For readers drawn to psychological mystery, morally complex family dynamics, and narratives that use form itself as a storytelling device, We Were Liars is one of the more carefully constructed entries in contemporary YA fiction. Kirkus Reviews awarded it a starred review and called it "riveting, brutal and beautifully told," and R.L. Stine described its central twist as "the most heartbreaking twist" he had ever encountered. The caveat is genuine: the novel is front-loaded with ambiguity, and Cadence's figurative narration requires patience before the payoff arrives — critics noted the ending is something Lockhart "just about manages to pull off," a qualified compliment that signals how much trust the book demands.

Best for ages 14 and up. While the novel is officially targeted at readers aged 12 to 17, the review notes particular resonance for the older end of that range — its themes of grief, class, complicity, and family trauma, combined with Cadence's narration of chronic pain and Percocet dependency, suit a more mature teen reader. Younger readers within the 12–17 window may find the fragmented, figurative narration and morally weighted ending harder to process.

E. Lockhart

About This Author

Reviewed

March 23, 2026

Read Time

8 min read

Age & reading levelAges 14+ · Young adult

Reader rating

4.2 · 80,686 Amazon ratings

reader ratings, not a LuvemBooks score

$7.00 on Amazon Audiobook

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We Were Liars

Name: We Were Liars
Author: E. Lockhart
ISBN: 0385741278

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart Review: A Gripping YA Mystery With Real Bite

by E. Lockhart

E. Lockhart's We Were Liars is a critically acclaimed 2014 young-adult novel built around the wealthy, seemingly perfect Sinclair family and a summer that Cadence Sinclair Eastman cannot remember. Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Young Adult Fiction and recipient of a starred review, it remains a landmark of contemporary YA fiction, praised for its razor-sharp prose and a twist that author R.L. Stine called the most heartbreaking he had ever encountered.

$7.00 on Amazon

Ages 14+chronic pain and prescription drug dependency · grief and traumatic loss

LuvemBooks Verdict

Best for

Readers aged roughly 14 and up who enjoy psychological mystery and morally complex family drama, and who are willing to surrender to an unreliable, fragmented narrator in exchange for a twist that reframes everything they've read.

Worth it if

You're drawn to narratives that weaponise form itself — where the structure, the amnesia, and the figurative prose are all doing deliberate thematic work — and you can tolerate sustained ambiguity in the early chapters.

Skip if

You prefer clear, chronological storytelling and a narrator whose descriptions of pain and emotion are literal rather than figurative, as Cadence's abstracted, memory-fractured voice may try your patience before the payoff arrives.

What readers & critics say

Kirkus Reviews awarded the novel a starred review, calling it "riveting, brutal and beautifully told," and named it among its Best Books of 2014; en.wikipedia.org's reception summary records that it won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Young Adult Fiction and was listed as an ALA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults for 2015, while also noting the ending is something Lockhart "just about manages to pull off" — a qualified compliment acknowledging the trust the novel demands of its reader.

“Riveting, brutal and beautifully told — a devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady's life apart.”

— kirkusreviews.com

“The story shines through the pages, whisking you away to Beechwood Island and throwing you right into the centre of the Sinclair family drama.”

— theguardian.com

Sources: Kirkus Reviews, Wikipedia

4.2from 80,686 Amazon ratings— reader ratings, not a LuvemBooks score

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We Were Liars follows Cadence Sinclair Eastman as she returns to her wealthy family's private island retreat, Beechwood Island, trying to reconstruct the catastrophic summer she cannot remember — building toward one of YA fiction's most devastating twist endings. Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Young Adult Fiction and praised by Kirkus Reviews as "riveting, brutal and beautifully told," it is a landmark of contemporary YA that rewards patient readers with structural precision and emotional devastation. The key caveat: Cadence's deliberately fragmented, figurative narration demands sustained trust before the payoff arrives.

