E. Lockhart’s Family of Liars delivers what fans of We Were Liars have been craving: a darker, more visceral exploration of the Sinclair family’s carefully curated façade. This prequel transports readers to 1987, decades before Cadence’s summer on Beechwood Island, revealing that the Sinclairs’ capacity for deception—and self-destruction—runs far deeper than their immaculate white linen and inherited wealth might suggest.
The novel operates as both a standalone psychological thriller and an essential piece of the Sinclair puzzle, bridging the gap between the original bestseller and the forthcoming conclusion, We Fell Apart. While knowledge of the first book enriches the experience, Lockhart constructs this prequel to stand on its own merit, introducing us to Carrie Sinclair, the eldest daughter whose summer of unforgivable mistakes will echo through generations.
A Narrator Drowning in Her Own Privilege
Caroline “Carrie” Sinclair warns us from the opening pages: she is a liar. At seventeen, she’s recovering from reconstructive jaw surgery, self-medicating with stolen prescription pills, and haunted by the recent drowning death of her youngest sister, Rosemary. When three prep school boys arrive on Beechwood Island for the summer—particularly the charismatic, unpredictable Lor “Pfeff” Pfefferman—Carrie believes she’s found her escape from grief and family suffocation.
Lockhart’s greatest achievement here is crafting an unreliable narrator who earns our empathy despite her profound flaws. Carrie’s addiction to Halcion and codeine isn’t merely character texture; it’s a lens through which we view the Sinclair family’s broader moral decay. Her foggy perceptions and emotional volatility mirror the reader’s own uncertainty about what’s real on this isolated island where appearance trumps truth.
The first-person narrative voice feels raw and immediate, with Lockhart employing fragmented sentence structures and repetitive phrases that mirror Carrie’s spiraling mental state. When betrayal strikes, the prose itself fractures, mimicking the sensation of psychological dissolution with startling effectiveness.
The Fairy Tale Framework: Beauty Concealing Brutality
One of the novel’s most distinctive features is its integration of classic fairy tales—”Cinderella,” “The Stolen Pennies,” and “Mr. Fox”—which Carrie reads to Rosemary’s ghost and retells in her own words. These aren’t mere decorative elements; they function as narrative mirrors, reflecting the story’s themes of sisterly jealousy, unpunished guilt, and predatory charm.
The “Cinderella” retelling is particularly striking. Lockhart subverts the traditional narrative by emphasizing the stepsisters’ desperation for parental approval rather than their inherent cruelty. This reframing becomes crucial to understanding Carrie’s actions—she isn’t simply villainous but trapped within a family structure that demands perfection while offering conditional love.
The fairy tale of “Mr. Fox” parallels Pfeff’s character arc with unsettling precision. Like the charming villain of the story who lures women to his castle only to murder them, Pfeff presents an attractive façade that conceals something far more predatory. Lockhart handles the themes of consent and coercion with nuance, showing how “please” can become a weapon and how privilege insulates young men from accountability.
The Ghost in the Machine: Sisterhood and Survival
Rosemary’s ghost appearances provide the novel’s most emotionally resonant moments. Rather than relying on cheap supernatural scares, Lockhart uses these encounters to explore Carrie’s unprocessed grief and guilt. The ghost plays Scrabble, eats potato chips, and demands fairy tales—heartbreakingly ordinary activities that emphasize what was lost when the ten-year-old drowned.
The dynamic between Carrie, Penny, and Bess evolves from typical sibling rivalry into something far more complex and disturbing. When Penny betrays Carrie by kissing Pfeff, the resulting violence exposes how the Sinclair family’s emphasis on competition and performance has poisoned even the bonds that should be most sacred. The sisters’ ultimate loyalty to each other, despite their capacity for mutual harm, creates a morally ambiguous core that resists easy judgment.
Lockhart excels at depicting how family dynamics can be simultaneously toxic and unbreakable. The sisters cover for each other not out of pure love but from a complex mixture of genuine affection, shared trauma, and the understanding that their family name requires protection at all costs.
Atmospheric Perfection: The Island as Character
Beechwood Island itself deserves recognition as one of the novel’s most fully realized creations. The private Massachusetts island, with its named beaches, connected cottages, and carefully maintained walkways, becomes a gilded cage. Lockhart’s descriptive passages conjure the sensory details of privileged summer life—lemon hunts, midnight swims, homemade ice cream on striped tablecloths—while gradually revealing the darkness beneath.
