Sometimes a book is a book and sometimes a book is a phenomenon. E. Lockhart’s 2014 Y.A. psychological thriller We Were Liars is, without a doubt, a phenomenon. . . . The prequel aims to stand on its own, and technically it does; you don’t need to have read the earlier book to understand this new one. But for the greatest enjoyment of Family of Liars, read We Were Liars first.” —The New York Times, on Family of Liars
"You’re going to want to remember the title. Liars details the summers of a girl who harbors a dark secret, and delivers a satisfying, but shocking twist ending." —Breia Brissey, Entertainment Weekly
"This mindblowing YA thriller from E. Lockhart will make you glad you're the 99 percent...And that's about all we can tell you when it comes to the story of 'We Were Liars,' the book by E. Lockhart that everyone will be reading, and re-reading, this summer. It's twisty, it's mysterious, and it's got a surprise ending that'll knock your socks off."
—Kat Rosenfield, MTV News
"Surprising, thrilling, and beautifully executed in spare, precise, and lyrical prose, Lockhart spins a tragic family drama, the roots of which go back generations. And the ending? Shhhh. Not telling. (But it’s a doozy)...This is poised to be big." —Booklist, starred review
"Lockhart has created a mystery with an ending most readers won’t see coming, one so horrific it will prompt some to return immediately to page one to figure out how they missed it. At the center of it is a girl who learns the hardest way of all what family means, and what it means to lose the one that really mattered to you." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Riveting, brutal and beautifully told." —Kirkus, starred review
"The ending is a stunner that will haunt readers for a long time to come." —School Library Journal, starred review
"A taut psychological mystery marked by an air of uneasy disorientation...The ultimate reveal is shocking both for its tragedy and for the how-could-I-have-not-suspected-that? feeling it leaves us with. But we didn’t, which is Lockhart’s commendable triumph." —The Horn Book, starred review
“This is a love story as much as it is a psychological mystery…Astonishing." —Shelf Awareness, starred review
“[a] haunting, sophisticated mystery...a novel so twisty and well-told that it will appeal to older readers as well as to adolescents.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Irresistible premise for this ticking time bomb of a novel.” —The New York Times Book Review
"A Lockhart YA is always a treat and this is no exception...The glimpse we get into a life of privilege, a lifestyle most of us can only imagine, is insightful and thrilling. The ending will shock the mose jaded of readers, we promise!" —RT Book Reviews
"There's trouble in paradise at the opening of National Book Award finalist and Printz honoree E. Lockhart's shattering yet ultimately hopeful YA novel . . . and neither family nor reader will ever be the same." —Library Journal
"It's a nearly perfect story, and it's utterly absorbing." —Bustle, A YA Best Book of the Year
"No book on this summer's reading list will have readers immobilized in their hammocks more than E. Lockhart's We Were Liars..... This book has that surprise quality—like Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity—that makes readers scramble back through hungrily devoured chapters and wonder in admiration: Could I have seen this coming? Did I miss any clues?" —Newsday
"Like a shard of glass, WE WERE LIARS glitters and shines, then cuts deep. E. Lockhart has truly outdone herself with this masterful, darkly mesmerizing portrait of a fractured family ruined by the excess of wealth. Humming with rich descriptions and razor-sharp intelligence, the story of Cadence Sinclair Eastman will both inspire and haunt readers for years to come." —Sarah Pitre, Forever Young Adult
"Perception often is not reality — and it certainly is not in WE WERE LIARS. This is a look at what “a perfect world” looks like on the inside and how it unravels once one of the players sees it for what it is. Pitch perfect in both plotting and character development."
—Carol Fitzgerald, Book Reporter
"The must-read contemporary novel so far this year is definitely E. Lockhart’s stellar We Were Liars, a rich, stunning summer mystery with a sharp twist that will leaving you dying to talk about the book with a pal or ten." —Sonia Charaipotra, Parade
"A haunting tale about how families live within their own mythologies. Sad, wonderful, and real." —Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies and Leviathan
"I've fallen in love with every E. Lockhart book I've ever read (and I've read them all), but We Were Liars blows them all out of the water. Dark, gripping, heartrending, and terrifyingly smart, this book grabs you from the first page—and will never let go." — Robin Wasserman, author of The Waking Dark
"Spectacular." —Lauren Myracle, author of Shine, The Infinite Moment of Us, and TTYL
"A haunting, brilliant, beautiful book. This is E. Lockhart at her mind-blowing best." — Sarah Mlynowski, author of Don't Even Think About It and Gimme a Call
"Stunningly sharp. . . . will sear itself into your memory." —Christian Science Monitor
"A haunting psychological thriller." —The Guardian
"The mystery driving the plot is a shocking punch in the face that will stay with you long after you finish." —Hypable Online Hypable-Weekend Reading
“There’s no preparing for the shocker of an ending.”
—SLJ
"We Were Liars is amazing. I felt run over by it . . . .Emily has done something incredible here. —Paul O. Zelinsky
★ 04/01/2014
Gr 9 Up—Cadence Sinclair Easton comes from an old-money family, headed by a patriarch who owns a private island off of Cape Cod. Each summer, the extended family gathers at the various houses on the island, and Cadence, her cousins Johnny and Mirren, and friend Gat (the four "Liars"), have been inseparable since age eight. During their fifteenth summer however, Cadence suffers a mysterious accident. She spends the next two years—and the course of the book—in a haze of amnesia, debilitating migraines, and painkillers, trying to piece together just what happened. Lockhart writes in a somewhat sparse style filled with metaphor and jumps from past to present and back again—rather fitting for a main character struggling with a sudden and unexplainable life change. The story, while lightly touching on issues of class and race, more fully focuses on dysfunctional family drama, a heart-wrenching romance between Cadence and Gat, and, ultimately, the suspense of what happened during that fateful summer. The ending is a stunner that will haunt readers for a long time to come.—Jenny Berggren, formerly at New York Public Library
★ 2014-03-17
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady's life apart. Cady Sinclair's family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady's reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters' slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady's fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle's closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family's foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens' desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic. Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)
