We Were the Liars by e. lockhart

I love a tale that spins out of a tiny slice of a life I could never imagine.  Set on an island in Martha's Vineyard, an island the Sinclair family owns, We Were the Liars, is such a story. It is told by one of the strong-chinned, blond, well-educated Sinclair grandchildren, Cadence.  She seems smart, witty, and trust-worthy at first, as if she is letting us in on the grandeur of the Sinclair family.  They are a family of money, manners, traditions, servants and cooks, and secrets.  They don't speak of the money they have, nor do they speak of the addictions, divorces, or other messy parts of their lives. Cadence's cousins, Johnny and Mirren, are close to her age, and they represent the generation that starts to question the rules of the game the family has played for so long.  The group of teenagers call themselves the Liars, setting up readers with curious questions about what their self-title might really mean.

Cadence falls in love with the boy who begins to visit to the island each summer as a friend of the family.  The boy is dark-skinned, smart, and principled; his name is Gat Patil.  Cadence and Gat steal moments and memories falling in love while scrambling for other moments of freedom and independence with the cousins, the other Liars.  As the drinking, intolerance, hatred, and fear sneak in like fog swirling around the Sinclair family, readers are left with a narrator, Cadence, who is back on the island after missing a summer, and there is a mysterious secret around her absence. Cadence tells the readers of her amnesia, leaving us to wonder what terrible tragedy she survived.  Since she seems to be revealing secrets of her family's darker-side, we never question the soap-opera-y presence of her amnesia...we fear the worst for her.  And when the cloak of secrecy is unveiled, it is shocking and twisting and wonderful story-telling at it's best.