Book Review :: We Fell Apart by E. Lockhart

We Fell Apart by E. Lockhart
ISBN: 0593899164
Published by Delacorte
on 4 November 2025
Genres: Mystery, Young Adult
Goodreads

The invitation arrives out of the blue.

In it, Matilda discovers a father she’s never met. Kingsley Cello is a visionary, a reclusive artist. And when he asks her to spend the summer at his seaside home, Hidden Beach, Matilda expects to find a part of herself she’s never fully understood.

Instead, she finds Meer, her long-lost, openhearted brother; Brock, a former child star battling demons; and brooding, wild Tatum, who just wants her to leave their crumbling sanctuary.

With Kingsley nowhere to be seen, Matilda must delve into the twisted heart of Hidden Beach to uncover the answers she’s desperately craving. But secrets run thicker than blood, and blood runs like seawater.

And everyone here is lying.

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What is We Fell Apart by E. Lockhart about?

We Fell Apart by E. Lockhart takes us back to the world of the Sinclair family we met first in We Were Liars, but this time, we’re across the bay with Matilda Klein.

When Matilda gets a very unexpected email from Kingsley Cello – a famous artist who says he’s her father. Matilda doesn’t know who her father really is – her mother is flaky to say the least, and Matilda has spent her 18 years of life moving from one place to the other. The only really stable adult in her life is one of her mum’s ex-boyfriends, Saar.

So when Matilda gets the email, she’s intrigued and decides to take the leap and go to Hidden Beach to meet her supposed father. When she arrives, she meets a very enthusiastic Meer who is Kingsley’s son (suddenly she has a half-brother she knew nothing about), Tatum, a young man who picks her up from the airport (less enthusiastically), and Brock, who is a former child actor recovering from an addiction.

It very soon comes to pass that Kingsley is away in Italy and not actually on the island at all, and no one seems to know when he’ll be back.

Matilda reluctantly stays, trying to get more information out of those at Hidden Beach, including Meer’s mother, June, who has strict rules about the house, and just waiting for Kingsley to return.

Oh and there’s a couple of people on the island who she’s connected with already, including Holland, who definitely has secrets.

My thoughts on We Fell Apart

For the most part, I enjoyed We Fell Apart. There was enough intrigue and mystery to keep me reading, and they were all new characters in this one, so it felt fresher than Family of Liars. 

The book starts quite ordinary – just Matilda coming to a new place, meeting new people, waiting for her father to return from Italy – but, like any good E. Lockhart book slowly descends into mystery and questions and putting the pieces together.

While I do recognise that this is a completely different book and story from We Were Liars, you can’t help but compare. I was expecting a really good twist, but alas, it really didn’t come. Not in the way that We Were Liars really hit.

I do, however, think this one was better than Family of Liars. And the twist or the gasp factor was more prevalent in We Fell Apart. Perhaps it was because this one was a little further removed from the Sinclairs – yes, they were still connected, but it was much more subtle, and We Fell Apart felt like a whole new story.

You’re still expecting that mystery twist, and while it was good in this book, it wasn’t as good as the first one.

Still a 3-star book from me, and it’ll be interesting to see if they adapt this book for TV as they did We Were Liars (something they did very well, I thought!).

Have you read We Fell Apart by E. Lockhart? What did you think?