We Were Liars is about a rich girl named Cadence who can't remember what happened during a summer on her family's private island. She was there with her three cousins - Johnny, Mirren, and Gat - and they called themselves "the Liars" Something bad happened that summer, and now Cadence has memory problems and keeps talking to her cousins even though something seems off about them.
The show goes back and forth between that summer and the next summer when Cadence comes back to figure out what happened. During the bad summer, the four cousins got mad at their rich family for being awful people. The Sinclair family owns this fancy island called Beechwood where they spend every summer acting like they're better than everyone else. Cadence's grandfather Harris is this cold, manipulative old man who controls everyone with money. The three Sinclair sisters (Cadence's mom and aunts) are constantly fighting over inheritance and trying to stay in Harris's good graces so they don't get cut off financially.
The cousins, especially Gat who's the only brown kid in this super white family, get disgusted watching all this toxic behavior. Gat feels uncomfortable with all the privilege and doesn't really fit in, which makes Cadence fall for him even more. Meanwhile, Harris starts playing these cruel games with his grandchildren. He announces this twisted competition where whoever finds a hidden lime, gets to inherit the island. When Gat actually finds it, Harris tries to cheat him out of the prize by offering some bogus internship that would keep him away the next summer. That's when the cousins realize they're just pawns in Harris's sick games.
So the four of them decide to burn down the main house, Clairmont, as this big act of rebellion against everything their family represents. They're drunk and angry and want to destroy the symbol of all this generational wealth and cruelty. But the fire goes completely wrong. Johnny, Mirren, and Gat all die in the fire while Cadence barely escapes, hitting her head so hard that she gets severe brain trauma and amnesia. The big twist is that the three cousins she's been talking to throughout the whole show are actually ghosts. She's been having conversations with dead people this entire time without realizing it, similar to the twist in the movie "The Sixth Sense" and they've been trying to help her remember what really happened that night.
The TV show changed quite a bit from the book, and not always for the better. In the original novel, the tragic events happened over multiple summers with more time to develop the characters and their relationships. The grandmother Tipper dies between Summer 14 and 15, the fire happens at the end of Summer 15, and Cadence doesn't return to the island until almost two years later during Summer 17. The show squishes all of this into just two summers, which makes everything feel more rushed and doesn't give the emotional weight time to build properly.
The book also had way more of Cadence processing her trauma through these elaborate fairy tales she tells herself, where she casts her family members as kings and princesses and dragons. It's this really interesting way of showing how she's trying to make sense of her fractured memories and feelings. The show keeps some of this but mostly cuts it out, which is a shame because it was one of the more unique aspects of the original story.
But the biggest change is in how the actual fire happens and who's responsible. In the book, Cadence bears much more direct responsibility for her cousins' deaths. She's the one in charge of the ground floor, she uses too much gasoline, and she starts the fire on the wrong side of the house, which traps everyone inside. It's clearly her fault, which makes her guilt and trauma much more complex and justified. In the show, they soften this considerably. Gat was supposed to wait outside in the boat but runs back into the burning house when he doesn't see the others coming out as planned. Mirren and Johnny get trapped because they're distracted - Mirren by one of her paintings and Johnny by wanting to smash more stuff - and the smoke rises faster than they expected. Cadence thinks it's her fault because she ran back inside to grab her grandmother's black pearl necklace and then again to try to save the dogs they all forgot about, but she's not really the direct cause of their deaths like she is in the book.
This change makes the story less dramatically powerful because Cadence's guilt feels less justified. In the book, she actually did something that directly killed her cousins, so her trauma and self-destruction make complete sense. In the show, she's more of a victim of circumstance, which makes her ongoing guilt feel almost irrational. The dog detail feels particularly manipulative, like they needed to add extra tragedy to make people cry without wanting to make Cadence too culpable.
The ending is also completely different between the two versions. In the book, Cadence decides to stay with her family and take responsibility for her actions. She resolves to be a better person and own her place in what she calls her "evil" family. It's a mature ending about accountability and growth. In the show, when her grandfather Harris reveals that he knows the truth about the fire and wants her to keep lying about it, she just runs away from the island and rejects the Sinclair name entirely. It's supposed to feel empowering, but it really just feels like she's avoiding taking any real responsibility for what happened.
The good parts of this show are genuinely great. The ghost reveal is devastating and brilliantly executed, especially when you go back and notice all the little clues that were there the whole time. Moments like Johnny saying "I don't want to burn again" or Mirren talking about never feeling seen and now never being able to feel seen again are absolutely heartbreaking once you know the truth. The show does tackle important themes about generational wealth, privilege, racism, and how toxic family dynamics can destroy young people. Joseph Zada as Johnny gives the standout performance - he brings real charisma and complexity to what could have been just another "troubled rich kid" character.
But the problems are pretty significant. The middle episodes really drag with repetitive family drama that doesn't move the plot forward much. You get tired of watching the Sinclair sisters fight over the same stuff episode after episode. The romance between Cadence and Gat, which is supposed to be this epic love story, falls completely flat because the actors have zero chemistry together. It's hard to believe these two characters would die for each other when they barely seem to like each other.
Some of the dialogue is painfully bad in that way where you can tell adults are trying to write how they think teenagers talk. The show also has this problem where it's clearly trying to be more socially conscious than the book by adding more explicit discussions about race and privilege, but it often feels forced rather than organic to the story.
The logic gaps are probably the most frustrating part. These are supposed to be smart, privileged kids who have had the best education money can buy, but they decide to burn down a house from the inside, instead of, from outside where they'd be safe. It makes no sense. And somehow Cadence faces absolutely no legal consequences for her role in what amounts to arson and accidental manslaughter. No police investigation, no legal troubles, nothing. Her family apparently just covers it all up, which strains believability even for a show about rich people getting away with things.
The ghost sex scene between Cadence and Gat, which turns out to be a hallucination, felt unnecessary and weird to me. The show also puts these terrible bleached blonde wigs on the Sinclair teenagers that look obviously fake and distracting. These might seem like small details, but they add up to make the show feel less polished and thought-through than it should be.
Despite all these problems, the show is still worth watching if you can get past the slower parts and logic issues. The emotional core of the story is powerful, and that final episode revelation genuinely works. It's one of those twists that decontextualizes everything you've seen and makes you want to immediately rewatch the whole thing. The themes about privilege, trauma, and family dysfunction are handled well enough to make you think, even if the execution isn't always smooth.
The book definitely handles these themes with more nuance and gives Cadence a more satisfying character arc, but the show's visual storytelling does make certain moments more impactful. Seeing the ghosts interact with Cadence and slowly realizing what's happening hits differently than reading about it. The production design of the island and the houses also helps establish the oppressive atmosphere of this wealthy family's world.
It's flawed but memorable, especially if you're into psychological thrillers and don't mind some plot holes. But don't expect everything to make perfect logical sense. If you're a fan of the book, you might be disappointed by some of the changes, particularly the way they soften Cadence's responsibility and change the ending. But if you're coming to it fresh, it's an emotionally engaging watch that tackles some heavy themes, even if it stumbles along the way.
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