, beautiful, and rich. They walked in straight lines and held sophisticated discussions around the dinner table. They were the definition of quintessential. At least, they used to be. But everything changes one summer when Cady, Gat, Mirren and Johnny craft a foolish plan. Now, two years later, Cady is back at Beachwood for only four weeks. Four weeks to go through the twisting chaos of her memory and find out how consequential her actions really were. But after Cady finds out the truth, she finds that it was more beneficial to her fragile state of mind to be left in the dark. Friendship and family are important, but they are also fragile. What happened that summer? With her perfect family crumbling down around her, will Cady be able to overcome and accept what she did? The way Cady, Gat, Mirren, and Johnny are portrayed is vital to the success of the book. As you read, each personality floats out of the pages and can be seen as a reality. The reader can easily relate to the main characters, their emotions, relationships with each other, and struggles they go through. There are two main characters that especially pop out at you. The first one is Gat who was passionate, political, and ambitious, brings perspective, intelligence, and diversity to the island, “Not everyone has private islands. Some people work on them. Some work in factories. Some don’t have work. Some don’t have food” (Fantasy Island by Meg Rosoff). Gat is aware of everything going around him and wants to make a difference. He never lets anyone forget how bad the world sometimes really is, “You don’t know my bedroom with the window onto the airshaft…...You only know me on this island, where everyone’s rich except me and the staff. Where everyone is white except me, Ginny [the housekeeper], and Paulo [the gardener]” (103). He doesn't want to be perfect and put on fake smiles at dinner. Gat pops out of the book because of how different he is. Gat wasn’t a Sinclair. He wasn’t blond and rich. In fact, he was the complete opposite of a typical Sinclair and while some of the family couldn’t stand him, Cady fell in love with him.With Gat in the picture, Cady views the world differently. In my opinion, I think that Cady wouldn’t have made those mistakes and gotten into her accident if it hadn’t been for the way Gat influenced her and convinced her to take more chances without fully thinking through them. Not only are the characters important to the success of We Were Liars, but the plot is as well. Each good story must contain a strong, intriguing plot. There must be suspense, diction, and conflict. The plot E. Lockhart creates with her surprise ending will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page. When you start reading We Were Liars, the reader discovers that the main character, Cady, was in an accident. She’s been told that she hit her head while swimming. However, the reader and Cady, who are both limited to the information of what actually happened, start to question the sequence of events from the night of her accident, “I make a separate page for the accident itself…I must have gone swimming on the tiny beach alone. I hit my head on a rock….I was diagnosed with hypothermia, respiratory problems, and a brain injury…Did I really have a head injury from the swim, or did something else happen?...Was I the victim of some crime?” (77). Cady starts wondering about what really happened, and no one will help her remember, “Johnny stares at me oddly. ‘You don’t remember?’ ‘Her memory is messed up Johnny!’ yells Mirren……..No, no, shut up right now,’ Mirren barks……..’This is important! How can you not pay attention to this stuff?’ Mirren looks like she might cry” (94). Cady and the reader are limited to the information of the accident but discover that Cady’s mind conjured visions of Mirren, Johnny, and Gat to protect her from what actually happened that night. As the conclusion of the book comes, suspense builds and the ending is unforeseen. Your actions are important. Consider the consequences of what you’re doing before doing them. If Cady had done this, the place in her heart meant for family and love would not feel so empty. E. Lockhart uses Cady’s choices to make We Were Liars an unpredictable roller coaster from start to finish. I would recommend this book to someone who loves suspense action, and love.

