We Were Liars - E. Lockhart

This book was recommended to me by my lovely friend Helen so I just had to read it as soon as I could get myself a copy.

A life of endless summers where the rest of the year hardly seems to exist. Cadence and the rest of the Sinclairs spend every summer at her grandfather's private island near Martha's Vineyard. Blonde, rich and privileged, the family have every luxury and convenience at their fingertips.

All this changes after the accident. Now Cady has almost constant headaches and she cannot remember what happened to her that summer. Her mother doesn't want to let her go back to the island and she spends the next summer touring Europe with her father. Cady feels isolated from her cousins and suspects that something traumatic must have happened to her, especially when none of them bother to reply to her emails.  The year after, when she eventually persuades her mother to let her go back for part of the summer, she finds a very different island. Her grandfather has rebuilt his house as an austere Japanese villa and her cousins have moved into the empty house of one of her aunts.

What actually happened to Cadence? Her cousins won't tell her anything as they and the rest of the family have been told not to discuss it with her so she can remember by herself. All we know are the few vague details she is told about how she was found and she is sure that she must have some kind of head injury that the doctors haven't discovered.

The twist is quite clever and even after I finished, I tried to go back and find the clues but they were very well disguised. I don't know if anyone would guess what happened, if you've read it and figured it out, please let me know!

Cady, her cousins Johnny and Mirren, and their friend Gat, are known to the rest of the family as the Liars. I didn't feel like this was adequately explained and found myself wondering throughout the book. Particularly as it is in the title. There was a brief mention that they weren't called the Liars before Gat started coming to visit so I kept expecting to find that he had done something to earn their name. The version I read actually does explain it in the extras, which is useful.

Though every evening Cady's family gather for cocktail hour before dinner, I found this book was the hardest to match with a cocktail. Eventually I settled on an adaptation of the Pink Faced Liar. In a shaker with ice, mix a shot each of gin and vodka, half a shot of lemon juice and a couple of dashes of grenadine. Pour into a tall glass with ice and top with tonic, then give it a stir before serving.