This weekend is set to be a scorcher, with temperatures tippling over the 30 degree water mark. So what better way to beat the heat than set up in front of a fan with a good binge watch?
Amazon Prime Video has just the thing after this week dropping all eight episodes of the hotly anticipated summer thriller We Were Liars.
Based on E Lockhart’s bestseller, which did numbers on BookTok, this glossy adaptation is a summer vibes machine with a twist you’ll never see coming.
We can’t talk about that big spoiler-y final reveal, which has been one of the book’s biggest talking points since it was published over a decade ago.
The show’s central mystery swirls around rich young thing Cadence Sinclair, played by Emily Alyn Lind, who is retreading her memories of the previous summer after she half-drowned and had no recollection of what happened.
‘Something terrible happened last summer,’ our heroine Cady tells us via voiceover, which is peppered throughout the show. ‘I have no memory of what or who hurt me.’
Up until that point, her life had been a sun-drenched dream, buoyed up by her filthy-rich ‘American royalty’ family and a close-knit bond with her troublemaker cousins – who the family dub the titular ‘liars’.
Set on the family’s private isle Beechwood, near the Kennedy stronghold Martha’s Vineyard, this is The Summer I Turned Pretty meets a near-murder mystery, which is already ranking at the second spot on Prime Video’s ranking of most popular film and TV.
The novel’s author was also an executive producer on the show and teased – spoiler free – the pacing of the show and how they kept the audience who had not read the book guessing.
Lockhart told Deadline: ‘We want[ed] to stretch out the suspense a little bit and give each, each of the liars their own experience of that big event.’
Metro’s thoughts on We Were Liars
Senior TV Reporter Rebecca Cook shares her take…
When Cady isn’t making ominous reference to her impending amnesia via voiceover, We Were Liars is largely a summer vibes machine with a big-budget soundtrack.
The breathy voiceover can sound like Carrie Bradshaw’s column word salad when you really tune into what she’s quite repetitively saying.
But whenever you start to feel bogged down in the so-so teen melodrama, some big reveal will come from another corner of the show to pull you back in. This is the show’s strength: it moves at a clip and there is always something barmy happening to one of the Sinclairs.
Unlike the best eat-the-rich mysteries, this is painfully lacking in the laughs department and probably takes itself a bit too seriously.
But you won’t regret sticking around for the final reveal to plug the gap in Cady’s memory: it’s so bonkers it’s beyond the guessing game.
Prime Video viewers have already been ploughing into the episodes of the show – and have been left emotional at the show’s final twist.
@Ayaaam_x wrote on X: ‘I can’t open my eyes from the tears. I have read and reread that book prepping for the show and still nothing could ever.’
Many of the viewers have been fans of the book, which found a new audience on TikTok, with @halsteadaes saying they were ‘ready to be emotionally destroyed’ by the show.
@itsamemikasa added: ‘We Were Liars destroyed me wtf were those plot twists in the last episode.’
@twoworldsapartt chimed: ‘Watching this knowing what’s gonna happen is making me wanna slam my head into a wall.’
@dimaggioooo added: ‘Just finished we were liars (haven’t read the book) and OH MY GOD THE ENDING,’ alongside a string of crying emojis.
We Were Liars is available to stream on Prime Video.
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