This book in one word: Wut.

The tagline for We Were Liars promises a huge twist and then admonishes readers, if anyone asks you how this book ends, lie.

Wut.

No, really. LOL. How do you expect to drum up business for a book with such a cheap trick? It’s one thing to vaguely allude to the shocking twists that occur in a book, and it’s quite another to forecast it and then try to get readers so hyped up about that you JUST have to read it for YOURSELF so that you can LIE ABOUT IT TO OTHER PEOPLE.

Spoiler: I did not like the end of this book at all.

Cadence is a teenager from a wealthy clan, whose extended family owns an island and goes there to stay throughout the summer. She, her cousins, and her aunt’s boyfriend’s nephew form a posse called The Liars, and they do rich-people things all summer. Of course, Cady is still battling amnesia from an accident and trying to piece together why this summer is so weird. And of course, we find out.

E. Lockhart is a gorgeous writer. There is some beautiful prose, and the feelings of isolation, grief, confusion, and growing up are convincingly plotted. But the end. The hamfisted twist. That clumsy marketing. It ruined the experience for me. It cheapened what could have been an otherwise really genuine and interesting novel for me. I mean, you know what happens at the end of The Book Thief, but it only makes the end that much more compelling and devastating since you already knew it.

Basically, We Were Liars is The Book Thief in reverse.