We Were Liars
We Were Liars Book 1
Delacorte Press
ISBN 9780385741279
eISBN 9780375984402
ASIN B00FPOSDGY
I have been aware of this novel for a while. And I am really not the intended audience. But my youngest daughter is a budding bibliophile, and through grade school I tried to read everything they were reading. She was reading this with her class in grade 9 and part way through she asked me to read it so she could bounce her ideas off me. We have done this with numerous books over the last few years. I picked it up with no real expectations and without knowing much about the actual story or author.
The description of this novel is:
“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.”
My daughter and her best friend were both stressing over this story. Part of their anxiety was over the fact that while reading it in class they could not get too far ahead. Which left them with lots of time to think and fret over their theories, about what was happening or had happened in the story. They used me as a sounding board before I started reading and once I was ahead of them. And to be honest we had about 90% of it figured out before the big reveal. We had each picked up different pieces and shared them together. My daughter had had used flip chart paper to trace out her ideas. Her teacher asked to see it and ended up doing a class activity based on it.
The story is interesting, and the characters well written. When I went to university and have friends with the kind of money this family had, and can say much in the novel reminds me of conversations with them. They story starts off feeling like a tragedy but we do not really know how much so until the end. I loved the way the protagonist kept retelling fairy tales and stories we are familiar with but with new twists on the stories. I think these retellings were among my favourite parts of the book. To quote Nicholas Cage from Gone in 60 Seconds this family “has too much bloody money”. And like many families huge infighting. Almost everyone in the story is manipulative and scheming on at least one level.
Cadence (Cady) suffers from amnesia, migraines, and often feeling chilled. She does not remember the accident, or much of the summer it happened. The story is mainly told 2 years later back on the family island. And she is trying to piece together what happened, and why she can’t remember. She starts tracking it on paper and putting it up in her room, in the house her and her mother occupy on the island. But not everything is as it appears.
After we finished I did pick up the deluxe edition for my daughter for the extra material in it, I would recommend that version. It was an entertaining read. My daughter, her friend and even her teacher cried when reading the book. My daughter thinks I am cold hearted because I did not. It was an interesting read with a great twist. I kind of described it as Fight Club for teen girls. A solid 4 star read.
Books by E. Lockhart:
Fly on the Wall
Dramarama
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
How To Be Bad
Genuine Fraud
Again
…
Ruby Oliver Series:
The Boyfriend List
The Boy Book
The Treasure Map of Boys
Real Live Boyfriends
…
We Were Liars Series:
Family of Liars
We Fell Apart
…
Contributed to:
Love Hurts
21 Proms
Not Like I'm Jealous Or Anything
…
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