Onto another of the books from my Christmas haul, We Were Liars isn’t my favorite book of the year so far, but it does probably take the title of most surprising. I thought I knew what I was getting into with this one, except I didn’t expect the lies that wound up being unearthed. What seems like an innocent enough story about a family absolutely obsessed with securing what they feel is rightly theirs from their aging, rich grandfather, and the grandkids who are unwittingly dragged into this, and into a deep bond with one another, winds up darting in a different direction every time I think I have a handle on it.
First, I was all in on the budding relationship between Cadence and Gat, the nephew of her aunt’s new man, Ed. The uncertainty of whether this would be a summer fling type of thing or if they could last. Then Cadence is taking a swim in her underwear, getting knocked unconscious by a rock underwater, and waking up to constant migraines and memory loss, not even sure why she wound up swimming all alone, what led up to it, or if the series of events she’s pieced together from what she’s been told are even true.
We Were Liars continues to keep you guessing from there, with each new shedding of light drastically changing the entire novel’s landscape, until you reach the end, which gave me a one-two punch of shock. I thought one thing was going to be the huge reveal, only for it to be punctuated by something drastically more jaw-dropping.
While I don’t like to rate things highly based almost entirely off of the strength of their twists, We Were Liars‘ twists were too well-hidden and effective to not give Lockhart my immense kudos. I want to say more about the book, yet I feel like saying anything more would rob you of the rollercoaster of emotions that is this book. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to reveal as much as I did about the book’s plot, but I wanted to give you a hint of how it refused to stay in one groove for long. So, if you a fan of twists, We Were Liars will spin you right round, baby, right round, like a record.
