Book Review: 'We Were Liars'

 by Eva Burkinshaw

Over the last week I have been reading ‘We Were Liars’ by E. Lockhart. 

The story follows a 17 year old girl called Cadence (Cady), who is trying to get her memory back after her almost fatal accident 2 years previously. 

Her family is the beautiful, rich and perfect Sinclair family,or so they are perceived,  and they own a private island off the coast of America where the whole family goes every summer. 

Cady is incredibly close with her cousins; Mirren, Johnny and Johnny’s Stepdad's nephew Gat who spends the summer with them,during the summer however there is almost no communication the rest of the year. 

Everything is going great for Cadence until the summer she turns 15 - which is when her accident happens. Mysteriously she can only remember uneventful things about what happened before and after the accident. She then wakes up in the hospital, with the doctors puzzled over her illness with no recollection of what happened.

She is then too ill for almost everything for the next 2 years. Then the summer where she turns 17 rolls around and Cady is determined to find out what happened. The rest of the book is her trying to figure out everything from that suspicious summer.

This is probably one of the best books I have read because of the plot and how it thickens with every chapter. I read the book in 24 hours and I honestly couldn’t put it down.  There are 5 parts to the book and after every part I thought I had figured out what happened  at the end, but as soon as I read the next chapter I knew I was wrong and was desperate to find out the massive plot twist I knew was coming. 

The author uses emotive and figurative language to really make you connect with the characters in the book. E. Lockhart adds a bit of romance with a friend of one of her cousins around half way through the book, and I really like how the author introduced it because of the fact that it didn’t take away from the main story and made it the centre of attention but it's there and really helps the ending and how it all plays out. 

What really makes this book such a page turner is the eagerness we have as readers, to know what happens to the characters next in their story. It tackles subjects like racism and sexism which is shown in an interesting way.  

It shows how upset and greed can tear families apart slowly. This book took me on such an emotional rollercoaster, and I thought that the ending was such an interesting twist that I didn’t see coming.  

The book reminded me a bit of Outer Banks on Netflix as it has a similar setting and I think anyone who likes Outer Banks would really enjoy this book.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes psychology, mystery and adventure.