Is it worth reading?: For readers drawn to psychological mystery, morally complex family dynamics, and narratives that use form itself as a storytelling device, We Were Liars is one of the more carefully constructed entries in contemporary YA fiction. Kirkus Reviews awarded it a starred review and called it "riveting, brutal and beautifully told," and R.L. Stine described its central twist as "the most heartbreaking twist" he had ever encountered. The caveat is genuine: the novel is front-loaded with ambiguity, and Cadence's figurative narration requires patience before the payoff arrives — critics noted the ending is something Lockhart "just about manages to pull off," a qualified compliment that signals how much trust the book demands.
Who should read this?: We Were Liars is best suited to readers who enjoy psychological mystery, unreliable narrators, and fiction that uses narrative form as a deliberate storytelling device. The review singles out particular resonance for the older end of its 12–17 target range, given the novel's engagement with grief, class, complicity, and the violence of family mythology. Readers who prefer straightforward chronological narration may find Cadence's fragmented, figurative voice demanding — but those willing to sit with ambiguity will find a novel with uncommon thematic coherence and an ending of genuine emotional devastation.
What age is it for?: Best for ages 14 and up. While the novel is officially targeted at readers aged 12 to 17, the review notes particular resonance for the older end of that range — its themes of grief, class, complicity, and family trauma, combined with Cadence's narration of chronic pain and Percocet dependency, suit a more mature teen reader. Younger readers within the 12–17 window may find the fragmented, figurative narration and morally weighted ending harder to process.
Similar books: Readers who respond to We Were Liars' combination of psychological mystery, unreliable narration, and emotionally weighted reveals will find strong matches among the curated selections below. John Green's Looking for Alaska shares the boarding-school insularity, grief, and the experience of reconstructing a catastrophic event from incomplete memory. Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower similarly deploys a fragmented, emotionally raw narrator navigating family trauma and the weight of things left unsaid. Megan Lally's That's Not My Name offers another twist-driven narrative built around a protagonist who cannot fully trust her own memory — a direct parallel to Cadence's situation. For those interested in other E. Lockhart titles, Genuine Fraud and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (neither currently in the LuvemBooks catalogue) showcase her recurring interest in unreliable, self-constructed female protagonists.
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: Television adaptation rights to We Were Liars were acquired by Julie Plec's My So-Called Company and Universal Television, with Plec set to adapt both We Were Liars and its prequel, Family of Liars, for the screen. Julie Plec is best known as a television producer and showrunner, and the project speaks to the novel's sustained cultural traction more than a decade after its 2014 publication. Specific release dates for the adaptation have not been confirmed in available sources.
What are the main themes?: We Were Liars is organised around grief, class, complicity, and the violence of family mythology — themes the review describes as giving the novel particular resonance for older teen readers. Amnesia functions throughout as a razor-sharp metaphor for the Sinclair family's collective refusal to confront reality, and the fairy-tale structure frames the entire narrative around the consequences of one's mistakes. Cadence's chronic pain and Percocet dependency also thread through the novel as a lens on how suffering distorts personality and perception.

Summarize this book

Is it worth reading?

Who should read this?

What age is it for?

About E. Lockhart

Tell me about the adaptation

What are the main themes?

Summarize this book

We Were Liars centres on Cadence Sinclair Eastman, the eldest grandchild of the wealthy Harris Sinclair, who owns Beechwood Island — a private retreat near Martha's Vineyard divided among four mansions. Cadence, her cousins Johnny and Mirren, and their close friend Gat Patil form the group known as "the Liars." The novel opens two years after something went catastrophically wrong during what Cadence calls Summer 15, when she suffered a serious head injury and lost most of her memories of that season. Returning to the island, she tries to reconstruct what really happened, what was concealed, and at what cost — and the book's architecture is built entirely around that devastating reconstruction.

Follow up

Who is Gat Patil?

What is Beechwood Island?

What's the fairy-tale structure about?

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Our Review

We review the evidence: published critics, reader verdicts and BookTube reviews, gathered and weighed with AI assistance and edited by LuvemBooks, rather than one reader's first-hand take.

E. Lockhart's We Were Liars is a landmark of contemporary YA fiction that earns its reputation through structural precision, a memorably unreliable narrator, and a devastation that accumulates quietly before landing all at once.

What the Novel Is and What It Does

At the centre of We Were Liars is Cadence Sinclair Eastman, the eldest grandchild of Harris Sinclair — a wealthy, self-styled family patriarch who owns Beechwood Island, a private retreat near Martha's Vineyard divided among four mansions: Windemere, Cuddledown, Red Gate, and Clairmont. The Sinclairs, known informally as the "Royals of America," have gathered on the island every summer for generations.

Cadence, her cousins Johnny and Mirren, and their close friend Gat Patil — the nephew of Carrie's partner, Ed — form the group the family calls "the Liars." The novel opens two years after something went catastrophically wrong during what Cadence calls Summer 15, when she suffered a serious head injury and lost most of her memories of that season.

Returning to Beechwood Island and reuniting with the other Liars, Cadence tries to piece together what happened. The book's central engine is that reconstruction: what really occurred, what was concealed, and at what cost.

Structure, Influences, and Design Intent

Lockhart has spoken directly about the deliberate architecture of the novel. As a child, she was captivated by her mother's fairy-tale collections, and she built We Were Liars around a contemporary story with a fairy-tale structure — her stated aim was to write something that could unpack what she had spent years thinking about in that form.

The influence is legible in the novel's moral framework: the story is organised around the consequences of one's mistakes, a classic fairy-tale preoccupation. The character of Gat — present in the Sinclair world but permanently an outsider — was drawn from Lockhart's own experience as a scholarship student at private schools and, according to Wikipedia's account of her sources, from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.

Cadence's migraines and Percocet dependency, which shape her narration throughout, reflect Lockhart's interest in how chronic pain distorts personality and perception.

Critical Reception and Awards

The novel's reception was strong and broadly consistent. Kirkus Reviews awarded it a starred review, describing the book as "riveting, brutal and beautifully told" and specifically praising Lockhart's humanising treatment of the Sinclair family.

