Why read the We Were Liars series? – After Thoughts

On the second installment of After Thoughts, I explore why I return to We Were Liars, the series, by E. Lockhart.

We Were Liars was published in 2014 and became an instant sensation. Since, two more books have been released – Family of Liars (2022) and We Fell Apart (2024). The series has since been adapted into a Netflix show.

When I sat down to write about the third and latest instalment, I wondered what this series offered me that I keep returning to. It is not the mystery or the setting. I believe it is the fact that it traces how one family passes down love, cruelty, silence, and responsibility across generations. And I didn’t realize this until I read the second book. 

I am not an avid reader of the Young Adult genre. The lifestyle of generationally rich people who own private islands is nowhere close to my reality. And maybe it is for this reason that I have found myself immersed in this series so often in these last few months. I have enjoyed the various perspectives – Cadence, Carrie, Matilda. The story arcs of the main characters are different but what stays the same through each is the Sinclair family, sometimes in focus, and other times in the fringes. There is a deep sense of responsibility the family members carry because they know their inheritance so well. What draws me to the stories each time is exactly this generational context. I know each book gives me a clue to how one generation has been affected by the next.

We Were Liars has an incident that takes place in 2012. Family of Liars takes place decades before this in the 1980s, and tells the story of the summer Carrie, Cadence’s aunt, at fourteen. We Fell Apart returns to 2012 and reveals connections to Harris Sinclair, Cadence’s grandfather and Carrie’s father. Three generations. The Sinclair family may be unimaginably rich with old money yet they are not protected from misfortune and their family isn’t perfect. In each story, something awful has happened. Whether it is a fire that destroyed so much more than a house, the loss of a sibling, the abandonment that characters feel. In each story, some core truth about their family as they know it is a lie.

Each book uses a different kind of story to tell the truth indirectly. The audiobook narrators are fantastic — they embody the voices of Cadence, Carrie and Matilda with emotion and clarity. E. Lockhart brilliantly uses fairytales to situate the dynamics between the parents and children as well as the siblings. These stories become a kind of escape from reality for the characters themselves. Cadence and Carrie, particularly, think about fairytales of fathers controlling sons/daughters, alluding to what is really happening. How a parent is pitting his children against one another. How this has been ongoing for generations. Matilda arrives on the scene with plots of video games, a more modern version of storytelling compared to the fairytales. Her father’s paintings use fairytales and Shakespeare’s tragedies to explore his life. 

I love this series because in each case, it is a different kind of coming of age each time, set in the context of family pressure and personal unravelling. For Cadence, it was about remembering the accident that changed everything. For Carrie, it was about accepting the truth about herself and Harris and how its existence does not change anything since she is a Sinclair. For Matilda, what started off a journey to get to know her father for the first time, ends with her seeing the dysfunction that has long existed in the family she has never known and that she does not have to keep this cycle going. 

When I first started reading We Fell Apart, I did not know how it would inform me more about the Sinclairs but I am happy to say that it expanded my understanding to a new level. We Fell Apart ends on the hopeful note that one generation does not have to carry on the practices of the last. That we all have agency and we can change. Sometimes tragedies are the opportunity to take a step towards love by accepting our grief.

I can’t wait to find out what new aspect of the Sinclairs I will discover when I reread. I am excited to see if E. Lockhart will return to them again.

---

Have you read We Were Liars and it’s follow up books?

You can find my thoughts on each of the books on the blog. Click/Tap the cover to take you to the Goodreads page.

Thanks for reading!