Lockhart, E. We Were Liars. New York: Delacourte, 2014.
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Psychological Thriller
Intended Audience: 14 and up
Personal reaction to the book
In Lockhart’s We Were Liars, the main character and narrator, Cadence Sinclair, has experienced a mysterious “accident” that has left her with crippling headaches, vomiting, and memory issues.
This accident took place during “Summer 15,” or the summer of her fifteenth year which she spent on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and their friend “Gat.” Cady, her cousins, and Gat form a group called the Liars. After her accident on summer 15, Cady is not allowed to go back for summer 16 and returns on summer 17. Nobody will give her a clear idea of how her accident took place, and this forms the central mystery of the novel: will she remember what happened?
Honestly, I was a little let down by this novel. I found this disappointing because I really loved E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and Dramarama. We Were Liars just fell flat, and even though I knew a huge twist was coming–that was heavily trumped up in the marketing and in reviews–I still felt manipulated. Sometimes that’s a good thing, when you feel like an author has so thoroughly warped your perception of a book that it blows your mind when you find out the truth, but here it just seemed artificial and contrived. I’m all for a good twist, but my reaction after learning the twist was feeling let down, like it was just a gimmick.
I also had a hard time identifying with the characters: rich, upper-upper class WASPs. All the rebellion that Cady felt was actually quite tame, all things considered. I could see ordering this for a library because E. Lockhart is such a renowned author and also because people tend to like “trick” books.
Author Facts
- Lockhart’s morning writing habit is “Morning. Coffee. Silence.”
- Lockhart rewrote We Were Liars about 15 times.
- Lockhart loves fairy tales and loosely based We Were Liars on the fairy tale “Meat Loves Salt”
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