February's Book Pick is WE WERE LIARS, by E. Lockhart. She has done it again. Author of 2008's wonderful The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks, WE WERE LIARS is a gem of a novel.
Seventeen year old Cadence Sinclair, of the rich and beautiful Sinclair family, has been through a terrible trauma. When the novel opens, she is in awful shape. She takes lots of pills for her crippling headaches, she keeps her blond hair dyed black, and she is in the process of giving away all of her earthly possessions. She hasn't been to her family's private island since her mysterious accident the summer she and the other Liars were fifteen. Until then, the four Liars had spent their summers together, running wild and forging deep bonds of friendship. And love--Cady and Gat have fallen in love. But there is more to life than this idyllic little island. Gat isn't one of the Beautiful Sinclairs, and the eventually the Liars begin to see that all things in this world must come to an end. When Cady returns to the island to piece together the mysteries of her past, the Liars spend one last bittersweet summer together.
I think this book has everything--a well-written plot with a lurking mystery that keeps you reading on and on, interesting characters, a fairly exotic setting, gorgeous tone, language, and structure, and a heck of a twist for its ending. I was loving this book even before I caught up with what was going on, and once I got there I realized that this was one of those truly special, standout books. Rereading it to see where all the clues are placed, I fell in love all over again with the language, the style, the cadence of the writing. And the plot doesn't suffer the second time around from the reveal, either. Wonderful stuff!
--Lynn
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