We Were Liars
E. Lockhart, 2014
Young adult Contemporary fictionMystery, thriller & crimeRomance
A girl returns to her family's private island to find the summer she can't remember—and the cousins she loves hiding what happened. A lyrical, uneasy read that moves through sunlit family summers while dread gathers underneath, and the voice keeps circling what memory refuses to hold.
Feels like dread, nostalgia and serenity. About memory, family and love.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy tense family stories, unreliable memory, and a romance threaded through old money and island summers. The withheld memories and lyrical circling can make the middle feel disorienting if you want a clear, steady account of events.
Why read it
Pick it up for a sharp study of loyalty and grief, told with enough unease to keep the island's secrets close.
A page from the book
A compliment that treats love as a kind of reading.
Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you. E. Lockhart.E. Lockhart is the pen name of Emily Jenkins, who also writes children's books—including the Toys Go Out series.
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Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is We Were Liars for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy tense family stories, unreliable memory, and a romance threaded through old money and island summers. The withheld memories and lyrical circling can make the middle feel disorienting if you want a clear, steady account of events.
- What is We Were Liars like?
- A lyrical, uneasy read that moves through sunlit family summers while dread gathers underneath, and the voice keeps circling what memory refuses to hold. Feels like dread, nostalgia and serenity. About memory, family and love.
- What should I read after We Were Liars?
- If you liked We Were Liars, try Before We Were Yours (Lisa Wingate), It's Not Summer Without You (Jenny Han) and The Good Girl (Mary Kubica).
A taste of the feed
A stranger’s grip can feel like a message you haven’t learned to read.
Someone touches my hand and wrist, fingers encircling me so unexpectedly that I jerk away, then stop myself, so as not to cause a scene. The grip is cold and bony and trembling, but surprisingly strong. I turn to see the woman from the garden. She straightens her humped back and gazes up at me through eyes the color of the hydrangeas back home at Drayden Hill—a soft, clear blue with a lighter mist around the edges. Her pleated lips tremble.
Before We Were Yours · Lisa Wingate
Grief makes a person feel like a stranger to their own life.
I wasn’t in Cousins. Conrad and I weren’t together, and Susannah was dead. Nothing would ever be the same again. It had been—How many days had it been? How many days exactly?—two months since Susannah had died and I still couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t let myself believe it. When a person you love dies, it doesn’t feel real. It’s like it’s happening to someone else. It’s someone else’s life. I’ve never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really and truly gone?
It's Not Summer Without You · Jenny Han
The relief of letting someone else carry your sadness, just for a moment.
But he holds me so tightly that for a moment, the emotions are at bay. The sadness and fear, the regret and the loathing. He bottles them up inside his arms so that for a split second I don’t have to be the one carrying the weight of them. For this moment, the burden is his.
The Good Girl · Mary Kubica
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