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Book Reviewed by:
Tamara Ellis Smith
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We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.
A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends - the Liars - whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.
We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.
1
WELCOME TO THE beautiful Sinclair family.
No one is a criminal.
No one is an addict.
No one is a failure.
The Sinclairs are athletic, tall, and handsome. We are old-money Democrats. Our smiles are wide, our chins square, and our tennis serves aggressive.
It doesn't matter if divorce shreds the muscles of our hearts so that they will hardly beat without a struggle. It doesn't matter if trust-fund money is running out; if credit card bills go unpaid on the kitchen counter. It doesn't matter if there's a cluster of pill bottles on the bedside table.
It doesn't matter if one of us is desperately, desperately in love.
So much
in love
that equally desperate measures
must be taken.
We are Sinclairs.
No one is needy.
No one is wrong.
We live, at least in the summertime, on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts.
Perhaps that is all you need to know.
2
MY FULL NAME is Cadence Sinclair Eastman.
I ...
We Were Liars is a meticulously constructed story, but Lockhart's precise plotting and solid foundation don't show at all. The story is simply a sharp, strong blow to the gut...continued
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(Reviewed by Tamara Ellis Smith).
John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars
Thrilling, beautiful, and blisteringly smart, We Were Liars is utterly unforgettable. Robin Wasserman, author of The Waking Dark
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. Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies and Leviathan
A haunting tale about how families live within their own mythologies. Sad, wonderful, and real.E. Lockhart's We Were Liars takes place on fictional Beechwood Island. It is just east of Martha's Vineyard, and is reminiscent of it.
Martha's Vineyard is located just seven miles off of the coast of Cape Cod. It is triangular shaped, and is about nine miles wide and 26 miles long at its farthest points - with over 120 miles of shoreline. One third of Martha's Vineyard is protected land, so quite a large chunk of it is undeveloped. The year-round population is a mere 15,000 which grows to over 100,000 in the summer months.
The Aquinnah Cliffs, in the town of Aquinnah on a southwestern peninsula of the island, frame valleys that were made by streams running off of glaciers during the Ice Age. Native American camps are estimated ...
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If you liked We Were Liars, try these:
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Published 2023
Yvonne Woon, author of If You, Then Me, has crafted a slow-burn thriller about fixing—our friends, ourselves, and our complicated pasts. For fans of Allegedly and We Were Liars, My Flawless Life features a compelling narrator who grapples with the secrets of her private school classmates as well as her own life.
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From the author of the unforgettable New York Times bestseller We Were Liars comes a masterful new psychological suspense novel - the story of a young woman whose diabolical smarts are her ticket into a charmed life. But how many times can someone reinvent themselves? You be the judge.
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