Read this book without looking up what happens. Don’t read reviews that describe the plot in detail. Don’t let someone tell you the twist. If you can arrive at We Were Liars genuinely cold, it will hit you significantly harder than if you know what’s coming, and it is already, even if you know, a book that hits hard.

What I can tell you safely: the Sinclair family spends every summer on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts — four generations of beautiful, wealthy, casually powerful people. Cadence Sinclair Eastman, seventeen, has been coming to Beechwood Island her whole life. Two summers ago, something happened on the island, and Cady doesn’t remember what. She has spent the intervening time with crushing migraines and a family that won’t tell her anything, trying to reconstruct what she can’t hold.

The Liars are Cady, her cousins Johnny and Mirren, and Gat — a boy from outside the family, Johnny’s friend, the person Cady loves. They have been the heart of the island’s summers since they were young enough to run along the shore together. Whatever happened two summers ago happened to all of them.

The Writing

E. Lockhart writes We Were Liars in a style that is spare and precise and very deliberate — short sentences, clean observations, the kind of prose that is deceptively simple until you notice how much it’s withholding. She renders the Sinclair world with enough beauty to make you understand why Cady would want it and enough edge to make you feel what it costs.

The Sinclair family’s particular mythology — the way they construct and perform their own story, the way beauty and money and confidence become armour and eventually trap — is observed with quiet mercilessness. Lockhart is not interested in making the wealthy villains. She is interested in what happens to people who live inside a story that doesn’t allow for certain kinds of truth.

Cadence

Cadence is an unreliable narrator in the literal sense — she cannot trust her own memory — and Lockhart makes this structural choice work by giving Cady a voice that is clearly intelligent and clearly damaged and clearly trying. She is not hiding things from the reader on purpose. She is hiding them from herself, which is considerably more unsettling.

Why YA Readers Will Love This

We Were Liars is the rare short book that feels complete — nothing is missing, nothing is padding. It is exactly as long as it needs to be and then it ends. For readers who struggle with long series or find 500-page fantasies difficult to commit to, this is a perfect single-sitting novel.

For readers who respond to unreliable narrators — who enjoy the particular pleasure of a story that has been concealing things from you in plain sight — Lockhart’s technique is exceptionally well executed. The re-read, which I recommend, is a genuinely different experience.

For readers interested in how wealth operates — not as villain but as environment, as the water people swim in — We Were Liars is one of the most precise observations of that phenomenon in YA.

The ending will not leave you quickly. You’ll think about it on the way to sleep. It is one of those books.

Published: May 2014 · Genre: YA contemporary/mystery · Standalone

Frequently Asked Questions

What is We Were Liars about? Cadence Sinclair Eastman has been coming to her family’s private island off Massachusetts her whole life. Two summers ago, something happened on Beechwood Island, and Cady doesn’t remember what — she has spent the intervening time with crushing migraines and a family that won’t tell her anything. The review’s primary instruction is to go in cold: ‘Don’t read reviews that describe the plot in detail. Don’t let someone tell you the twist. If you can arrive genuinely cold, it will hit you significantly harder than if you know what’s coming.’

How does Lockhart’s prose serve the novel’s structure? The review describes the writing as ‘spare and precise and very deliberate — short sentences, clean observations, the kind of prose that is deceptively simple until you notice how much it’s withholding.’ Lockhart ‘renders the Sinclair world with enough beauty to make you understand why Cady would want it and enough edge to make you feel what it costs.’ The family’s mythology — ’the way they construct and perform their own story’ — is ‘observed with quiet mercilessness.’

What makes Cadence an effective unreliable narrator? Cadence is ‘an unreliable narrator in the literal sense — she cannot trust her own memory.’ Lockhart makes the structural choice work by giving Cady ‘a voice that is clearly intelligent and clearly damaged and clearly trying.’ The review emphasises the distinction: ‘she is not hiding things from the reader on purpose — she is hiding them from herself, which is considerably more unsettling.’ The re-read, described as ‘a genuinely different experience,’ is recommended.

What does We Were Liars observe about wealth and privilege? The Sinclair family’s ‘particular mythology — the way beauty and money and confidence become armour and eventually trap — is observed with quiet mercilessness.’ The review notes Lockhart ‘is not interested in making the wealthy villains — she is interested in what happens to people who live inside a story that doesn’t allow for certain kinds of truth.’ We Were Liars is described as ‘one of the most precise observations of wealth as environment in YA.’

What makes We Were Liars work as a single-sitting novel? The review describes it as ’the rare short book that feels complete — nothing is missing, nothing is padding, it is exactly as long as it needs to be and then it ends.’ For readers who struggle with long series or 500-page fantasies, this is positioned as ‘a perfect single-sitting novel.’ The ending ‘will not leave you quickly — you’ll think about it on the way to sleep.’ It is one of those books.

Further Reading from Authoritative Sources

  • We Were Liars — Wikipedia’s We Were Liars article provides publication details and context for the novel, helping readers understand its place within E.
  • E. Lockhart — Wikipedia’s E.