We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

*spoiler-free*

We Were Liars is a short fiction story told from Cadence Sinclair’s perspective, detailing her troublesome family affairs and the summers spent with her family on their private island near the coast of Massachusetts. Cadence is close with her two cousins Johnny and Miriam, as well as Gat who is her uncle’s stepson making them ‘The Liars’ of the island, uniting in defence of their problematic family.

This is the first book I have read by Lockhart and so the writing style took some time getting used to. Some sections are written like poetry, often with short repetitive lines. Initially, I did find this structure refreshing as it is different to my usual fiction books that I read, but it did make the plot quite difficult to understand at times as I was not always sure what was a metaphor and what was reality. This did remind me a bit of Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You in terms of the heavy use of metaphors and how personally, I did not always find these relevant.

This is a book I have been meaning to get around to for years, especially due to the popularity of this book on social media. However, I did find We Were Liars quite underwhelming. Whilst it was an easy read due to the short chapters and overall short length of the book, I struggled to connect with the characters. From the offset, it is clear that the Sinclair family is a prestigious, wealthy family not always appreciative of their privilege, making it difficult to like them and feel much emotion. There are themes of love, grief, and racism, but I didn’t feel these were explored in as much depth as they deserved to be.

Do not accept an evil you can change.

We Were Liars., p112

Nonetheless, I did like how the story is told from Cadence’s perspective, but it is evident she is an unreliable narrator. This links well to the major plot twist towards the end of the book which had a high shock factor, and I was pleasantly surprised that I did not guess it. But whilst I was reading this part of the book, I did question how believable it was due to how the characters involved were previously described. The last 30 pages or so were the most interesting, but unfortunately, it was a book that for me that was overhyped online.

I can appreciate how people do love this book, as it has a marmite feel due to its reading style making people either love or hate it. I see how this book would be interesting to re-read with the knowledge of the major twist at the end, so you can spot all the clues throughout. I have seen that there is a prequel also which would be good to get around to at some points and may provide more context and depth for the characters that were missing in We Were Liars.

2/5 stars