2 Top Books:"We Were Liars" & "The House We Grew Up In"

Am not sure I’m loving the big trend of cut out gowns on the red carpet these days. You know the Golden Globe dresses I’m talking about.

Beautiful girls in dresses apparently tailored by Edward Scissorhands. Huh.

In fashion, cut outs aren’t so hot. But in fiction? Bring them on!

Just finished not 1 but 2 books with suffering heroines whose memories had been hacked. Huge chunks of time simply erased, otherwise known as the memory cut out.

The memory cut out is sad for our heroines but good for us as readers because we can’t put the books down, so eager are we to find out what in the heck happened.

I finished the first book We Were Liars by E. Lockhart in 2 days. It’s technically a young adult title, but the book deals with some very adult themes. And it’s so good it’ll keep you up reading way past the average young adult’s bedtime!

 The book’s about Cadence, a teenage member of the elite Sinclair family, and the apocryphal events that unfold one summer at their island estate off of the Cape. (Trying saying that 3 times fast.)

Why is Cadence at the center of the action, but in retrospect she can’t remember anything about it?

Is she like guru girl when hosting a dinner party, so distracted by possibility of cooking catastrophe that she blanks entire event out? Or is the reason behind her memory loss something more sinister?

The book is an examination of love & loyalty, class & race with a smidgen of betrayal and denial thrown in, just for fun. It ends with the very high cost this wealthy family pays when all these issues collide.(Click this link to check out "We Were Liars" on amazon.com where you can buy it for around $10.)

The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell looks at some of the same themes but through the lens of hoarding. The Birds are a charming, English family, helmed by whimsical & packrattish mother, Lorelei. Childhood for the four Bird siblings is idyllic until something goes very wrong in their teenage years.

What happened to make the family implode? Why won’t Lorelei speak of or even remember it? (Click this link to go to amazon.com to check out more about "The House We Grew Up In", which you can get for around $12.)

 Both these reads are fantastic. Though maybe not quite as fantastic as the Golden Globes, which has its own cast of charmed protagonists with their own doomed fates (cut out gown, anyone?).

Happy reading, guru girls & guys!