However, none of that keeps the darkness from creeping into their lives, especially for Carrie her parents make her get surgery to fix her bite and weak jaw, her little sister Rosemary drowned when she was only 10, and then she got hooked on codeine pills - which she needed when her jaw surgery got infected - and eventually sleeping pills, which she stole from her father. They hold parties with decadent food and family games, the girls all go to expensive boarding schools, and they have dogs with names like Wharton and Reepicheep. They own an island with a housekeeper from Belarus, a groundskeeper, a boat, and a young au pair from Poland. The Sinclairs inhabit a world that seems at times untouched by reality. This is crucial because the Sinclair family isn't the kind of family most readers immediately feel a connection with.

While this would be merely a strength in a different story, in Family of Liars it becomes the element that makes readers develop empathy for the characters and care about what happens.

Lockhart is a great storyteller with a knack for developing complex characters that feel deeply human. As Carrie retells the events of that summer in Beechwood Island, a private island owned by her father and uncle, she reveals the dark secrets and deep flaws that exist at the heart of her seemingly perfect family. Johnny is curious about Carrie's past and asks her to tell him stories about the worst things she did when she was young, so Carrie tells him about the summer of 1987, her 17th summer, the summer she first 'saw a ghost' and kissed a boy for the first time. The novel takes readers back in time to show them the secrets at the core of the Sinclair family and how some of the major events of We Were Liars were set in motion during the summer of 1987, but the narrative also works perfectly well as a standalone coming-of-age novel about grief, addiction, young love, and learning to navigate the world.įamily of Liars starts with Caroline Lennox Taft Sinclair - Carrie to almost everyone in her life - spending time in her kitchen with the ghost of her dead son Johnny. Lockhart's Family of Liars is a strange prequel to her New York Times bestseller We Were Liars.

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