From the time I learned to read up until high school, I was addicted. I read book after book and even got in trouble for reading with my book under my desk during class in sixth grade. However, like many others, I lost my love for reading when I got to high school. Due to sports, homework, and trying to have a decent social life, my time to just sit down and read went away almost completely; and, the fact that I had to read books for school also took away my love for it. However, being driven to the brink of insanity during quarantine because of my extreme boredom, I rediscovered my middle school reading obsession and I started with this book.
I found E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars at a bookstore a while ago and remember a friend saying that she loved it. It sat on my shelf for a while because I still hadn’t had the time or motivation to read a book that wasn’t for a class, but then I saw it one day and decided to try it out. If I didn’t like it after reading for a little while, I could simply stop and do something else. So, I picked up this book, began to read it, and I absolutely could not put it down until I finished. I wasn’t disappointed in the quality of this read and you won’t be either.
We Were Liars was a book that wasn’t difficult to read and flowed incredibly well. I am the kind of person who often guesses the endings in movies or the big plot twist in a book before it happens but the twist in this book is one I never saw coming.
We Were Liars follows seventeen-year-old Cadence Sinclair and her seemingly perfect family and the “liars” (Cadence, her two cousins Johnny and Mirren, and Johnny’s friend Gat) who spend their summers on their private island every year. However, everything changes when something happens during her fifteenth summer and this suspenseful novel takes you along Cadence’s journey of being back on the island to figure out the truth.
I know, that is incredibly vague, but trust me when I say you don’t want me to spoil it for you. The book is written through Cadence’s perspective, allowing the reader to see through her eyes and hear her thoughts, therefore learning everything at the same time she does. This makes the end even more startling to read. I love a good suspenseful family drama as much as the next girl and Lockhart did an amazing job writing this one. It had me crying as I flipped from page to page as fast as my brain could process the words I was taking in.
We Were Liars is a book that I recommend to everyone, and it’s a great book for if you haven’t read anything for pleasure in a while (like I hadn’t), because it will keep you interested and wanting more. I would give this book 5/5 stars because it truly shocked me and left me wanting to read again.