We Were Liars

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart                      225 pages

This was a wonderful, beautiful, sad, magical book.  Four teenagers, Cadence, Johnny, Mirren, and Gat, three of whom are privileged Sinclairs, and one who is not, have spent every summer together on their family’s island since they were eight years old.  They have the best summers together.  During the school year they don’t keep in touch well, but when summer begins they pick up right where they left off the previous summer.  The summer they are fifteen, after their grandmother, Tipper Sinclair, has died, something happens.  Cadence has some sort of accident and can’t remember most of the summer.  Her mother doesn’t allow her to come to the island the next summer.  Instead, Cadence goes to visit her father in Europe for the entire summer.  The summer after she turned seventeen, her mother wants her to go to her father again, but Cadence insists on returning to the island.  It is there that Cadence finally begins to regain some of her lost memories, and to understand why she may have chosen to block those memories for so long.  This is a coming-of-age story that a lot of teens would like.