{"id":195222,"date":"2025-06-18T19:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T19:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/195222\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T19:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T19:52:10","slug":"we-were-liars-the-5-biggest-changes-from-book-to-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/195222\/","title":{"rendered":"We Were Liars: The 5 Biggest Changes from Book to Show"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post contains spoilers for<\/strong> We Were Liars.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The lone body of a woman on a beach is rarely a good sign\u2014just ask the affluent characters of Netflix\u2019s The Perfect Couple or HBO\u2019s Big Little Lies. That same holds for Prime Video\u2019s We Were Liars<\/a>, an eight-episode TV adaptation of the mystery YA novel published in 2014, but popularized via BookTok<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n

Both E. Lockhart<\/strong>\u2019s book and the series from showrunners Julie Plec<\/strong> (The Vampire Diaries) and Carina Adly Mackenzie<\/strong> (Roswell, New Mexico), begin with heroine Cadence Sinclair Eastman (Emily Alyn Lind<\/strong>) washed ashore outside of her family\u2019s secluded property on a private island off the coast of Martha\u2019s Vineyard. The eldest grandchild of wealthy media mogul Harris Sinclair (David Morse<\/strong>) and his wife, Tipper (Wendy Crewson<\/strong>), doesn\u2019t know how she got there, where her clothes went, or why none of her similarly-aged cousins, who call themselves the Liars, can give her any clarity.<\/p>\n

The show cuts back and forth between Cadence\u2019s post-traumatic amnesia and the events that led up to it the previous summer. Her mother Penny (Caitlin FitzGerald<\/strong>) has forbidden Cadence\u2019s aunts Carrie (Mamie Gummer<\/strong>) and Bess (Candice King<\/strong>) from speaking about the incident. Also sworn to secrecy are the Liars: Carrie\u2019s son Johnny (Joseph Zada<\/strong><\/a>), Bess\u2019 daughter Mirren (Esther McGregor<\/strong><\/a>), and Gat (Shubham Maheshwari<\/strong>), the nephew of Carrie\u2019s longtime boyfriend Ed (Rahul Kohli<\/strong>). But familial infighting soon gives way to secrets about the Sinclair dynasty\u2014and insight about Cadence\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n

Ahead, a look at the biggest differences between the We Were Liars book and TV adaptation, from more insight about Johnny\u2019s sexuality to a new twist on that shocking ending.<\/p>\n

A Missing Timeline and Character<\/strong><\/p>\n

The original novel chronicles multiple summers, named for how old Cadence is during each season. Cadence and Gat begin to fall in love during summer 14. Grandmother Tipper dies before summer 15\u2014the same year of Cadence\u2019s accident. In summer 17, Cadence returns to Beechwood Island searching for answers about the previous year. But the show condenses the story into just two timelines: before Cadence\u2019s accident, and after. All of major plot points take place in summer 16, including Grandmother\u2019s sudden death from heart failure.<\/p>\n

In the TV series, there\u2019s also a major character missing from the Sinclair family tree. That would be Taft, the youngest son of Bess Sinclair. In the book, Taft\u2019s main contribution to the story is his concern over Cadence\u2019s Percocet addiction\u2014a worry that gets doled out to a slew of other characters on the show.<\/p>\n

The Sinclair Sisters<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lockhart\u2019s novel skims over the backstories of sisters Carrie, Penny, and Bess, the mothers of three of the titular Liars. There\u2019s more information about them in the 2022 prequel, Family of Liars. That book is where Rosemary, \u201cthe daughter who didn\u2019t grow up,\u201d is first mentioned. But the series outright references their late sister, a fourth Sinclair daughter who died during childhood. She may have died due to something that happened during one of their own summers on the island\u2014while grieving the death of her own daughter in the show\u2019s season finale, Bess wonders if the fire is \u201cpunishment\u201d for \u201cwhat we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Candice King, David Morse, Wendy Crewson, Mamie Gummer, Caitlin Fitzgerald in We Were Liars.Jessie Redmond<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This post contains spoilers for We Were Liars. The lone body of a woman on a beach is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[1641,3444,77,382,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-195222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-amazon-prime","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114706117700392099","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}