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We Were Liars summary

Name: We Were Liars
Rating: 4.3 (15 reviews)
Author: E. Lockhart

E. Lockhart

A Suspense Novel About Family, Lies, and the Mistakes That Haunt Us

4.3 (15 ratings)

20 mins

Brief summary

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart is a captivating young adult mystery novel that unravels the dark secrets of a privileged family on a private island.

Topics

Wealth Love Friendship Class Literature Trauma & Healing

Table of Contents

We Were Liars
Summary of 5 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 5

What’s in it for me? A compelling story of dark family secrets.

To the world, the Sinclair family presents a perfect facade: they’re incredibly wealthy, extremely high achieving, and, above all, happy. But in private, cracks are beginning to appear in their carefully crafted self-image. Tensions arise between the family’s three generations over who will inherit the family’s massive estate when patriarch Harris Sinclair eventually dies. And the younger Sinclairs, Harris’s grandchildren, are beginning to question their family’s extreme privilege and the systems of structural oppression that underpin it.

Then, something unspeakably awful happens. Something that will shake the Sinclairs to their core. But Cadence Sinclair, who was at the center of this tragedy, can’t remember what happened. Told over the course of three summers, this is the story of the build-up to that traumatic event, and Cadence’s struggle, in its aftermath, to remember and articulate exactly what happened.

In the Sinclair family, not everything is as it seems.

Meet the Sinclairs. Old money. East coast. White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant as anything.

Harris Sinclair is the gruff, business-minded patriarch; Tipper, his wife, is just as charming in her 80s as when she was a debutante. Their three girls, Carrie, Bessie, and Penny (all divorced, but no one talks about that) have a gaggle of children between them. All three generations of Sinclairs are tall, blonde, sporty, high achieving, charming – in short, they’re the perfect family.

Perfect, that is, if you ignore the aforementioned divorces, Harris’s boiling temper, Tipper’s fragile health, the increasing tensions among Harris’s daughters about how his estate will eventually be parceled out, and the growing unease of the “Liars” – the name given to themselves by the three eldest grandchildren, along with their friend Gat – with the SInclairs’ patterns of behavior and way of life.

The Sinclairs are very good at ignoring these things. As Penny, Cadence’s mother, puts it: “Silence is a protective coating over pain.”

Gat, however, isn’t in the habit of ignoring uncomfortable truths. Gat is the nephew of Ed, Carrie’s boyfriend. Ed is Indian, and Harris Sinclair has made no bones about the fact he disapproves of his daughter dating someone who isn’t white. As an Indian teenage boy from a working-class background, Gat is emphatically an outsider. The most intellectually curious of the Liars, he feels shut off from the glittering academic, professional, and social opportunities that await Cadence, Johnny, and Mirren. He’s sometimes appalled by the Sinclairs’ blatant displays of wealth and privilege. And he doesn’t – or won’t – understand the polite rules that govern all the Sinclairs’ interactions. He brings up politics at the dinner table. He talks about things the rest of the family would prefer to keep hush-hush – like divorce and death. Most unforgivable of all? Gat falls in love with Cadence, and she falls in love with him.

Harris loves all his grandchildren but Cady is his golden child. She’s the eldest of the grandchildren. She will, as he frequently reminds her, stand to inherit the bulk of the Sinclair fortune. Her feelings for Gat jeopardize all of this. What’s more, she doesn’t care.

ANALYSIS

The story of the Sinclair family is ultimately a story about inheritance and legacy. The Sinclairs are extremely wealthy and the older generations of Sinclairs are preoccupied with safeguarding this accumulation of wealth, assets, and valuable objects. As Cadence puts it, the philosophy of her mother, aunts, and grandparents seems to be: “whoever dies with the most stuff wins.”

But while the older Sinclairs see their estate and inheritance in material terms, the story is really about what else is handed down from generation to generation: the beliefs, behaviors, and secrets that can be safeguarded within the family unit and passed down generational lines.

So what is the real Sinclair legacy? The Sinclairs place self-interest ahead of kindness; they guard their wealth rather than sharing it; they’re more concerned with maintaining a fairy-tale facade in public than addressing private pain and trauma.

