We Were Liars
I know many people really love this book and the amounts of reviews on this book are numerous so I thought I really needed to read this and see if I was really missing something. As Cadence gathers with her cousins, I reminisced about the summers I spent with my cousins at my grandparent’s house when I was growing up. We’d help grandpa out at his department store, we’d hang out at the grade school telling stories on the deserted playground equipment and then later we’d walk back to grandmas where she’d walk us across to the Tasty Freeze. Random kids might ride up on their bikes where we would make up fictitious names for ourselves, we might head over the town square for some adventures and then grandpa would douse us with his nightly glass of water. Just like Cadence, these were the best of times. At the age of 15, an accident occurs while at Beechwood for which she has no recollection of what occurred. What she is left with is a traumatic brain injury, headaches, and lots of pain. Cadence would like to remember what happened that day when her world fell apart. It’s now two years later and when she returns to Beechwood, that island that belongs to their family, she wants answers. The language is sharp and direct, there is nothing unnecessary here. I think perhaps that is what I found I didn’t like about this book, the language. It seemed hard and almost too frank for me at times, for it lost some of the tenderness I felt I wanted it to have.
4