I guess the best way to start this review is to be as blunt as possible: I actually really enjoyed my time with We Were Liars. I say “actually” because I was skeptical at first. After browsing Goodreads, there seemed to be two general reactions: 1) “I love this book! It’s so good! Oh my god!" and 2) “I detest everything about this book. Why is it getting so much praise?” So, me being me, I eliminated all expectations. I mean, the synopsis doesn’t give you much information to begin with, but I still wanted to be as open as possible. The end result? In short, We Were Liars is an intriguing novel that engaged me early on, kept me interested the entire time, and had me genuinely surprised at the end. The downside is the writing is a bit odd, which doesn’t seem like it would be a huge deal, but it did detract from my enjoyment of the novel as a whole. We Were Liars follows young Cadence, who is part of a wealthy family known as the Sinclairs. Her story takes place shortly after a terrible accident during Summer Fifteen, where she suffered something traumatic--so traumatic, in fact, that she has no recollection of what happened. So, it is her goal, and ours, to pick up the pieces and find out what happened that night, because the doctors feel she needs to come to the realization on her own. The problem I can see some people having with this novel is that none of the characters are relatable if you are not wealthy yourself, except for Gat, who is Cadence’s love interest. However, if I am being completely honest, where a novel like Don’t Try To Find Me treats the “problems” of its wealthy protagonists as real issues, We Were Liars goes out of its way to mock them, which makes most of their petty squabbles seem less problematic and more of what they are: greedy people acting selfish. In doing so, it helped avoid the frustration I would have normally felt reading about a group of people like the Sinclairs. Instead, it focuses on Cadence’s real health issues, which can essentially be boiled down to migraines, but these migraines are so bad that it leaves her nauseous and unable to move. If you don’t have a family member who suffers with something similar, it is easy to pass this off as her being over-dramatic, but it’s not. This is not to say Cadence doesn’t go a bit overboard on occasion, however, which is made clear very early on with this wonderful mind-f***: "Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound, then from my eyes, my ears, my mouth." This bizarre excerpt is the perfect example of what is wrong with the novel on a technical level: Lockhart’s writing is an entirely different level of weird. For starters, there is no indication that the above text is metaphorical until you read the next couple of paragraphs. It’s just Cadence being Cadence, which resulted in a loud expletive on my end. Also, if you hadn’t noticed, Lockhart has A weird tendency To do this For seemingly no reason At all. Again, not a huge issue, but it is kind of an eyesore, and there is never any explanation for why the structure randomly switches up in the middle of a page. Lastly, and probably my biggest gripe personally, throughout the novel the story switches from present day to Summer Fifteen, but the reader is never given a sign of when a switch is made. This occasionally resulted in me reading one, two, or sometimes three of these “chapters” before I realized that we had changed years. So for a novel that generally succeeded in pulling me in, it really tried its best to simultaneously pull me out. With that note, I don’t feel I have much else to say except to try and brush-off some of the pretentiousness as rich white teenagers trying to be deep. Yes, it can get a little corny sometimes, but this is technically YA, so I think it’s safe to say that it kind of comes with the territory. In any case, as the reviews indicate, We Were Liars is definitely not for everyone—no book is, honestly—but there is something about its story that enamored me, and although there are a handful of flaws with how the book is actually written, I couldn’t put it down.

I didn't know what I was getting into when I first started We Were Liars. I had no idea that this book would emotionally wreck me, it wasn't even a possibility in my mind. The John Green blurb and the description caught my interest, but other than that I had no idea what this book was about. Who would have thought that We Were Liars would easily escalate to the top of my favorite books shelf ? Days after finishing We Were Liars, I still feel like I'm going to cry just from thinking about this book. I cried so much to the point where my head ached and I felt as if I would never be so touched by a book ever again. We Were Liars starts off innocently enough with a tale about a group of friends and it quickly turned into one of the most intense, shocking books I've ever read. Honestly, I'm speechless. We Were Liars is one of the most beautifully written books I've read in years. E. Lockhart's writing style is simple, yet extremely power; Lockhart's prose will haunt readers long after they're finished. We Were Liars is an absolutely unforgettable thriller that deserves much acclaim; I really hope this wins the Printz Award and/or The National Book Award. This is one of the best YA books I've ever read period. We Were Liars is the type of book that demands to be read, it's extremely addicting and once you start, there's no stopping. This is the type of book that many readers will be able to finish in one reading because it's that compelling. Seriously, don't plan on just reading one chapter because you will be so hooked that you will probably end up reading the entire book. There is no such thing as reading just one chapter of We Were Liars, it's just like eating only one piece of chocolate -- it's nearly impossible to just stop at one. Moving, unforgettable, shocking, heartbreaking, poignant, groundbreaking are just a few of the words I would use to describe We Were Liar's ending. I did not see this coming even slightly, my heart was shattered into a million pieces and I'm still emotionally recovering. You cannot prepare yourself for the ending of We Were Liars, no matter how hard you try. Charm & Strange is only other book that I can think of that had an ending that was this astonishing and was so emotionally overwhelming. E. Lockhart is an expert at manipulating readers' emotions with ethos and I was way too overcome by a multitude of feelings to function properly. We Were Liars deserves all of the hype it's been receiving and then some more. Don't overlook We Were Liars because it's an extremely intelligent psychological thriller and it's one of the best novels that I've read in years. Few novels have touched me like We Were Liars did and I really look forward to seeing how others react to this novel. The bottom line is We Were Liars is an absolute must-read and it will remain with readers longer after they read the final sentence.

