At a glance
LuvemBooks Verdict
Best for
Readers aged 12 and up who love twist-driven mysteries built around a carefully concealed revelation — especially those drawn to stories exploring how inherited wealth and family dysfunction corrode from within.
Worth it if
Worth it if you prize novels engineered so precisely around a single devastating reveal that rereading rivals the first-read experience, with earlier scenes taking on entirely new meaning once the full picture emerges.
Skip if
Skip it if you prefer consistently grounded, realistic prose throughout — Lockhart's deliberately heightened, figurative style in depicting Cadence's inner pain can disorient readers who aren't expecting shifts into a fable-like register, particularly in the novel's earlier sections.
What readers & critics say
Kirkus Reviews awarded We Were Liars a starred review, calling it "riveting, brutal and beautifully told," and the novel went on to win the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Young Adult Fiction and an ALA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults listing for 2015, as documented by Wikipedia. BookBrowse praised its "taut psychological mystery marked by an air of uneasy disorientation," noting that the ending's "how-could-I-have-not-suspected-that? Feeling" compels readers to return immediately to page one.
“Riveting, brutal and beautifully told — a devastating tale of greed and secrets.”
— Kirkus Reviews“The story shines through the pages, whisking you away to Beechwood Island and throwing you right into the centre of the Sinclair family drama.”
— The GuardianAsk LuvemBooks
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- Is it worth reading?
- We Were Liars has earned genuine critical acclaim since its 2014 debut, with Kirkus Reviews awarding it a starred review and calling it 'riveting, brutal and beautifully told,' and Book Reporter's Carol Fitzgerald describing it as 'pitch perfect in both plotting and character development.' The novel's reputation as a modern benchmark of YA rests on its intricately engineered plot twist, its thematic richness — grief, privilege, family dysfunction, the corrosive effects of inherited wealth — and a fairy-tale structure that gives it unusual architectural intentionality. The primary caveat is that the twist-dependent structure front-loads much of the first-read payoff toward a single revelatory moment, and Lockhart's heightened figurative prose can occasionally disorient readers who expect consistently realistic narration.
- Similar books
- Readers drawn to We Were Liars often connect with other YA novels that blend emotional intensity with carefully constructed reveals. John Green's Looking for Alaska shares the private-school setting, a close-knit group of outsiders, and a devastating pivot that reframes everything before it. Tamara Ireland Stone's Every Last Word offers a similarly fragmented narrative voice tied to a protagonist navigating hidden pain and fractured perception. Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower also centers on a teenager piecing together suppressed memory amid themes of grief and family dysfunction. For readers drawn to the darker, literary side of the novel, Donna Tartt's The Secret History — while adult fiction — shares the elite-enclave setting and the structure of a revelation that illuminates a moral catastrophe.
- Who should read this?
- We Were Liars is designed for readers aged 12 to 17, with a publisher-assigned grade level of 7 through 9, but its thematic weight — grief, family dysfunction, the corrosive effects of inherited wealth, and the consequences of moral failure — gives it genuine resonance well beyond that range. Readers who prize novels built around a carefully concealed revelation, where the pleasure of rereading rivals the first-read experience, will find it a particularly satisfying choice. Those drawn to the intersection of contemporary realism and fairy-tale structure, or to stories that examine how privilege distorts family life, will find both elements woven tightly into the novel's architecture. Forever Young Adult's Sarah Pitre described it as a 'masterful, darkly mesmerizing portrait of a fractured family ruined by the excess of wealth' — a verdict that signals this novel's reach extends to adult literary readers as well.
- What age is it for?
- Best for ages 12 and up — the publisher-assigned grade level is 7 through 9, placing the intended readership squarely in early-to-mid adolescence. The novel's slightly fragmented, figurative prose style and its thematically heavy subject matter — grief, suppressed trauma, a character's Percocet dependency, and the psychological distortion of chronic pain — suit confident readers who are comfortable with unreliable narration and emotionally complex storytelling. Its thematic depth also gives it genuine staying power for older teens and adults.
- About E. Lockhart
- Emily Jenkins, who sometimes uses the pen name E. Lockhart, is an American writer of children's picture books, young adult novels, and adult fiction.
- Tell me about the adaptation
- We Were Liars has been adapted as an original series on Prime Video, demonstrating the novel's sustained cultural staying power in the decade since its 2014 debut. The review does not detail casting, release date, or how closely the series follows the book's plot, but the adaptation's existence underscores the story's broad appeal beyond its core YA readership. Readers considering the book first will find that the twist-driven structure — built to reward rereading — is best experienced on the page before encountering any adaptation.
- What are the main themes?
- We Were Liars is thematically dense for a YA novel, centering on the corrosive effects of inherited wealth and privilege — embodied in the Sinclair family's self-image as 'Royals of America' — and the consequences of moral failure when that privilege goes unchecked. Grief, family dysfunction, and the psychological distortion caused by chronic pain and suppressed memory are woven into Cadence's fractured narration. The novel also engages with questions of outsider status and belonging through the character of Gat Patil, whose position as always 'slightly outside the Sinclair circle' throws the family's insularity into relief. Lockhart's deliberate fairy-tale structure frames all of these themes within a fable-like architecture, giving the moral reckoning at the novel's core a heightened, almost mythic weight.
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Age & Reading Level
Recommended age
Ages 12–18
Reading level
Young adult
Content to know about
Best for: Ages 12+ — the publisher's grade level of 7–9 and the novel's fragmented, unreliable narration suit confident readers comfortable with emotionally complex, twist-driven YA fiction.
Skip if you prefer grounded, realistic narration throughout and have little patience for figurative, fragmented prose that depicts inner pain in non-literal terms.
Editorial Review
We Were Liars is a critically acclaimed 2014 young-adult novel by E. Lockhart — winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Young Adult Fiction and an ALA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults for 2015 — that follows Cadence Sinclair Eastman as she attempts to recover the memories she lost during a mysterious injury on her family's private island, building toward a twist-driven revelation about privilege, consequences, and the fractures hidden beneath a perfect surface.
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