But there’s more to the fairy-tale Sinclairs than their painstakingly crafted image of a close-knit, high-achieving, and perfectly functional family. In fact, at interludes throughout the book Cadence writes fairy-tale versions of her family’s story, featuring a King and his three beautiful daughters. The endings of these tales turn increasingly bitter and violent.

Cadence knows her relationship with Gat might see her disinherited. But the more she learns of the real Sinclair family legacy, the less she wants any part of it.

Trauma expresses itself in a multitude of ways.

The action of We Were Liars takes place over three consecutive summers. Summer 15, when Cadence and the other liars are 15, Summer 16, and Summer 17. The Sinclairs summer every year on their private island, Beechwood, off the Massachusetts coast and a stone’s throw from Martha’s Vineyard. There are four mansions on the island – Clairmont, home to Harris and Tipper; Red Gate, home to Carrie’s family including Gat, who joins his uncle Ed every summer; Cuddledown, home to Bess and her four children; and Windemere, home to Penny and Cadence.

Summer 15 starts off like all the rest. Long, lazy lunches – all prepared by the staff, naturally; sunbathing and kayaking with the Liars; trading books and meaningful glances with Gat who, even though he has a girlfriend back at his home in New York, is irresistibly drawn to Cadence.

Love and friendship are worth more than money.

After the catastrophic events of Summer 15, Cadence spends Summer 16 traveling around Europe with her Dad. She sends postcards and emails to the Liars detailing her adventures – eating snails in Barcelona, visiting the statue of David in Florence. She doesn’t tell them she spent most of her holiday lying with her cheeks pressed to the tile of various hotel bathroom floors.

But, for Summer 17, Cadence returns to Beechwood. A number of things have changed. In the wake of his wife Tipper’s death, Harris Sinclair is confused and erratic. He frequently mistakes Cadence for Mirren. Bessie and her children are staying with Harris instead of at Bessie’s house, Cuddledown. The aunts, who were at each other’s throats in Summer 15, are much gentler with each other now. The biggest change of all? Clairmont, Harris and Tipper’s stately mansion, has been demolished. New Clairmont, an austere modern house, stands in its place.

The truth is revealed.

As the summer wears on, memories of Summer 15 come back to Cadence in flashes. She begins to write down what she remembers, to piece together the events leading up to her head injury.

Here’s what she remembers:

Final Summary

After a head injury, Cadence Sinclair can’t remember the tragic fire that shook her family and burnt her grandfather’s home to the ground. Over the course of three summers, she fills in the backstory and pieces together the aftermath of the fire, which she set, along with the Liars – her cousins Johnny and Mirren and boyfriend Gat – as an expression of their disgust at the Sinclairs’ extreme privilege. A twist ending reveals that, while Cadence believes she’s spent three summers with the Liars, the other three died in the fire, and for their last summer together, Johnny, Mirren, and Gat were ghosts or products of Cadence’s imagination.

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What is We Were Liars about?

We Were Liars (2014) is the suspenseful story of the wealthy, carefree Sinclair family and the tragic event that exposes the cracks in their perfect facade – as told by an unreliable narrator, Cadence Sinclair.

We Were Liars Review

We Were Liars (2014) is a gripping exploration of family dynamics, secrets, and the consequences of privilege. Here's why you should read it:

The novel's intriguing mystery keeps you hooked as you try to uncover the truth about the Sinclair family.
It addresses important themes such as love, friendship, and the impact of wealth on relationships.
The unexpected twists make it an unforgettable and thought-provoking read.

Dive into the world of the Sinclairs and unravel their secrets by reading We Were Liars.

Who should read We Were Liars?

Lovers of suspenseful fiction and well-crafted romance
Anyone keen for a glimpse into the lives of the 1 percent
Avid readers who want the scoop on one of the best-loved young adult contemporary novels

About the Author

E. Lockhart is the author of numerous best-selling books for young readers, ranging from picture books to young adult novels. She’s best known for the We Were Liars duology, the Ruby Oliver quartet, and stand-alone novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.

Categories with We Were Liars

Money & Investments Sex & Relationships Society & Culture

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