Family of Liars
Family of Liars Book Review by E. Lockhart
As soon as I found out that We Were Liars had a prequel, I was sold. Normally, I’m apprehensive about prequels. This apprehension stems from the indubitable fact that prequels normally suck.
More than several series prove this statement to be true, including prequels for Wicked Lovely, The Maze Runner, and the Hunger Games prequel Mockingjay.
To me (and probably to many others), prequels often come across as an author’s way to keep milking a popular series instead of creating something new and novel.
Sometimes the fans want a prequel (Where is my marauder era series, J.K. Rowling?), but in most cases, fans want new novels or perhaps spin-offs.
However, there was no doubt in my mind that Family of Liars would be good. After one book, I trust E. Lockhart. I knew in my soul that she would deliver on something as precarious as a prequel to an already beloved novel. I was right.
Family of Liars describes the story of Penny, Bess, Rosemary, and Carrie as teenagers in the 1980’s on the family island before Cadence, Mirren, Gat, and Johnny are even born.
Before we fall in love with Cadence and the terribly tragic events that spiraled and led to the death of her dearest friends and family, another generation lived and loved. Just like their children, Carrie and her sisters are one thing above all others: liars.
Right off the bat, Family of Liars reads as a parallel to We Were Liars. Instead of reading from Cadence’s POV, we get to see and experience Carrie’s adolescence.
Unlike the first book where I didn’t delve into specifics and left this review mainly spoiler free, this one will include spoilers. Please continue reading at your own risk.
The oldest of four sisters of the esteemed Sinclair family line, Carrie feels like she bears the entirety of the family’s weight on her shoulders. Beautiful, blonde, and always a credit to a family, Carrie looks out for her younger siblings. Even though Penny is selfish and shallow, Bess is young and naive, and Rosemary…well Rosemary is dead.
The novel starts with the narrative of the young girls, along with their parents, Tipper and Harris, losing the youngest sister. Their baby. Their everything.
This loss, despite staining every inch of the Sinclair family, remains under lock and key. No one speaks about Rosemary. No one wants to be reminded of her. Rosemary’s things are packed away and hidden. Move on. Don’t dwell. Keep moving forward.
Except that Carrie can’t move forward. Well, unless she’s drowning in pills and a sea of numbness. Just like in We Were Liars where Cadence suffers from a mysterious mental condition, Carrie suffers from a narcotics addiction.
Hooked on pain pills from what was supposed to be a “simple” jaw surgery to reconstruct her chin, Carrie finds solace from her pain and guilt at the bottom of an orange bottle.
From here, the plot devolves into another masterpiece of Lockhart’s creation. Carrie’s experience on the island includes dealing with family expectations, learning that Harris is not her biological father, mourning Rosemary while trying to cope with visits from her seemingly real specter, falling in love with a boy named Pfeff, and then dealing with betreyal, secrets, and most shockingly, murder.
I knew this book was going to have plot twists and wowieeeee did it deliver. Finding out that Carrie’s father wasn’t Harris blew my mind. The implications that her sisters weren’t her full sisters, that her mother had previously engaged in an affair, and that Harris had kept Carrie and claimed her anyway shaped a lot of Carrie’s decisions, mental health, spiral into addiction, and behavior.
I loved that Lockhart addressed family matters here and relayed the message that blood isn’t what matters most.
At first, Carrie falling in love with Pfeff bothered me. It seemed like a rinse and repeat of Cadence falling in love with Gat. Except that it wasn’t. Not at all. From what started out as a clandestine summer love between two teenagers twisted and turned until it evolved into a monster all its own.
Learning of Pheff’s true despicable characteristics brought some much needed levity to the novel. Penny and Pfeff hooking up makes Carrie realize that Penny cares more about feeling wanted and needed than loving and staying loyal to her sister.
Carrie is sickened. She’s enraged. Penny offers a paltry apology, Pfeff offers nothing at all, and the pills go down, down, down.
Just like in We Were Liars, one night changes it all.
Heartbroken and ill, Carrie wakes one night from Bess shaking her. Bess leads Carrie outside to a blood bath. Pfeff is dead, bashed in the head with a loose board from the pier, a rusty nail sticking out of the wood and covered with blood and hair.
It was self defense, Bess claimed, Pfeff was assaulting Penny. Penny agrees. They need their big sister, their hero.
And despite Carrie’s grief and anger and sadness, she helps them. That’s who she is. She’s the big sister that’s already let one sibling die. She can’t lose the others.
That night, the three sisters concoct a plan to rid the body, the evidence, and create a fake murder scene in which Pfeff drowned, probably eaten by a shark.
Because of the Sinclair’s money, their privilege, their reputation, and their intelligence, the murder scheme works. The sisters are innocent and Pfeff is dead. They grieve, agree to never speak of it, and move on with their lives.
This, honestly, would have been enough for me as a reader. I would have been pleased. Pfeff was a dirtbag, the girls helped each other, end of story. Except Lockhart doesn’t end it there. No, from there she points out that Carrie and her sisters have always been one thing and one thing only: liars.
Except Carrie doesn’t want to lie. Not to Johnny, her dead son whom she’s relaying this tale. He deserves the truth. He deserves better from her. It is here the reader learns the truth of Pfeff’s death and what really happened that night.
You learn that Carrie woke that night not from Bess shaking her, but from a lack of pills. Once she’s awake she sees Pfeff and Penny. Again. How could they do this to her? How could they continue after Carrie caught them the first time? Don’t they care about her? Don’t they care at all?
Fueled by vitriol, Carrie goes downstairs. Instead of innocent Bess hitting Pfeff to protect Penny, you get a brutal scene of Carrie picking up the board, aiming for the dock, and swinging with all of her might. She was trying to hit Pfeff. She was trying to hit Penny. She wanted someone to hurt.
That someone ended up being Pfeff but it could have been Penny. It could have been anyone. Shocked and ashamed, the murder cover up follows the same tale as above, but this time from a different lens with Carrie being the woeful murderer.
The rest of the novel deals with this shock of a twist and delves briefly into Carrie’s future, the pills, two-stunts at rehab, and the eventual continuation of her telling ghostly Johnny the full and complete truth for once in her life.
This book was marvelous. From start to finish it surprised, allured, and awed. The characters breathe and act like actual people. They make terrible mistakes, do bad things, act petty, stab others in the back, and commit selfish acts.
But they also love. They also laugh, feel wonder, and deal with remorse. Lockhart writes her characters as beautiful representations of real people and the difficulties they face in life. None of her characters are good or perfect, but that’s what makes them raw and enjoyable to read about.
Lockhart’s plot and writing are simple, but effective in their delivery, tone, emotional impact, and twists. She proves that you don’t have to have a convoluted plot to have a story that matters.
Comparatively, I enjoyed We Were Liars more than Family of Liars. Not because the prequel was bad, far from it, but because reading We Were Liars filled me with such breathless surprise and joy that I didn’t expect while I expected it from Lockhart the second time around.
This isn’t Lockhart’s fault, but simply a case of unrelenting expectations.
If We Were Liars left you yawning for more from the Sinclair family, look no further than Family of Liars. It will deliver everything you loved from the first novel, but with a new cast of complex characters and new lies that will leave you gasping for more.
Recommendation: If you loved We Were Liars, you will love this book too. It is one of the only books worthy of the prequel title.
Score: 8/10
