Introduction

1. Title
2. Author
3. Illustrator
4. Fiction or Nonfiction
5. Why did you choose this book?
Reading Rainbow Tip: Was the title interesting? Did the cover spark your curiosity? Was it something else? Talk about why you chose the book to help your classmates understand more about you!

I chose to do my book report on E. Lockhart's fantastic mystery “We Were Liars.” I love this book and I have already read it twice, so I defnitely know what it's about. The 225 paged book was first published in 2014 and does not contain any illustrations. The book is a fiction mystery that once you start reading it, you won't be able to stop. The cover defnitely sparked my interest because it looked mysterious and the back cover doesn't tell you much about it. I couldn't resist buying it in the local book shop. I finished reading the book on the same day because it just pulled me in, making me want to read it over and over again.

The Setting
Reading Rainbow Tip: Think about WHEN the story takes place, WHERE it all happens, and how much TIME passes from start to finish. Describe the setting so your classmates feel like they are INSIDE the story!

I think the story takes place in the modern days. The story is set on Beechwood Island in Massachusetts, USA. See map above.It's important that the setting is isolated insofar as Cadence's family is consumed by their own drama—the plot is helped along by the fact that the characters rarely see other people and instead are left to swirl around in their own heads.
  I think this is a really cool location for a story. There are four main houses in the story : Windemere, Cuddledown, Red Gate, and Clairmont, which becomes New Clairmont after the fire.
Each family has their own. The children on the Island are happy until one day a horrible accident happens, which changes all their lives forever. The book keeps flipping from the past to the present, this made the book very interesting.
During summer seventeen, most of the scenes featuring the Liars take place in Cuddledown, Bess's house, which she abandons after her daughter Mirren's death. This enables Cadence to get caught up in the world of the Liars alone in Cuddledown, there's no one around to notice how strange it is that she's talking to ghosts of her imagination-whatever it is that the Liars become after they die.

The Characters
Reading Rainbow Tip: Who is the main character? Do they have any friends or helpers? Is there someone who challenges the main character? Instead of just naming people, talk about what makes each person memorable.

The main character in the book is Cadence. She is also the narrator of the story.
When a narrator has amnesia from a traumatic brain injury, it's safe to say she's unreliable. Cadence is trying her best, though. She wants to remember what happened to her she's just not sure whose version of events she can believe. She then goes ahead questioning family members, until at the end her past unravells before her eyes.
Gat first arrives on the island with his friend Johnny when they're eight years old. He and Cadence love each other pretty much instantly they're head-over-heels by the time they're fourteen. Gat is a very strong character in the book. He doesn't believe in love. But We Were Liars isn't a cheesy romance novel, and Gat's not the flawless typ of guy. Instead, he's a smart dork, which is both his greatest strength and, ultimately, his downfall.

The story involves a lot of family conflict. Harris is Candence's grandfather.There's power-tripping, and then there's Harris Sinclair. This crazy character actually builds himself a house on a remote island, builds three more houses for his kids, and sits in his fortress manipulating everybody for his own amusement. Providing summer homes for your loved ones might seem like a beneficent thing to do, but Harris turns Beechwood into a cruel game. Harris's favorite pastime is promising something to one daughter, then turning around and promising it to another. Although this character is not the nicest, I thought that he gave the book an interesting spin so I defnitely appreciated him.
The three Sinclair sisters Penny, Bess and Carrie also play an important role in the book. Penny is one of the three Sinclair sisters, or "the aunties," and Cadence's mum. Penny is a breeder of Golden Retrievers and the owner of Bosh, Poppy, and Grendel she lives in Windemere and Burlington, VT.

Bess is the mother of Mirren, Liberty, Bonnie, and Taft, and lives in Cuddledown and Cambridge, MA.

Carrie had Johnny and Will with her first (and only) husband William, she is now partner to Ed, and lives in Red Gate and New York City.

Tipper is wife to Harris, mother to the aunties, and grandmother to the littles and the Liars (except for Gat—of course). Tipper lives in Clairmont with Harris until she dies of heart failure shortly before Cadence turns fifteen.

Taft, Will, Liberty and Bonnie (the twin sisters) are described as “The Littles” throughout the book and only play a minor role.

Sam is Cadence's dad, a professor of military history who divorces Cadence's mom at the beginning of the book. He moves to Colorado and takes Cadence to Europe during summer sixteen.

Plot
1. Beginning: what happened at the beginning?
2. Middle: usually the highest point of action in the story.
3. Ending: how did everything finally work out?
Reading Rainbow Tip: Think about the most important events in the story. Be careful not to re-tell the whole story but give enough detail so that the plot makes sense to someone who hasn’t read the book.
On the surface, Cadence Sinclair's life appears to be pretty sweet. Not only does she live in a big, fancy house in Vermont, her family also owns an island off the coast of Massachusetts called Beechwood, where she spends every summer. She even has a cute summer boyfriend named Gat, whose uncle Ed is her aunt Carrie's partner.
Cadence, Gat, and her cousins Johnny and Mirren ( The Liars) are all fifteen years old, and "summer fifteen," as she calls it, promises to be another season of fun in the sun, funded by her rich grandfather, Harris. Picnics, beaches, private boats, and five adorable Golden Retrievers with whom to frolic in the sand? Yes, please!

Something terrible happens during summer fifteen, though—something Cadence can't remember. All she knows is that she woke up on the beach half-dressed and half-underwater, and now she has killer migraines.
She wasn't allowed to go to Beechwood for summer sixteen—instead, she had to spend the summer with her dad (in Europe, but still)—and worst of all, after her accident, Johnny, Mirren, and Gat ignored her emails. Nobody will tell her what happened, and her life now consists of crippling headaches and prescription painkillers. She finally gets to go back to Beechwood for summer seventeen, but only for a month. It's not long, but it's enough time to find out what's up with Gat.

When Cadence gets to Beechwood, she learns that Clairmont, her grandparents' massive house, has been replaced with a house everyone calls New Clairmont. Nobody will tell her why—they say Cadence's doctors want her to remember on her own.
Gradually, she starts to remember bits and pieces of summer fifteen. During her last week on the island, it all comes back to her: The Liars committed arson. They were sick of listening to their mothers fight over Harris's will, so they took action and burned Clairmont to the ground, dousing the rooms with gasoline and using flaming paper towel rolls as torches.

After she remembers what happened, Cadence goes back to Cuddledown to confront the Liars. They confirm that her memories are correct: Not only did they burn the house down, but Cadence was the only one who escaped. That's right they're all actually dead. Are they ghosts? Hallucinations? Memories? It's not clear, but it doesn't really matter—the point is that they were finally there for Cadence when she needed them.

From Gat's faded t-shirt to Mirren's cheesy tourist-town bikini, the Liars have been wearing two-year-old clothes all summer, and now Cadence knows why. They tell her it's getting hard to stick around, so she goes with them to the beach to say goodbye. One by one, they walk into the water and go to wherever it is ghosts go. Cadence thinks of all the things they dreamed of but will never have, and resolves to, as Mirren said, "be a little kinder than you have to."

Conclusion
Reading Rainbow Tip: It’s important to give your opinion! Would you recommend this book to someone else?

I would defnitely recommend this book to others. It is siutable for teenagers and young adults alike. This book is only one of E. Lockharts masterpieces. She has won many prizes and praise for this book.
“A searing story... At the center of it is a girl who learns the hardest way of all what family means, and what it means to lose the one that really mattered to you.”   - Publishers Weekly, starred
It was a pleasure being able to write about such a stunning book. I enjoyed writing my book review and hope that you too will enjoy reading it.