We Were Liars was named among the best young adult books of 2014 by Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and The Wall Street Journal, and it was listed as an ALA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults for 2015. It won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Young Adult Fiction and, according to Goodreads, was the platform's most-searched standalone title of 2014.

Bustle described the novel as "compulsively readable" with a "meaningful" plot. R.L. Stine praised its central twist as "the most heartbreaking twist" he had ever read.

A reader review noted that "the story shines through the pages, whisking you away to Beechwood Island and throwing you right into the centre of the Sinclair family drama."

Where the Novel Challenges Its Readers

The same qualities that give We Were Liars its power are the ones that require patience from the reader. Cadence's narration — shaped by memory loss, pain, and the Sinclair family's deep-seated habit of denial — is deliberately fragmented, and her descriptions of physical and emotional suffering are frequently figurative to the point of abstraction.

Reviewers noted that Cadence's emotional descriptions could be momentarily disorienting, requiring readers to pause and recognise that she is speaking figuratively rather than literally. This is by design — amnesia functions, as one critic noted in Wikipedia's reception summary, as a razor-sharp metaphor for the Sinclair family's collective refusal to confront reality — but readers who prefer straightforward, chronological narration may find the novel's early sections demanding.

The ending itself was described, in that same reception summary, as something Lockhart "just about manages to pull off," a qualified compliment that acknowledges the novel asks a great deal of the reader's trust before delivering its payoff.

Who the Book Is Designed For and Its Ongoing Relevance

Originally published in 2014 and available in a subsequent Ember reprint edition, We Were Liars is targeted at readers aged approximately 12 to 17, with particular resonance for the older end of that range given its themes of grief, class, complicity, and the violence of family mythology. The novel's appeal has proved durable: its television adaptation rights were acquired by Julie Plec's My So-Called Company and Universal Television, with Plec adapting both We Were Liars and its prequel, Family of Liars, for the screen.

For readers drawn to psychological mystery, morally complex family dynamics, and narratives that weaponise narrative form itself as a storytelling device, this novel represents one of the more carefully constructed entries in the genre. It does not offer comfort so much as clarity — and it arrives at that clarity through precisely the kind of deception its title promises.

Sources & Further Reading

The key facts and claims in this review are grounded in the retrieved, verified sources listed below.

Cited in this review
1
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart | Audible.com
audible.com
2
We Were Liars - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Further reading
3
E. Lockhart — author profile
E. Lockhart, LuvemBooks
4
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart – review | Children's books | The Guardian
theguardian.com
5
We Were Liars — E. Lockhart
emilylockhart.com
6
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart - Book Review - Armed with A Book
armedwithabook.com
7
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart [Book Review] | Author Eliza Stopps
elizastopps.com
8
Book Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart – The Central Times
chhsnews.com
9
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart (Book Review) - Benjamin McEvoy
benjaminmcevoy.com
10
Summary, Spoilers + Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart - The Bibliofile
the-bibliofile.com
11
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®
barnesandnoble.com
12
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews

Age & Reading Level

Recommended age

Ages 14+

Reading level

Young adult

Browse all teen (12–18) books

Tropes

unreliable narrator

From how readers describe it, not our own reading.

3 content notes · who it suits

Content to know about

chronic pain and prescription drug dependency

grief and traumatic loss

psychological trauma and suppressed memory

Best for: Ages 14+ — the novel's morally complex ending, themes of grief and complicity, and narration shaped by chronic pain and Percocet dependency suit confident older teen readers rather than younger audiences within the 12–17 range.

Skip if you prefer straightforward chronological narration and want a payoff that doesn't require sustained patience with ambiguity.

E. Lockhart on We Were Liars

E. Lockhart discusses the inspiration, characters, and themes of her novel We Were Liars.

Uploaded by Amazon Books, 2014 · Watch on YouTube ·

Scholarship background shaping Gat's outsider perspective

Attending elite private schools and colleges on scholarship gave Lockhart the experience of having one foot inside and one foot outside American privilege, which directly informed Gat's ambivalent position in the novel.

Wuthering Heights as a central influence

Lockhart modeled Gat on Heathcliff from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, exploring what happens when an outsider of a different racial background is brought into and ostracized by an empowered white family.

Migraines as the novel's physical origin

The physical starting point for the novel was severe migraines, as Lockhart wanted to explore how chronic, non-fatal pain alters a person's personality and pulls them out of their own life story.

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Genuine Fraud

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Same author's nonlinear thriller structure, an unreliable narrator, and a sun-drenched setting that hides something deeply wrong.

Told entirely in reverse chronology, Genuine Fraud follows Jule, a young woman whose glossy confidence conceals a terrifying capacity for reinvention. Like Cadence's fractured summer memories, the story withholds its full picture until the structure itself becomes the revelation. Best for readers who loved the puzzle-box narration of We Were Liars and want that same craft applied to a tighter, more propulsive thriller.

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Memory deliberately altered to escape unbearable pain — and the devastating cost of forgetting who you really are.

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Speak

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If the poetic, fragmented narration felt like a wall — Speak delivers the same raw trauma and suppressed memory in a voice that is immediate, grounded, and viscerally direct.

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