I did wish the book talked a bit more about privilege. Also the way rich people will just use their wealth and power to cover things up is…something. I cannot believe they still use this island with all the trauma that keeps happening there 💀 But they cannot abandon their assets or dare hint that the Sinclair family isn’t perfect and calm and wonderful. It’s so fascinating and terrible and impossible to look away from (probably why I like reading these books so much). “Rich unhinged people do richly unhinged things” is truly a genre of its own. Carrie’s taking it really hard and has resorted to pills to cope. They’d rather act like Rosemary never existed than face how it broke them. So the family is clearly suffering but their class and mentality drives them to “suffer in silence” and “show no cracks”. It’s in the wake of the death of the youngest, Rosemary, who drowned when she was 10. Carrie narrates and she’s 17 and of course it’s summer so they’re all spending time at their private island. This book centres around the four Sinclair sisters: Carrie, Penny, Beth and Rosemary. (I’m not meaning to spend the whole review comparing the two books but 🤣 I think WWL pulled off the ominous tension better.) I do really like the literary style, though it did drag a few times. And if we learned anything from We Were Liars it’s: (a) don’t trust the narrator completely 😪 and (b) prepare to have your heart hurt. The pace is slow and it builds up this ominous dread about what’s coming. The book is a bit longer, but I still flew through. It’s set in the 1980s and has this immaculate summer lethargy, languid and entrancing, and it was so easy just to keep reading chapter after chapter. No spoilers in this review though!! Family of Liars is a captivating and harrowing echo of We Were Liars and it delivers everything we loved from the first book. (2) It definitely spoils We Were Liars, so you do want to read it first.

(I snuck in a reread after I finished Family Of Liars though.)Īnyway! Two things to know about Family Of Liars first: (1) this is a PREQUEL about the teenage years of the kids in We Were Liar’s parents. It’s been 8 years though, so I do think that’s fair. 😂👌🏻 I forgot about 80% of We Were Liars. It also gave us a slight literary style that was very compelling. I remember blasting through it in 1 day and being throttled by the unreliable narration and the devastating twists. Like that book…the HOLD it had on us all in 2014.

I was excited when I heard We Were Liars was getting a prequel. It’s time for another devastating summer with the Sinclair family.

Book family of liars