We Were Alright

I picked this up solely because I adored the title. The cover seemed calm and mysterious as it stood there on the library shelf. I wasn’t in the market for new books to read, but I thought “eh why not?”

Unfortunately I never came to love we were liars. It was a pleasant enough read, short and light. I, however, was expecting a beautiful slow read about families and secrets and the special bonds formed when people grow up together.

It wasn’t.

Instead it was Cadence narrating in a perpetual long whine. See, Cadence is part of a rich family and every Summer the family gathers on their own private island where they bicker and struggle for power. Two years ago a terrible thing happened and now Cadence suffers amnesia and migraines. We meet her as she is going back to the island, trying to piece together what happened to her.

Everything in this books was hard to connect to. It was full of stilted prose and confusing metaphors, like

Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.

I read that sentence a bunch of times, thinking her father had actually shot her. Turns out she was just being dramatic, something she revels in throughout the book.

Then there was the case of “the liars”. There was no backstory, no sense of a special bond and no explanation as to why the four cousins were special enough to become “the liars” when everybody in the family seemed to lie. Who are the cousins? Doesn’t matter. Everyone in this book beside Cadence is sort of a blur – they felt distant and not in a cool, rich person sort of way, more like wait-who-was-that-again?

For me the book dragged on a little too long. Especially after the twist is revealed. Lockhart attempts at some sort of emotional redemption, but if you don’t care about the characters at all it just drags on.

We were liars is nothing special, but a light fun read for young people with a nice mystery.