E. Lockhart's We Were Liars is a suspenseful, gripping novel about a wealthy teenage girl who spends her summers on a small private island off of Martha's Vineyard. The Liars, as they are called, is a group of three cousins (main character, Cadence, among them) and a family friend who summer on the island owned by the three cousins' grandfather. In some ways, this novel has the typical tropes of YA literature: angsty teenagers, anger towards parents, and general distaste for the way the world works. But this novel, which centers mostly around Cadence's lost memory after a terrible accident in her sixteenth summer, differs in one central way: Cadence and the Liars are not angered but what their family doesn't have, but are disgusted with what they do. A life of privilege, money, secrecy and alcoholism disturb the teenagers and make them feel stuck on the island in more ways than one. A gut-wrenching twist at the end makes the novel worth reading.
As a teacher of reading and writing, I noted that the writing was also worth paying attention to. The pairing of lengthy sentences with stilted ones, the occasional moments in which the prose slips into poetry, and the development of secondary characters are all great points to teach into.
While it wasn't exactly my cup of tea, We Were Liars does a great job of warning the reader along the way that all is not right in the protagonist's world. Suspense well done.
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