The contrast between the island’s beauty and the violence it conceals creates sustained tension. When tragedy strikes on the family dock, the setting’s isolation becomes sinister. The ocean that provides summer recreation also conceals crimes and claims lives, serving as both playground and grave.
Where the Novel Stumbles
Despite its considerable strengths, Family of Liars occasionally suffers from pacing issues. The novel’s middle section, while atmospheric, meanders through summer activities and interpersonal drama that sometimes feels repetitive. Readers may grow impatient waiting for the inevitable tragedy, particularly if they’re aware of Lockhart’s tendency toward devastating third-act revelations.
The character of Pfeff, while effectively unsettling, occasionally veers into caricature. His transformation from charming love interest to predatory figure happens rapidly, and while this reflects Carrie’s shifting perception, readers may question whether his darker qualities were always present or simply convenient for the plot’s trajectory.
Additionally, some secondary characters—particularly the other boys, George and Major—remain frustratingly underdeveloped. Given the novel’s length and relatively small cast, these characters deserved more dimensionality beyond their roles as witnesses and occasional comic relief.
The ending’s revelation, while emotionally powerful, may feel somewhat inevitable to readers familiar with Lockhart’s previous work. The author has a signature style of unreliable narration and explosive conclusions that, while executed skillfully here, follows a recognizable pattern.
Themes That Linger: Privilege, Accountability, and Inheritance
At its core, Family of Liars interrogates how wealth and social status corrupt moral judgment. The Sinclair family’s “dirty money and unearned privilege” (as Carrie herself acknowledges) creates an environment where appearance matters more than ethics, where family reputation justifies covering up crimes, and where children absorb these values as naturally as breathing.
The novel’s treatment of addiction feels particularly honest and unflinching. Carrie’s dependency on prescription medication isn’t romanticized or easily resolved; instead, Lockhart shows how trauma and privilege can combine to enable destructive coping mechanisms. The pills that help Carrie “escape” ultimately trap her in cycles of poor judgment and moral compromise.
The question of accountability haunts every page. When Carrie describes herself as “Cinderella’s terrible, jealous stepsister,” “the ghost whose crime went unpunished,” and “Mr. Fox,” she’s grappling with her own capacity for violence while recognizing how her family’s values shaped that capacity. The novel refuses to offer easy answers about culpability, leaving readers to wrestle with questions about nature, nurture, and personal responsibility.
The Sinclair Trilogy Takes Shape
For readers of We Were Liars, this prequel enriches our understanding of the Sinclair family’s intergenerational trauma. References to Carrie’s future children—including Johnny, who appears as a ghost in the framing narrative—create poignant connections to the original novel. The patterns of lying, covering up, and prioritizing family reputation over individual wellbeing clearly didn’t begin with Cadence’s generation.
The forthcoming We Fell Apart promises to complete this trilogy of Sinclair secrets, and Family of Liars effectively whets our appetite while standing as a complete story in its own right.
Final Verdict: A Worthy, If Uneven, Addition to the Sinclair Saga
Family of Liars succeeds as both atmospheric thriller and character study, offering Lockhart’s trademark gorgeous prose and gut-punch revelations. While it doesn’t quite achieve the perfection of its predecessor, it deepens the Sinclair mythology in meaningful ways and provides a compulsively readable exploration of how privilege enables—and eventually destroys—those who possess it.
Carrie Sinclair joins the pantheon of memorable unreliable narrators, her voice distinctive enough to carry this prequel while clearly sharing DNA with Cadence. The novel works best when it embraces its fairy tale darkness, using these ancient stories to illuminate modern failures of character and family.
Readers seeking another dose of Lockhart’s lyrical prose and moral complexity will find much to appreciate here, even if the journey occasionally feels longer than necessary. The final third delivers the emotional devastation fans expect, justifying the patient build-up that precedes it.
If You Loved This, Read Next:
Similar Books to Explore:
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart (if you haven’t read the series starter)
Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart (another unreliable narrator thriller)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (wealthy students and moral corruption)
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty (privilege, secrets, and female relationships)
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (family dysfunction and unreliable narration)
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio (privileged students and dark secrets)
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (class differences and family secrets)
Family of Liars confirms that E. Lockhart remains one of YA literature’s most sophisticated voices, unafraid to let her teenage characters be complicated, flawed, and morally compromised. In the Sinclair family’s carefully maintained world, where beauty conceals brutality and silence protects sins, Lockhart has created a fictional dynasty that feels disturbingly real—and impossible to look away from.