Cady (Cadence) Sinclair loves going to Beechwood Island for the summer and meeting up with her aunts and cousins. Gat, the nephew of her aunt’s partner has also joined them since they were eight. This island belongs to her grandparents and has been in the Sinclair family for many generations.

There are four mansions built on the island. One for each of the daughters and one larger one called Clairmont for the grandparents. The Sinclair family is wealthy, beautiful, blonde and happy. (Or so it seems). Cady is the eldest grandchild of the Sinclair family and is an “heiress to the island, the fortune and the family expectations.”

The cousins do everything together over each summer holidays and when they are fourteen Gat and Cady’s relationship changes into something more.

The year of her fifteenth summer something happens. Cady can’t remember. But it’s left her with terrible migraines and gaps from that summer. And when she finally returns, things are different. When she realises why, she wishes she still can’t remember….

This Collector’s Edition is a special release of the hugely popular and successful We Were Liars.

After the story itself (which gripped me just as much in my second reading as the first), an entirely new section of poems, hand drawn maps and the Sinclair family tree is included. There are also author notes on the process of how We Were Liars came into being.

Another extra is a Reader’s Group Guide providing questions to ponder for any book clubs keen to discuss this novel further.

The prequel Family of Liars (to be released in NZ / Aust in May 22) effortlessly engulfed an evening as I read it in one go.

Read them. Love them. See what TikTok and readers all over the world are raving about. One of my very favourite books.

Author – E Lockhart

Age – 14+

(2022, Allen & Unwin, Secret, Family, Love, Lies, Inheritance, Wealth, Arson, Romance, Crush, Uncertainty, Betrayal, Sibling Rivalry, Sisters, Island, Summer, Fire, PSD, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Coming to Terms, Cousins, Greed)