Cadence Sinclair Eastman

About
Cadence Sinclair Eastman, aka Cady, is the heiress to a fortune her grandfather, Harris Sinclair, amassed “doing business I never bothered to understand.” She is the unreliable narrator of We Were Liars.

Plot
The story begins during her 15th summer when she suffers a head injury on the private island Granddad owns off Cape Cod. Cady vacations on Beechwood every year with her mother, two aunts, and—most importantly—the other liars of the title: cousins Mirren and Johnny, and Gat Patil, the nephew of Aunt Carrie’s longtime boyfriend.

The book unfolds two summers later, with Cadence trying to piece together the memories she lost after the accident while up against crippling headaches, a brain that feels “broken in countless medically diagnosed ways,” and family members who refuse to speak on the subject (or have been cautioned not to). She has no memory of the accident other than what her mother told her. Still, she wants to find out what happened and why the details don't match up.

During this 17th summer, the book takes a strange turn where Cadence is trying to piece together what happened during the 15th summer. Flashes of her past come back while she hangs out with the liars. She wonders why none of them responded to her emails, and why Gat never visited her while she was recovering.

The younger cousins, often referred to as the littles, speak of the houses on the island being haunted. The aunties are hugging more than they used to, and the main house of the island has been rebuilt. None of the old things from the house were kept.

More memories of the past resurface when Cadence directly asked the liars to tell her what happened. She recalled setting fire to the main house, Clairmont. The liars were supposed to do it together and meet up in Cuddledown, Auntie Bess's house.

Only Cadence returned to Cuddledown. Later, her grandfather explained that Johnny, Gat, and Mirren had all died in the fire, as they had been dousing in gasoline the second and third floors, along with the basement. Since Cady had been assigned to the ground floor, she was able to escape when the house caught on fire, accidentally leaving the others trapped inside.

At the end of the book, Cadence has to let go. She says goodbye to her Liars at Beechwood and learns to live without them, remembering them wholeheartedly.