Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Title: We Were Liars

Author: E. Lockhart

Published: May 13th 2014 (Delacorte Press)

Pages: 227

Genres: Young Adult, Mystery, Romance

Format: Hardcover

Source: Purchased

Rating: Four stars

Purchase: Barnes and Noble / Amazon / Book Depository

Cover Thoughts: I absolutely adore this cover. I love people on the cover,

First Line: Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family. 

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This will be a bit different than my usual reviews, you’ll notice there’s no Goodreads summary listed. You have probably heard We Were Liars is best read when knowing nothing about it, I can vouch for that statement. I’ll still tell you a bit about the novel though. At least what you need to know.

There’s a private island, a very wealthy family, four friends, and two summers.

The narrator is Cadance Sinclair, the eldest of the Sinclair grandchildren, the one who’s destined to receive the grandfather’s favor.

We Were Liars is a beautifully written and original suspense novel. There are a lot of metaphors, which may be hard to understand at first and purple prose, that could have been lessened. There are flashbacks and foreshadowing and they all intertwine tightly together.

We Were Liars contains a number of literary references such as fairytales. As a lover of fairytales, I was thrilled when we see fairytales being sprinkled throughout to describe situations. I felt they were very cleverly used throughout the story. They were definitely a highlight of mine. We Were Liars could be described as a fairytale of sorts with it’s magical, dreamlike quality it has, especially with the Massachusetts summer island setting. The island is the perfect setting for a novel such as We Were Liars. Tucked away from the real world, it’s perfect for a wealthy family with secrets.

There are several themes such as wealthiness, power, patriarchy and racism.  I loved reading about each of these themes and how they connected to one another. One of the things I really liked about We Were Liars is despite how the Sinclairs are wealthy, Cadence and her friends don’t focus on the wealth. Occasionally in Young Adult books it’s hard to sympathize with teenagers who are rich or have it all, but I felt Cadence and her friends were well written.

Overall, I rate this book four out of five stars. I felt some of the metaphors and purple prose could have been diminished or done without. We Were Liars is an intelligent, and uniquely written novel with a writing style that flows right off the pages. We Were Liars is a once in a lifetime novel that will stay with readers. There’s no doubt that it will have readers flipping through the pages to get to the very end and then read it again. We Were Liars is definitely one of my favorite novels of all time and has made me a fan of E. Lockhart for life. I recommend this to everyone.

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