When I read We Were Liars by E. Lockhart for the first time over 10 years ago, I ripped through it in one sitting — the eerie YA novel has an unputdownable story and a gut-punch ending that has really stuck with me the past decade. (Apparently I’m not alone, as it’s caused quite the stir over on Booktok, too.) After seeing the news of Prime Video’s TV series adaptation of the book starring Emily Alyn Lind, Caitlin Fitzgerald, and Mamie Gummer, as well as the new prequel, Family of Liars, floating around bookstagram, Lockhart’s original ‘wait, what?!’ twist has been on my mind once again. Whether you’re new to the story of teenager Cadence Sinclair and her close-knit group of friends, or you just want a refresher on the book before seeing if the show does it justice, there’s no better time to break down the complicated, twisty-turny ending of We Were Liars.
Warning: A whole bunch of spoilers for the ending of E. Lockhart’s novel are below! Read at your own risk.
What is E. Lockhart’s ‘We Were Liars’ about?
The 2014 novel is broken into five parts — Part One: Welcome, Part Two: Vermont, Part Three: Summer Seventeen, Part Four: Look, a Fire, and Part Five: Truth. The first part begins with 17-year-old Cadence “Cady” Sinclair recalling the past summers she spent on a windswept private island off the coast of Massachusetts owned by her obscenely wealthy grandfather. And I do mean obscenely — the island, Beechwood, is big enough for four individual houses, with the main mansion occupied by her widowed Granddad, and the remaining three for each of his daughters, all of whom are divorced or separated. Despite various tensions simmering just under the surface of their relationships, the family spends every summer together on the island. Through this tradition Cady grows close with her two older cousins, Johnny and Mirren, as well as Gat, the nephew of one of her aunt’s boyfriends, and over the years the group earns the nickname ‘the Liars.’
Cady and Gat, who is of South Asian descent, fall in love at 14, even though her racist, tyrannical grandfather aggressively disapproves. Unfortunately during her fifteenth summer, Cady suffers some sort of traumatic head injury from an unexplained accident on the island that she can’t remember. Ever since, she’s suffered awful migraines, and the rest of the Liars haven’t bothered to stay in touch during her long, painful recovery, not even responding to her multiple emails. She skips the next summer on Beechwood when her dad whisks her away to Europe, but after the radio silence from the Liars becomes too much to bear, she begs her mother, Penny, to tell her the details of the accident and to let her return to the island.
Penny warns Cady that she’s told her the truth of the incident many times already, which always ends in Cady becoming extremely upset. Even so, Penny allows her to go back to Beechwood and spend another summer with the Liars.
