Book Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Now that summer is officially over, I can finally pick my favorite summer read of 2014. (To be honest, I've already decided this is my favorite book of the year, but I can't make that ruling official until January 1, 2015)

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart is beautiful and poignant and poetic and so many things I didn't even know I wanted in a book. This book has had so much buzz, and I'm so happy I somehow managed to avoid it all. If you want to read this book (and believe me, you do), do not look up anything about this book before reading it. I can only speak from my experience, but going into this book with no expectations was so wonderful.

I'm not going to say anything else about the book here in case you want to read it, but if you are still on the fence, here is how I rated it on my personal book stats.

• Addicting: 10/10
• Originality: 10/10
• Thought-provoking: 10/10
• Lyrical: 10/10
• Romance: 8/10
• Overall rating: 48/50

Pick up this book if you like

• Poetic prose
• Quick reads
• Unreliable narrators

Skip this book if you hate

• Uses of amnesia in fiction

I'd like to recommend this book to a specific group of people, but it involves giving away a spoiler for something that happens 25% into the book. I'm going to list it below several rows of stars. If you don't want to be spoiled on this, this is it for the non-spoiler part of this book review, close this page and go read the book! If you want to see the slightly spoiler recommendation, keep reading beyond the stars.

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At the end of last year and beginning of this year, my two remaining grandparents passed away. There has been a lot of grief and anger to deal with, both my own and that of my immediate and extended family. To me, this book very accurately depicts how the death of a grandparent affects the relationships of the entire family. I found reading this book to be a cathartic experience in regards to my loss, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has recently lost a grandparent.

Click the link below to reveal my discussion including spoilers.

We Were Liars is a novel about the beautiful, rich, privileged Sinclair family, where no one is a criminal, no one is a drug addict, no one is a failure, and some of them are liars. We learn quickly that Cadence does not live up to this perfect Sinclair standard, partially through no fault of her own (she takes narcotics to treat severe migraines resulting from an unspecified accident that occurred two summers ago) and partially by her own choosing (she's modified herself from blonde athlete to dark-haired couch potato). We also learn that she is an unreliable narrator, also partially through no fault of her own (she has amnesia from the accident that left her on the beach in her underwear two summers ago), and partially by her own choosing (on page 15, she describes how her father shot her in the chest as he left her and her mother, before revealing that is just a metaphor for how she felt). 

In this book, we follow Cadence on her journey back to the island for the summer, where we flip back and forth between the present events and her recovered memories of the summers leading up to the accident.

I cannot think of a single thing I did not love about this book. The graphic metaphors describing her emotional state and migraines, the juxtaposition of outright lies with partial truths, the repetitive, lyrical quality of the prose, the fairy tales (my greatest weakness), it was all beautifully executed. There wasn't a single word out of place in all 200 pages.

There have been some criticisms to the title, as there is no clear reason why the group is nicknamed the Liars, particularly why the parents had called them the Liars. I personally liked it, as I have my own theories on the subject*, but I can see how it might upset others. That being said, this book is meant to be thought-provoking, and I would not have appreciated having that clearly explained.

I did not see the plot twist coming. I was in such denial at the reveal that my first thought was that the Grandfather had faked the deaths of the other Liars and was forcing them to live out their lives on the island.

*You have to keep in mind that the 

1. They got this nickname only after Gat became a part of their group. Gat's presence is what binds them together as friends where before they were merely cousins, which is what separates them from the other cousins and earns them a nickname. But the fact that they got a negative nickname once the outsider joined their ranks is no coincidence. Gat also acts as a foil to the Sinclairs. While the Sinclair children are content to lie on the beach of their private island and dream of the endless opportunities available to them, Gat knows how the rest of the world lives. Gat actively challenges their perspective, and allows them to form ideas outside of their parents' moldings. Even though the group's newly formed viewpoints are more honest than the fairy tale life their parents have been living, in the parents eyes, their fairy tale life is the only one they've known and it is their children's ideas that are lies.  
2. All of the Sinclairs are liars, in denying their vulnerabilities to uphold this facade of the perfect Sinclair family (not talking about the grandmother after her death, pretending to be normal after Cadence's father leaves her and her mother, not talking about the other aunts' divorces). The fact that they are not allowed to be anything else (criminals, arsons, drug addicts, failures, unhappy, crazy, rebels), leads me to believe that liars are the only thing they can be, or at least the most negative thing they can allow themselves to be called. By calling the group the Liars, I think the parents are calling them out for the behavior they deem as unacceptable in the only way that they, as Sinclairs, are allowed to be.