We Were Liars
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. Spending the summers on her family's private island off the coast of Massachusetts with her cousins and a special boy named Gat, teenaged Cadence struggles to remember what happened during her fifteenth summer. We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart. Read it. And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.
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What you might want to know about We Were Liars
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Cadence Sinclair Eastman is the seventeen-year-old eldest grandchild of a wealthy Boston family who summer on their private Massachusetts island Beechwood.
Yes, and the publisher famously asked early readers to not spoil it. Avoid Goodreads reviews if you want to read it cold.
Yes. Amazon Prime Video released a series adaptation in 2025.
It started as a standalone, but E. Lockhart wrote a prequel called Family of Liars in 2022 and a sequel called We Fell Apart is forthcoming.
We Were Liars was written by E. Lockhart, published in 2014 by Ember.
We Were Liars is 240 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, We Were Liars takes most readers 4 to 5 hours to finish.
We Were Liars is a standalone novel by E. Lockhart, not part of a series.
We Were Liars is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
