Cadence is not any normal girl. She is a Sinclair. Sinclairs are tall, and blond, athletic, square chinned, and incredibly wealthy. Heiress to her grandfather’s fortune, Cadence- “Cady”- serves as the undependable voice to this story, beginning during her fifteenth summer where she suffers from a head injury, on her Grandad’s private island. Cady and her mother vacation on Beechwood every summer with her two aunts, little cousins, and of course the vibrant, infamous liars: Johnny, Mirren, and Gat. The story develops further, two summers after the accident ,with Cady trying to connect the pieces of her lost memory of that fateful fifteenth summer. Battling disabling migraines, and a family who would rather keep her in the dark about the past, Cady returns to Beechwood with a scrambled brain and too many secrets surrounding the island to count.
Lockhart’s depiction of the intelligent, privileged Sinclairs is sharp,and acute.Through her illustration, the readers are able to witness the strong-minded, glamorous, Sinclairs as well as the selfish, greedy, superficial people who lay underneath. What Lockhart does is create a story so beautiful and so horrific, the reader cannot help but be lured into the world of Beechwood and its inhabitants. And then of course, an ending that is so abrupt and heartbreaking, the reader hardly knows if they want to continue, or go back and figure out where it all went wrong.
Personally, I absolutely loved and adored this book. They way it was written just automatically grabs the reader by the fabric of their shirts, beckoning them, saying: “Look at me! Look at me!” I fell in love with Cadence and her struggle for clarity. I fell in love with all the characters of this book, actually. To me, I think at the center of this story the author just wanted to illuminate how hard family is. And what it means to love and be loved unconditionally. And honestly, what a gorgeous job she did portraying that message. What’s astonishing is that, as much as the story is this absolute mystery thriller, it’s also a gentle love story, which makes it all that much more brutal to read. To quote John Green this book is “. . . beautiful, and blisteringly smart. . .” I really don’t have anything else to say except, BUY THIS BOOK! Read it, devour it, cry over it; trust me you won’t regret it.