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PART ONE: Welcome
Summary: Chapter 1
Cadence explains that she comes from a family of “old-money Democrats.” Outwardly the Sinclairs are the picture of white, upper-class success, but privately some of them struggle with debt and addiction.
Summary: Chapter 2
An unspecified accident has left Cadence weak, sickly-looking, and suffering from migraines. She dyes her blond hair black. At length, she relates the events leading up to the present point. When Cadence was fifteen, her father left her and her mother, Penny. Cadence was devastated, but Penny calmly packed the two of them off for their annual summer stay on the family’s private island, off the Massachusetts coast.
Summary: Chapter 3
Years earlier, on their private island, Granddad and Granny Sinclair had built homes for themselves and each of their three daughters, Carrie, Bess, and Penny. Penny was younger than either of her sisters, but Cadence was older than any of her cousins—the children of her aunts.
Summary: Chapter 4
Carrie had two boys, Johnny and Will. Bess had Mirren, Taft, and twins Liberty and Bonnie. The oldest children: Cadence, Johnny, and Mirren, are close. Since they were born within a few weeks of each other, the three named the summers after their age at the time. In “summer eight,” Gat arrived. His uncle, Ed, was Carrie’s boyfriend. Ed and Gat were of South Asian descent, which visibly bothered Granddad and Granny, but Gat and the three cousins soon became close friends. The rest of the family started calling the four of them “the Liars.” The reason is not given, but the cousins had not been “the Liars” before summer eight.
Summary: Chapter 5
Gat was kind and funny, and by the end of summer fourteen, he and Cadence were in love.
Summary: Chapter 6
Arriving on the island at the start of summer fifteen, after her parents’ breakup, Cadence walked in on Gat, unnoticed, as he was addressing a letter to another girl.
Summary: Chapter 7
Cadence learned more about Gat's relationship with the other girl from her cousins but said nothing to Gat. She joined in games and campfire talk and listened as Gat criticized the Sinclair family's sheltered life.
Summary: Chapter 8
Gat had been on a volunteer trip to India and had come back profoundly disturbed by the poverty there.
Analysis
Cadence’s introduction of herself and the Sinclair family is repetitive and told sometimes in verse, suggesting that the long lines of prose and the short lines of verse are equally important, as are the repetitions and the variations. In verse, she describes what the Sinclairs are not. In prose, she states what they are. The latter focuses on physical appearance and superficial attributes, while the former focuses on inner characteristics and traits. Her repetition of the root word “desperate” three times along with the short, staccato lines “So much / in love” are also cues that appearance and reality are at odds.
Cadence calls attention to her keen awareness of language’s precise meanings and the ways these can be subverted. She draws the reader’s attention to this fact with the difference in meaning implied by the similar phrasing regarding “suffer migraines” vs. “suffer fools.” Still, her warning doesn’t quite prepare the reader for her shocking and violent use of metaphor when she claims to have been shot by her father as he left them for another life. In introducing Harris and the aunts, Cadence shifts to the language of fairytale, calling the aunts princesses and describing their weddings, houses, and the expected inheritance. This mixture of linguistic styles is characteristic of Cadence’s confused state of mind and represents part of her attempt to piece together her memory and her role in her own story.
Cadence takes care to introduce the four Liars together the year they became the Liars, but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Gat is an outsider. First, he only joined them in summer eight, before which they were not called the Liars. Second, his appearance causes Gran’s face to change, in stark contrast to the family’s reaction little Will, whose blond hair marks him as a Sinclair. Finally, Gat is the last to emerge from the boat that carries all of them from the mainland, indicating a reluctance and hesitation to intrude into this world that obviously is unsure about how to greet him. Even years later, Gat isn’t willing to take a boat on the water without a family member accompanying him because he feels his lack of belonging so deeply.
Finally, summer fifteen, the summer all the trouble begins, Cadence realizes that she’s not the only girl in Gat’s life. At this point, Cadence is confronted with an unattainable desire, and she reacts much like any other Sinclair, with anger and determination.
Penny’s reaction to her husband’s departure is quintessentially Sinclair. She tells Cadence to “be normal,” “don’t cause a scene”, and to “breathe and sit up,” all of which is code for the stiff upper lip WASP-y attitude embodied by Harris Sinclair. It contrasts with Gat’s behavior, which is to question everything, including the Sinclairs’ right to own Beechwood Island. His questioning makes the other Liars uncomfortable, and they laugh him off as a way to escape having to interrogate their own positions and beliefs. Even as he wrestles with big, hard questions like whether he believes in God and what kind of Buddhist that makes him, Cadence obsesses over how much she loves him and whether he loves someone else and what it would be like to kiss him, clearly contrasting their concerns and preoccupations.
