We Were Liars (Lockhart) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
(Starred review.) Cadence Sinclair Eastman, heiress to a fortune her grandfather amassed "doing business I never bothered to understand," is the highly unreliable narrator of this searing story...which begins during her 15th summer when she suffers a head injury on the private island Granddad owns off Cape Cod.... 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 (Ages 12–up).
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) —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 (Gr 9 Up). —Jenny Berggren, formerly at New York Public Library
School Library Journal


(Starred review.) When Lockhart’s mysterious, haunting novel opens, readers learn that Cady, during this summer, has been involved in a mysterious accident.... She doesn’t return to Beechwood until summer 17, when she recovers snippets of memory, and secrets and lies—as well as issues of guilt and blame, love and truth—all come into play.... Surprising, thrilling, and beautifully executed in spare, precise, and lyrical prose, Lockhart spins a tragic family drama (Grades 7-12). —Ann Kelley
Booklist


(Starred review.) [T]his 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.... Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family's foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying.... Riveting, brutal and beautifully told (14 & up).
Kirkus Reviews