“We are Sinclairs. Beautiful. Privileged. Damaged. Liars. We live, at least in the summertime, on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts. Perhaps that is all you need to know.”
Cadence Sinclair Eastman in We Were Liars
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart chronicles the summer of narrator Cadence Sinclair Eastman, a 17 year old member of the affluent and mysterious Sinclair clan. Her family spends their summers on an island near Martha's Vineyard and it is Cadence's first year back since a traumatic incident that left her with chronic migraines and memory loss two years before. That same summer, Cadence had found love in Gat, a friend who vacationed with the Sinclairs on the island. Cadence spends the novel striving to piece together the romance she had with him while trying to gain back memories of the accident that occurred during "Summer 15". While looking for answers, she must question the validity of what the Sinclairs tell her. They are liars, after all.
I may be the only person to ever say that We Were Liars was a dissatisfying read; since it seems that everyone in the literary world has raved about it since its publication. However, I found We Were Liars to be, above all things unsatisfactory, cliche.
Reading about wealth is not something I will ever get tired of, though I've done so many times. That is not the cliche that bothered me as I worked through Cadence's narration. It is instead the fact that E. Lockhart follows an exhausted genre trend in the 3rd act of her novel. Even if I had enjoyed the bulk of We Were Liar's plot, and I really didn't, I would have been turned off by the "twist" Lockhart tries to make at the end of the novel. I've read the same "twist" over 4 times in the last year.
Additionally, the romance between Gat and Cadence is unbelievable and one-dimensional. It is the hormone-driven realization that the boy you grew up with is now an attractive young man instead of an accurate representation of loving someone who could actually be a great character. Gat is political and well-rounded where Cadence is weak in every way. There would have to be major suspension of disbelief to entertain the idea that he could love her.
In conclusion, We Were Liars is a predictable bore. It was the book I was excited to read, the book with the hype, the book I devoted a weekend too, and ultimately it was the book I hated.
Cadence Sinclair Eastman in We Were Liars
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart chronicles the summer of narrator Cadence Sinclair Eastman, a 17 year old member of the affluent and mysterious Sinclair clan. Her family spends their summers on an island near Martha's Vineyard and it is Cadence's first year back since a traumatic incident that left her with chronic migraines and memory loss two years before. That same summer, Cadence had found love in Gat, a friend who vacationed with the Sinclairs on the island. Cadence spends the novel striving to piece together the romance she had with him while trying to gain back memories of the accident that occurred during "Summer 15". While looking for answers, she must question the validity of what the Sinclairs tell her. They are liars, after all.
I may be the only person to ever say that We Were Liars was a dissatisfying read; since it seems that everyone in the literary world has raved about it since its publication. However, I found We Were Liars to be, above all things unsatisfactory, cliche.
Reading about wealth is not something I will ever get tired of, though I've done so many times. That is not the cliche that bothered me as I worked through Cadence's narration. It is instead the fact that E. Lockhart follows an exhausted genre trend in the 3rd act of her novel. Even if I had enjoyed the bulk of We Were Liar's plot, and I really didn't, I would have been turned off by the "twist" Lockhart tries to make at the end of the novel. I've read the same "twist" over 4 times in the last year.
Additionally, the romance between Gat and Cadence is unbelievable and one-dimensional. It is the hormone-driven realization that the boy you grew up with is now an attractive young man instead of an accurate representation of loving someone who could actually be a great character. Gat is political and well-rounded where Cadence is weak in every way. There would have to be major suspension of disbelief to entertain the idea that he could love her.
In conclusion, We Were Liars is a predictable bore. It was the book I was excited to read, the book with the hype, the book I devoted a weekend too, and ultimately it was the book I hated.