Exclusive Interview
Could E. Lockhart’s ‘We Fell Apart’ Characters Show Up in ‘We Were Liars’ Season 2? She Says…
What To Know
- E. Lockhart opens up to Swooon about her new novel, We Fell Apart, a gothic story set in the We Were Liars universe.
- The author explains how her readers influenced the novel’s ending.
- We Fell Apart explores the Sinclair family from new perspectives.
When We Were Liars author E. Lockhart sat down to write her next novel, she wanted to write a book that “felt like it was in conversation” with Jane Eyre, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Good Apprentice, and I Capture the Castle. Luckily enough, she already had the perfect universe for a gothic story. Welcome back to Martha’s Vineyard, Liars.
According to Lockhart, her newest We Were Liars story, We Fell Apart, has “a basic Gothic novel set up” with “a story about a girl who goes to a big, mysterious mansion by the sea, where there are strange goings-on. There are three young men in this house who are kind of a universe unto themselves, and everybody’s lying.”
Now that we’ve grown just as attached to Matilda, Meer, and the rest of the We Fell Apart gang, we couldn’t let E. Lockhart go without asking her if the characters from her third We Were Liars novel will ever make their way into the We Were Liars TV series. Lockhart’s answer? “All I can say is that the showrunners have read the book.”
Looking back at writing her first draft, Lockhart revealed, “As I was writing this novel, my side hustle was working on We Were Liars for Prime Video. I was an executive producer on that show, and I wrote the finale.” She explained that as she was writing We Fell Apart, “the world of We Were Liars just kind of kept coming on to the page.” As it turns out, when she least expected it, she came to “realize and then embrace” that she was writing another novel in the We Were Liars universe and “that there would be intersections between this, essentially standalone story, and We Were Liars.”
Much like the prior two We Were Liars novels, We Fell Apart has a massive, twisted ending that is “rooted in the emotional lives of the characters.” However, Lockhart wasn’t just worried about the pressure to deliver a jaw-dropping twist. “I really wanted it to be worth a second read,” she told Swooon. “I know from doing events and from looking at the internet that my readers have very often read We Were Liars and Family of Liars multiple times. And they’re looking for what they missed, and they’re paying very, very close attention. And that’s such a gift.” As she put it, “It’s the best right to write for an audience who is paying that kind of attention.”
Seeing as We Fell Apart ties back to both We Were Liars and Family of Liars, readers get a window into the lives of key members of the Sinclair family, outside of Cadence’s perspective. Lockhart explained, “Tipper is really the character who shows up the most in We Fell Apart, which is set simultaneously with the earlier events in We Were Liars.” As readers now know, We Fell Apart takes place in the days after the We Were Liars fire. She continued, “I liked getting to explore and deepen that character. You see a lot of her in Family of Liars, but this is sort of a later version of Tipper, and you see some of the behind-the-scenes machinations that she’s up to.”
When it comes to the rest of the Sinclair clan, she explained, “You know, part of me wished I could spend even more time with characters who are not central to this story. They pop up, you hear people gossiping about the Sinclairs, and you learn new things about the Sinclair family. You definitely learn some secrets that they’ve been hiding through the first two books.” At the same time, Lockhart made it clear that “it is a new cast and a new central story.”
We Fell Apart by E. Lockhart is available today.
