There are books that tell you stories, and then there are books that withhold stories until the very last moment, making you question everything you thought you understood. E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars belongs firmly in the latter category. This young adult thriller operates on a level of psychological complexity that transcends its genre, delivering a narrative so carefully constructed that its devastating conclusion feels both completely unexpected and utterly inevitable.
At its heart, this is a story about Cadence Sinclair Eastman, the eldest grandchild of a wealthy family who owns a private island off the coast of Massachusetts. But to reduce We Were Liars to a simple summary would be to miss the point entirely. This is a book about selective memory, about the lies we tell ourselves and others, about privilege rotting from within, and about how love and tragedy can become so entangled that separating them becomes impossible.
The Unreliable Architecture of Memory
Lockhart’s narrative strategy is as fragmented as her protagonist’s memory. Following a mysterious accident during her fifteenth summer on Beechwood Island, Cadence suffers from debilitating migraines and selective amnesia. She returns two years later, desperate to piece together what happened, while her family tiptoes around the truth with the kind of careful politeness that wealthy families perfect over generations.
The prose itself mirrors Cadence’s fractured recollections. Short, staccato sentences punctuate longer passages. Thoughts break off mid-stream. Fairy tale retellings interrupt the main narrative, each one a dark mirror reflecting the Sinclair family’s dysfunction. These aren’t mere stylistic flourishes—they’re integral to understanding how memory works when the brain desperately wants to forget something unbearable. Lockhart writes trauma not as a melodramatic event but as a persistent, shape-shifting presence that warps everything it touches.
The writing can feel almost too sparse at times, bordering on precious in its minimalism. Some readers may find the poetic fragments and repeated mantras (“Be a little kinder than you have to”) affected rather than affecting. Yet this same quality makes the book’s emotional gut punches land with devastating force precisely because Lockhart has stripped away every buffer between reader and revelation.
The Beautiful Sinclair Family and Their Poisonous Paradise
The setting of Beechwood Island functions as more than backdrop—it’s a character unto itself, a gilded cage where multiple generations of Sinclairs have perfected the art of looking perfect while slowly destroying each other. The family owns multiple houses on the island, each named with deliberate whimsy: Clairmont, Windemere, Red Gate, Cuddledown. These aren’t just vacation homes; they’re symbols of everything the family patriarch controls, the inheritance his three daughters compete for with smiles on their faces and venom in their hearts.
Lockhart’s examination of privilege is unflinching. The Sinclairs are old money, the kind of wealthy that manifests in ivory collectibles, original artwork, and the assumption that their problems matter more than anyone else’s. Cadence and her cousins—Johnny and Mirren—along with Gat, the nephew of an aunt’s boyfriend, form the core group known as “the Liars.” Together, they witness the family’s dysfunction up close: the three aunts tearing each other apart over inheritance, the patriarch playing favorites, the casual racism directed at Gat because he’s half-Indian.
What makes this portrayal particularly effective is that Cadence herself is complicit in the family’s toxicity until she begins to see it clearly. She’s not an outsider looking in; she’s been raised in this environment, taught to value appearance over substance, to prioritize family reputation over honesty. Her journey isn’t just about recovering lost memories—it’s about recognizing uncomfortable truths about who she is and where she comes from.
The Liars Themselves
The relationships at the center of this novel pulse with authenticity, even as we question which memories can be trusted:
- Cadence and Gat’s romance walks the tightrope between genuinely felt first love and the kind of teenage intensity that feels profound in the moment but may not survive reality
- The foursome’s friendship captures that peculiar intimacy of cousins who only see each other summers yet know each other better than anyone else
- Family dynamics reveal how love and resentment can coexist, how people can genuinely care for each other while simultaneously competing for affection and resources
Gat, in particular, serves as both love interest and moral compass. His outsider status gives him clarity the others lack, yet even he gets swept up in the Liars’ plans. Lockhart resists making him either a savior figure or a stereotype, though his role as the character who explicitly calls out the family’s prejudice occasionally feels didactic.
The Series Context: Past and Present Collide
We Were Liars launched a series that now includes Family of Liars (2022), a prequel that explores the previous generation’s secrets on Beechwood Island. While We Were Liars stands beautifully on its own, the existence of Family of Liars adds another layer to the narrative—the suggestion that the Sinclair family’s dysfunction spans multiple generations, that the patterns Cadence witnesses have deep roots. For readers who find themselves haunted by the original, the prequel offers both answers and new questions about how families pass down their traumas.
The announcement of a potential third book, We Fell Apart, suggests Lockhart isn’t finished with Beechwood Island yet, though details remain scarce.
Where the Book Stumbles
Despite its considerable strengths, We Were Liars isn’t without flaws. The twist, while genuinely shocking on first read, requires such careful withholding of information that some readers may feel manipulated rather than surprised. Lockhart plays fair within the rules of unreliable narration, but the revelation fundamentally changes how we understand every previous scene, and not everyone will appreciate being led quite so deliberately toward a predetermined conclusion.
The book’s treatment of mental health and trauma, while generally sensitive, occasionally veers into using these issues primarily as plot devices. Cadence’s migraines and memory loss serve the narrative’s mystery more than they explore the genuine experience of traumatic brain injury. Some readers seeking authentic representation of these conditions may find the portrayal frustrating.
Additionally, the supporting characters—particularly Cadence’s mother and the aunts—sometimes feel more like archetypes than fully realized people. We understand their roles in the family drama, but we rarely get beneath their surfaces the way we do with the Liars.
The Literary Landscape: Companions on the Shelf
Readers who appreciate We Were Liars will find kindred spirits in several other works. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn shares the unreliable narrator technique and the slow revelation of truth. The Secret History by Donna Tartt explores similar themes of privilege, friendship, and terrible consequences. For those who enjoyed Lockhart’s previous work, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks demonstrates her ability to examine institutional power structures through a teenage lens. And for readers drawn to the psychological complexity and family dysfunction, We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates or Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena offer comparable explorations of family secrets.
Within young adult literature specifically, All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven and I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson share We Were Liars‘ willingness to tackle difficult emotional territory without condescension.
The Bottom Line
We Were Liars is the kind of book that generates fierce reactions. Some readers declare it a masterpiece that haunted them for weeks. Others find it manipulative and overly precious. Both camps have valid points. What’s undeniable is that Lockhart has crafted a narrative that refuses to be forgotten, that lingers like the salt air on Beechwood Island.
This isn’t a perfect book, but it’s a brave one. It takes risks with form and structure. It trusts readers to follow a fractured narrative. And it refuses to soften its edges or provide easy comfort. And most importantly, it understands that sometimes the biggest lies aren’t the ones we tell others—they’re the ones we tell ourselves to survive.
For readers willing to surrender to Lockhart’s carefully orchestrated revelation, We Were Liars delivers an experience that transcends typical young adult fare. It’s a book about how we construct narratives to make sense of unbearable truths, and how sometimes those narratives collapse under the weight of reality. Read it once for the shock. Read it again to see how brilliantly Lockhart concealed and revealed in equal measure. Just be prepared: some truths, once known, cannot be unknown.