Rating: 3.5 Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family. No one is a criminal. No one is an addict. No one is a failure. The Sinclairs are athletic, tall, and handsome. We are old-money Democrats. Our smiles are wide, our chins are square, and our tennis serves are aggressive. So begins E. Lockhart’s much-hyped YA novel, We Were Liars. And, with these first lines, we immediately suspect that our young narrator, Cadence Sinclair, may not be terribly reliable. Through Cadence, we meet the Sinclair family. At its head is Harris, Cadence’s grandfather, the patriarch of the Sinclair clan. He is a wealthy and powerful man who lords his wealth and power over his three useless, divorcée daughters, Carrie, Penny, and Bess. They vie for his affection (read: they try to sinclair-family-treelock down their inheritances), drink too much white wine, and bicker constantly. And, every summer, they bring their seven children and Gat (Carrie’s boyfriend’s nephew, who first summers with them the year he is eight) to the Sinclairs’ private island, Beechwood Island, a twenty-minute boat ride from Martha’s Vineyard. Cadence is the oldest grandchild, but she, Johnny, Mirren, and Gat are all roughly the same age, having been born in the fall of the same year. The four of them are inseparable on Beechwood Island, and the rest of the family calls them, collectively, “The Liars.” They refuse to be involved with their mothers’ incessant efforts to plead their cases for this house or that piece of jewelry. Instead, they just enjoy the island and being together. They are happy. But, then, tragedy befalls the Sinclair family on Beechwood Island. During the summer that Cadence, Johnny, Mirren, and Gat are fifteen (“summer fifteen,” they call it), Cadence has a terrible accident. She is found on the we-were-liars-mapbeach alone, lying in her underwear, half in the water, suffering from hypothermia. She can’t remember what happened (the doctors diagnose her memory loss and horribly painful headaches as post-traumatic amnesia and migraines), but her family, who believe that “Silence is a protective coating over pain,” refuse to speak of the accident. Her mother (whom she calls “Mummy,” obviously) determines that Cadence should spend summer sixteen in Europe with her father, but, for summer seventeen, Cadence is ready to return to Beechwood Island to see Johnny, Mirren, and Gat, and uncover the mystery of the events surrounding her accident. Not only is Cadence an amnesiac, but she is also highly emotional and prone to somewhat melodramatic bouts that she describes in vivid, metaphorical detail (“My head and shoulders melted first, followed by my hips and knees. Before long I was a puddle, soaking into the pretty cotton prints. I drenched the quilt she never finished, rusted the metal parts of her sewing machine. I was pure liquid loss, then, for an hour or two.”). She is also an opinionated teenager. All of these factors contribute to her being a somewhat limited narrator . . . and it is through her that we are introduced to all the other characters. There are the bad guys: Mummy, who is “delusional,” always reminds Cadence to “Be normal now. Because you are. Because you can be,” and tries to cover problems up with money, and Grandfather, who is a maxim-spouting (“We work for what we want, and we get ahead. We never take no for an answer, and we deserve the rewards of our perseverance.”) manipulator. And there are the good guys: Johnny, who is “bounce, effort and snark,” Mirren, who is “sugar, curiosity and rain,” and Gat, who is “contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.” She has them all pigeonholed just so. And, because the characters are all described exclusively by Cadence, they all come off as one-dimensional. This may be intentional, but the result is a book full of fairly flat characters. At times, the writing style is beautiful and clever and creative (like the interspersed fairy tales that mimic the Sinclair family history). At other times, it borders on annoying. There are lots of choppy sentences and sentence fragments, sometimes with excessive paragraphing, so it verges on wannabe-poetic or somewhat reminiscent of Katherine Faw Morris’s stark style in Young God. Oddly, this combination makes for very fast and interesting (if somewhat fragmented) reading, and I devoured the book. Any write-up or review of this book will mention that there is a big twist ending. Normally, I loathe twist endings (I’ve mentioned Gone Girl as an example of this premise on numerous occasions). Twist endings tend to be a little too gimmicky, and this book’s ridiculously gimmicky marketing tagline (“Read it. And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.”) doesn’t help matters. But (in a surprise twist!) I didn’t mind this book’s twist. The ending is a surprise, but it’s not a stupid, out-of-nowhere, makes-no-sense twist. And, while I was reading, I didn’t find myself obsessing over the possibilities (there are clues but not overly obvious ones) or rolling my eyes at the predictability of it all. This is one of those books that was only a click or two away from being really, really great. If the characters were a little more interesting, if the writing style were a bit more cohesive, and if the plot had been a little less contrived, it could have been amazing. As it is, it’s pretty good.

