We Were Liars, the show, may be one of the best book adaptations I’ve ever watched due to the creativity and depth that matched the book’s energy.
Before going deeper, “We Were Liars,” the series, is an adaptation of the book by E.Lockhart, published in May of 2014. The show was published on Prime Video in 2025, and immediately broke the internet, because of the amount of love people had for the books
Originally, the book won multiple awards, such as the Good Reads Choice Award for best Young Adult Fiction Novel in 2014. Also in 2014, the book became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2015, the book won an ALA award for Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults. Finally, it was a finalist for Teen Choice Book Awards’ Book of the Year. E.Lockhart has also written other smash hit books, including writing sequels and prequels to We Were Liars.
Many shows use themes like love, loss, grief, greed, racism, facades, and family privilege. But no show captures all of them as well as “We Were Liars” does. “We Were Liars,” produced by Julie Plec and Carina Adly Mackenzie, embodies how greed and grief can tear people apart, but also provide guidance for bringing people together. It symbolizes how trauma can affect a person and how moving on and grieving takes time.
A common theme across show adaptations of books is that the show doesn’t stay true to the book or that the show genuinely just is bad. But for “We Were Liars,” the show goes against these past beliefs and demonstrates a great understanding and respect for the book.
I would be lying if I said that the two were completely identical. There are differences. But these differences are what enhanced the show as a whole. The show took the book and the overall plot, but also added relevance and storylines to other characters that in the book weren’t as relevant. This made the show even better because it was harder to get bored and easier to stay hooked with all the characters and their personal struggles.
The show takes place on a fictional private island in Martha’s Vineyard called Beechwood Island. It is owned by the very wealthy Sinclair family, specifically the grandparents Harris Sinclair and Tipper Taft Sinclair, who have 3 daughters, Carrie, Penny, and Bess (in that order). It mainly follows the teenage grandchildren, also known as “the liars”. There were 4 liars, Johnny Sinclair, played by Joseph Zada, Mirren Sinclair, played by Esther McGregor, Cadence Sinclair, the oldest granddaughter and main character, played by Emily Alyn Lind, and finally Gat Patil, the nephew of Carrie Sinclair, as well as Cadence’s love interest. Gat often is treated as an outsider, due to Harris being subconsciously racist, due to Gat being racist. At first, nobody seemed to notice it. Over time, the racism became more obvious, due to the obsession of family image.
The family counts their years in summers, when they are all together on the island. The show often jumps between summers 16 and 17, where summer 17 is the present, and summer 16 was the past. The show focuses on these summers, because of 2 major events taking place during summer 16. The first one is an accident at the end of that summer that put a block on Cadence’s memory of most of that summer, making summer 17 a summer of investigation.
The accident remains unknown until the end of the story, so the audience is also solving this mystery. Throughout this journey, Cadence unlocks memories from the past with the help of her parents and the other liars.
The time jump often gets confusing, but it’s easy to adjust to after a short while. The show perfectly guides the audience through this story, and the producers did such a great job of making this a mystery to us too. I really felt like I was on that journey with Cadence when she was unlocking all these long memories that her brain locked her out of.
There are also new plot lines for the other liars, which is different from the books. We learn about Gat, Johnny, and Mirren, and their journey with Cadence. We also learn about their lives separately, and their personal struggles and problems.
The other central plot line surrounds the greed of the children and how the vicious Harris Sinclair puts his children against each other for his own amusement. Each child of the three was given a trust fund by their father and is judged on how they used it. When their mother, and Harris’ wife, Tipper passes away, the show really shines on the shift in relationships and obsession with wealth divides people. Rather than grieving, the sisters always seem to try to one-up each other to their father, in order to receive an even bigger part of the father’s will. The sisters get so driven by this anger and obsession that they push their rivalries onto their children, who each have a different reaction to this.
I think the way that the author and producers portray these issues and the bonds between these characters are immaculate.
I only had 2 small issues with the show. I read the book, and loved it. But, in the show, I thought that there were some scenes that should’ve been a part of the series but weren’t part of the book. I think they did this because they wanted to create room for new plot lines, but it overall took away some really sweet moments that could have made the episodes more compact and interesting. My final issue was that I thought there were times where the show seemed to rush. Their time management was kind of off, and some scenes seemed unbalanced in pace. But overall, I think that because the show was so fascinating, it wasn’t as obvious.
So, if you are a teen looking for a new series that is eye-catching, mysterious, deep, and definitely will make you cry, then I think “We Were Liars” is the perfect show to dabble in. Season two is coming out soon, so I recommend catching up quickly, because I have a feeling it’s going to be even better.
