E. Lockhart

We Were Liars is about a rich family on a private island, a girl with a head injury and no memory of one summer, and an ending that rearranges everything preceding it.

Lockhart writes short chapters and withholds ruthlessly, and the book became one of those titles teenagers pass on with instructions not to spoil it. Genuine Fraud plays a similar trick backwards through time. She has published for decades under variations of her name, including the Ruby Oliver books, which are funnier and much less known.