Publishers Weekly - Audio
07/28/2014
In this noir YA drama, three privileged cousins and a friend meet each summer on a private island, where they confront first love and staggering losses. Reader Meyers does an excellent job with the main character, Cadence, whose dialogue requires the full range of emotions. At the beginning of the story, Cadence seems like a typical sullen teenager trying to find her place in the world and wondering why her boyfriend doesn’t write back to her. As the story continues and grows darker, however, she pieces together her spotty memories of an on-island accident that wrecked her health and distanced her from the family, a whole cast of characters that Meyers also voices. These characters include Cadence’s snobby mother and her two shrill, money-grubbing sisters, who spend the bulk of their summers trying to wheedle themselves into their father’s good graces and substantial inheritance. Where the narration falls short is with the grandfather, who gets a voice that is stereotypically gruff and shaggy, even in his rare tender moments. Ages 12–up. A Delacorte hardcover. (May)
Publishers Weekly
★ 02/17/2014
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 from National Book Award finalist Lockhart (The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks), which begins during her 15th summer when she suffers a head injury on the private island Granddad owns off Cape Cod. Cady vacations on Beechwood every year with her mother, two aunts, and—most importantly—the other liars of the title: cousins Mirren and Johnny, and Gat Patil, the nephew of Aunt Carrie’s longtime boyfriend. The book unfolds two summers later, with Cadence trying to piece together the memories she lost after the accident while up against crippling headaches, a brain that feels “broken in countless medically diagnosed ways,” and family members who refuse to speak on the subject (or have been cautioned not to). Lockhart’s gimlet-eyed depiction of Yankee privilege is astute; the Sinclairs are bigoted “old-money Democrats” who prize height, blonde hair, athleticism, and possessions above all else. There’s enough of a King Lear dynamic going on between Granddad and his three avaricious daughters to distract readers from Lockhart’s deft foreshadowing of the novel’s principal tragedy, and even that may be saying too much. 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. Agent: Elizabeth Kaplan, Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency. (May)
From the Publisher
Sometimes a book is a book and sometimes a book is a phenomenon. E. Lockhart’s 2014 Y.A. psychological thriller We Were Liars is, without a doubt, a phenomenon. . . . The prequel aims to stand on its own, and technically it does; you don’t need to have read the earlier book to understand this new one. But for the greatest enjoyment of Family of Liars, read We Were Liars first.” —The New York Times, on Family of Liars
"You’re going to want to remember the title. Liars details the summers of a girl who harbors a dark secret, and delivers a satisfying, but shocking twist ending." —Breia Brissey, Entertainment Weekly
"This mindblowing YA thriller from E. Lockhart will make you glad you're the 99 percent...And that's about all we can tell you when it comes to the story of 'We Were Liars,' the book by E. Lockhart that everyone will be reading, and re-reading, this summer. It's twisty, it's mysterious, and it's got a surprise ending that'll knock your socks off."
—Kat Rosenfield, MTV News
"Surprising, thrilling, and beautifully executed in spare, precise, and lyrical prose, Lockhart spins a tragic family drama, the roots of which go back generations. And the ending? Shhhh. Not telling. (But it’s a doozy)...This is poised to be big." —Booklist, starred review
"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." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Riveting, brutal and beautifully told." —Kirkus, starred review
"The ending is a stunner that will haunt readers for a long time to come." —School Library Journal, starred review
"A taut psychological mystery marked by an air of uneasy disorientation...The ultimate reveal is shocking both for its tragedy and for the how-could-I-have-not-suspected-that? feeling it leaves us with. But we didn’t, which is Lockhart’s commendable triumph." —The Horn Book, starred review
“This is a love story as much as it is a psychological mystery…Astonishing." —Shelf Awareness, starred review
“[a] haunting, sophisticated mystery...a novel so twisty and well-told that it will appeal to older readers as well as to adolescents.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Irresistible premise for this ticking time bomb of a novel.” —The New York Times Book Review
"A Lockhart YA is always a treat and this is no exception...The glimpse we get into a life of privilege, a lifestyle most of us can only imagine, is insightful and thrilling. The ending will shock the mose jaded of readers, we promise!" —RT Book Reviews
"There's trouble in paradise at the opening of National Book Award finalist and Printz honoree E. Lockhart's shattering yet ultimately hopeful YA novel . . . and neither family nor reader will ever be the same." —Library Journal
"It's a nearly perfect story, and it's utterly absorbing." —Bustle, A YA Best Book of the Year
"No book on this summer's reading list will have readers immobilized in their hammocks more than E. Lockhart's We Were Liars..... This book has that surprise quality—like Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity—that makes readers scramble back through hungrily devoured chapters and wonder in admiration: Could I have seen this coming? Did I miss any clues?" —Newsday
"Like a shard of glass, WE WERE LIARS glitters and shines, then cuts deep. E. Lockhart has truly outdone herself with this masterful, darkly mesmerizing portrait of a fractured family ruined by the excess of wealth. Humming with rich descriptions and razor-sharp intelligence, the story of Cadence Sinclair Eastman will both inspire and haunt readers for years to come." —Sarah Pitre, Forever Young Adult
"Perception often is not reality — and it certainly is not in WE WERE LIARS. This is a look at what “a perfect world” looks like on the inside and how it unravels once one of the players sees it for what it is. Pitch perfect in both plotting and character development."
—Carol Fitzgerald, Book Reporter
"The must-read contemporary novel so far this year is definitely E. Lockhart’s stellar We Were Liars, a rich, stunning summer mystery with a sharp twist that will leaving you dying to talk about the book with a pal or ten." —Sonia Charaipotra, Parade
"A haunting tale about how families live within their own mythologies. Sad, wonderful, and real." —Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies and Leviathan
"I've fallen in love with every E. Lockhart book I've ever read (and I've read them all), but We Were Liars blows them all out of the water. Dark, gripping, heartrending, and terrifyingly smart, this book grabs you from the first page—and will never let go." — Robin Wasserman, author of The Waking Dark
"Spectacular." —Lauren Myracle, author of Shine, The Infinite Moment of Us, and TTYL
"A haunting, brilliant, beautiful book. This is E. Lockhart at her mind-blowing best." — Sarah Mlynowski, author of Don't Even Think About It and Gimme a Call
"Stunningly sharp. . . . will sear itself into your memory." —Christian Science Monitor
"A haunting psychological thriller." —The Guardian
"The mystery driving the plot is a shocking punch in the face that will stay with you long after you finish." —Hypable Online Hypable-Weekend Reading
“There’s no preparing for the shocker of an ending.”
—SLJ
"We Were Liars is amazing. I felt run over by it . . . .Emily has done something incredible here. —Paul O. Zelinsky
MAY 2014 - AudioFile
Narrator Ariadne Meyers’s tone is candid as 17-year-old Cadence Sinclair Eastman reveals ugly realities about her proud, wealthy family. She harshly judges her bigoted, manipulative mother, aunts, and grandfather from a secure position as one of the “the Liars”—the younger generation of teens who spend summers on an exclusive island. Soon Meyers reveals the opposing views of a teen named Cady. She suffers crippling headaches and is gripped by a tragedy that lurks at the edges of her unstable mind. Meyers’s expression of Cadence’s pain is raw and startling, as is the Liars’ tragic response to her unlocking of secrets. The impact of Cady’s realizations will be just as shocking to listeners, who may immediately return to Meyers’s narration of this haunting story. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2014-03-17
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady's life apart. Cady Sinclair's family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady's reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this 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, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle's closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family's foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens' desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic. Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)
