Rich family, private island — what could go wrong?

📺 The Sinclairs are filthy rich, but they’re also just plain filthy. Based on the 2014 novel of the same name by E. Lockhart, We Were Liars is an eight-episode series following the Sinclair family — a preternaturally wealthy yet dysfunctional clan spearheaded by Harris Sinclair, a business tycoon with a love for mind games. Each summer, the family heads to Beechwood Island, a private escape off the coast of Massachusetts. There, there’s barely any wifi, signal, or consistent communication with the mainland. What could go wrong?

An (un)lucky heir. Cadence Sinclair (Emily Lind) is the eldest of the Sinclair grandchildren, and stands to inherit quite a lot. Her cousins, Joseph and Mirren Sinclair, barely have any issues with that. In fact, oddly enough, it seems none of the grandchildren seem particularly vested in taking hold of their family’s fortune, at least not as much as their mothers — the Sinclair daughters, who each harbor dangerous secrets.

The series starts with what the cousins have called Summer 16 — as in the summer they were all 16. The Sinclair cousins, alongside Gat, a step-relative, are known by their family as “the liars” — given their youthful shenanigans. Summer 16 doesn’t seem particularly bad, yet things slowly start going downhill. When the show flash-forwards to summer 17, and we find out that Cadence Sinclair almost lost her life the year before but retains no memory of anything, we begin — alongside Cadence — to put together the pieces of the puzzle.

If you’ve read the novel, you’ll still want to watch the series. While the adaptation stays true to the source material — including the stellar final act that the book gained fame for, the show expands on its scope, exploring the suspicious summer 16 through multiple points of view, rather than just Cadence’s, as was the case in the novel. In doing so, We Were Liars sets itself up nicely for a potential adaptation of the novel’s prequel, Family of Liars.

Every family has their secrets, but these secrets are dangerous. The series follows our cast of liars as they begin to understand the true nature of their family. As the summer goes by, they decide to take matters into their own hands — leading to the events that would leave Cadence barely alive by the end. The show is incredibly binge-able, easy to follow, and entertaining. If there’s one thing we’d be nitpicky about, it’s that the series doesn’t allow for much silence. Whenever there isn’t dialogue, there’s voiceover narration, which gets pretty old pretty quickly. Other than that, however? We were seated and constantly refilling our popcorn bowls.

WHERE TO WATCH– You can stream We Were Liars on Prime Video, and watch the trailer on YouTube (runtime: 2:16).