At first I wasn't sure how I felt about the story or even knew much about it. I understand it was made into a series, but didn't know much else. Long story short, this book emotionally destroyed me. I had my suspicions on what the plot twist was going to be, but I never expected what it truly was. It made me feel stupid and emotional after realizing all the hints and foreshadowing that was there all along. I took a chance on this book and I loved it. I will not only be keeping it in my collection, but recommending it as well.

*Incredibly Bodhi Book Reviews* This book has been getting a lot of talk this season and I am happy to say I really enjoyed it. The ending is something, while completely unexpected and horribly emotionally destroying, made sense. I actually can't believe I didn't see it coming. Cadence is the main character, and she suffered an accident two summers before the book took place, a summer which she can hardly remember. She comes back to the island "summer seventeen" to see her friends again and try to piece together what really happened. So here's what I thought: 1) Characters: Great Characterization. There were four characters the book focused on: Cadence, Gat, Johnny, and Miren. Cadence, Johnny and Miren were cousins hailing from the wealthy Sinclair family. They all grew up privileged, and while you could see that in their characters, they seemed to be overall kind-hearted individuals. Gat wasn't a Sinclair. His father was living with Johnny's mother for many years, and Gat always came to the island. Gat was a unique, cultured individual, and very easy to love. He had very strong opinions about how the world should be, and hearing his thoughts was very interesting. The characters of the Grandfather and Cadence's mother were also very well developed, and I really enjoyed the effect they had on Cadence. 2) the Setting The Book is set on the Sinclair's private island, and it is well described and makes for a perfect summer read. The island perfectly personifies the privilege and tension between the family that is ultimately Cadence's main problem. I just really loved the island. It totally made the book for me. Overall: I can't say too much about this book, because it will spoil the ending, but I will say that Cadence's accident and her selective amnesia plays a big role. I'd give the book a 4.5, because the ending just killed me. I was more sad than understanding! But I would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a shocking summer read. *For More Reviews Visit Incredibly Bodhi Book Reviews*

LOVE IT. Very easy , fast, weekend or beach read. Good and consistent main characters, and plot twits that we have missed . i enjoyed every page. If you are looking for deep philosophy and thorough natural descriptions, this book is not for you. But if you are looking to give your brain a tasty treat, this is definitely for you.

The Sinclair family has everything anyone could ever want and dream of. On the surface they're a powerful family full of old money, prestige, and respect. But just below the surface lies dark family secrets and brewing family feuds. But every summer, when the entire family travel to their private island just off of Martha's Vineyard, those secrets and feuds are buried deeper and deeper. It's those summers spend on the island that the Liars - Cady, Mirren, Johnny, and close family friend Gat - live for. The youngest Sinclair's just love soaking up the summer sun, spinning tales so tall their friends back home could hardly believe, and stepping into lives that they can call their own. That is, until their fifteenth summer. Everything seems wrong ... all wrong. And Cady can't seem to figure out why this summer is any different from any other summer. Gat's interest in her is feigning. Mirren is a shell of her former self, choosing to sulk rather than soar. And Johnny simply doesn't care. It's up to Cady to figure out what's wrong. Days pass seamlessly into weeks. And as they do Cady starts to remember bits and pieces of the puzzle that is her worst nightmare. Without realizing it, bits and pieces of a terrible accident become clearer and clearer. The details are frightening. But then again, the truth always is. We Were Liars, written by author E. Lockhart, is a textured and layered story full of mystery and intrigue. This smart book will keep readers guessing and their mouths agape. Lockhart's writing is simply stellar. The words she's penned on paper are evocative. The story that she's created is as twisted as it is smart. Readers will easily fall in love with the setting that's so lush readers will feel as if they've been transported to that small island off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. They will easily identify with characters so flawed and layered it's hard to not mistake them for real people. They will get so caught up in the story that Lockhart has spun that they will feel as if they are a part of it themselves. We Were Liars is the kind of books that readers - whether faithful fans of Lockhart's or newcomers - will devour! Never wanting to put it down until every last page is consumed, readers will instantly want to re-read this book. Not just because it's that great of a story, but because when finished minds will be reeling. And I mean that reeling in the best way possible. This book will leave readers with so many questions, so many lies, and so many truths just waiting to be uncovered. There is so much more I could say about this book, but in all honesty I can't in fear that I will give too much away. Readers, you will have to trust me on this one! We Were Liars is an amazing book that will leave a lasting impression on you. Seriously, I read it in January and it's still a book I think about, nearly four months later. You will NOT be disappointed!