I liked this book very much.
I've read somewhere that the difference between adult and YA fiction is that YA fiction dispenses with sub-plots. I've been reading a lot of YA fiction lately and I think that instead of sub-plots it's developing a relationship with intertextuality, particularly with traditional/canonical fiction. This book refers more than once to Wuthering Heights, and for good reason. Several of the main concepts and conceits in Bronte's book are revived here. (Even that name Cady is not so different from Cathy...) How do you interact with, and try to change, injustice if you are privileged, and if your privilege has not allowed you to develop certain characteristics or strengths? What does it do to relationships if you come from vastly different backgrounds? (There's another level to Cady saying "my Gat", I'd suggest.) During the novel the characters discuss Wuthering Heights as a romance or a tragedy - of course the popular version is that of the doomed love between Cathy and Heathcliffe, but that's leaving out the intergenerational nature of the whole book, of how Heathcliffe carries on and the nature of his behavioural change. Mirrored in various (fractured) ways in Liars.
I think this thing of referring to books mirrors the way many of us fall (or fell) in love for the first time. It can't help but be tinged by fantasy; by the books we've read (even fairy stories) and the scenarios we make up in our minds. In YA fiction first love is an insurmountable dividing line where reality becomes mixed in with fantasy, and the divided self starts to become self-aware. So Cady, as all young lovers do, starts out with limited self-awareness and becomes more aware by seeing herself through the lens of her developing love. But this book takes that concept and stretches it to its utmost, with Cady's headaches and ill-health meaning at times she is aware, and then returns to a state of childishness, not being able to deal with the adult world. Her ability to deal as an adult with her life ebbs and flows like the sea surrounding the island.
I usually do get really fed up with displays of privilege but in this case I felt it served a purpose - the privilege itself, like in historical novels, is a cage as well as something that eases life. I saw it both as a criticism of the ignorance of privilege and as a way of showing that money is another form of power, that can be abused like other forms of power. Power and powerlessness is a theme that recurs in a few forms throughout the book.
Like everyone else I knew there was a twist coming and like many others I didn't see it - perhaps because the writer played with a bit of genre-busting. I was not expecting it because it didn't feel like it was "allowed" in this kind of novel. But a brilliant artifice and idea, and I thought well-executed.
I was grateful to be introduced to this writer, and have passed the book on to DD. She's not a bookworm but has discovered (and loves) John Green's novels, and i think she'll enjoy this one very much.