We Were Liars, book review. (E. Lockhart)

Once upon a time, there was a little book about an old man who had an amazing family, the Sinclairs, who lived on an island together and made merry all summer long, only one year one of the grandchildren . . .

The Sinclairs are indeed fabulous. Beautiful, rich, intelligent - mostly - and their three daughters, along with the grandchildren, spend their summers on their island and all is good with the world, until Harris' wife dies, leaves him alone and understandably sad.
It is then that the daughters - who grew up wanting for nothing - suddenly feel that their mission in life is to procure their dead mother's jewellery, clothes, shoes, art, and even her island house before their fellow siblings do, which of course creates divisions between the sisters and starts to drive the grandchildren - particularly Cadence (the main character who narrates the story) into riskier and riskier ventures.

It is Cadence's fifteenth summer on the island when things start to go wrong, and like normal she is joined by her cousins and friend Gat, who she has a bit of a crush on, and with the three sisters bickering over the spoils the grandchildren are sort of left to it, which ends in disaster.

The writing style here is a bit odd but nothing too distracting, but for the one exception, one that I will keep banging on about until someone listens, all the stupid names. Time and again authors do this and I just don't understand why. Every time an unusual name comes up it prevents flow and gets in the way of the story, which is okay if you have just one or two, or if you're reading fantasy where you might expect something out of the ordinary, but why do we have to have it in modern-day America/England? Urg.
That aside, the story mostly takes place the following year, where Cadence and her mother return to the island to find that Harris has built a new house and all the kids are somewhat standoffish compared to previous years.
With Cadence having no real memory of what happened the previous summer - she's been suffering from amnesia since the incident - the reader is taken on a voyage of discovery and as she gradually starts to remember the previous year's events the reader begins to learn exactly what happened and I have to say I really quite liked it.
The pace was good the setting suitably mysterious and the kids believable, so a solid three stars for this one then, an enjoyable read.