Added on June 19, 2025 Staff Writer E. Lockhart , We Were Liars

We Were Liars: E. Lockhart’s Viral YA Thriller Becomes a Must-Watch TV Adaptation

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Author and now television writer E. Lockhart set the young adult (YA) literary world on fire with her 2014 New York Times bestseller, We Were Liars, a page-turning YA thriller steeped in mystery and psychological suspense.

After a TikTok resurgence in popularity during 2020, it remained in the Bestseller List for almost two years without input from the author or the publisher. The buzz was all fan driven.

Lockhart’s novel has now been adapted into an 8-part limited series co-executive-produced by television veterans Julie Plec (Legacies, The Vampire Diaries) and Carina Adly MacKenzie (Roswell, New Mexico, The Originals).

The highly anticipated Amazon Prime Video series follows in the footsteps of the captivating novel, exploring ‘Cadence Sinclair Eastman’ (Emily Alyn Lind) and her tight-knit inner circle, nicknamed ‘the Liars,’ during their summer escapades vacationing on their grandfather’s idyllic New England private island – Beachwood Island.

On the surface the Sinclair family is known for its good looks, generational wealth, and close familial ties, but after a life-altering accident, Cadence sets out to uncover the dark secrets beneath the Sinclair family’s polished exterior as she pieces together her fractured memories after her life-changing accident.

Starring David Morse, Mamie Gummer, Caitlin Fitzgerald, Candice King, Esther McGregor, Joseph Zada and Shubham Maheshwari, We Were Liars is a cautionary tale of wealth and privilege and explores the dark consequences of unfettered greed in order to preserve the Sinclair reputatation at all costs.

E. Lockhart spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine to discuss her gripping YA beachy gothic mystery thriller.

The Impact of Visual Aesthetic and Raw Emotion

Lockhart’s work surged in popularity largely due to BookTok, a platform where readers shared their reactions to her novel.

“They made aesthetic videos that invited people into the world of We Were Liars. They pulled pictures off of Pinterest that gave the vibe of a story set on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts. Wealth, summer, love, bonfires on the beach, golden retrievers, lobster feasts, all of that,” recalls Lockhart.

E Lockhart. Photo by Heather Weston

“Other readers were very vulnerable. People were either angry or weeping. They had strong emotions. They were either taking the book and throwing it across the room, or they were holding it up while sobbing hysterically with mascara running down their faces. They were inviting people to read the book because it made them feel something cathartic,” she adds.

Lockhart often explores themes of nostalgia and longing in her work, especially in her portrayals of friendships and first love.

Exploring the Teenage Experience

Says Lockhart, “I was interested first in really intense summer friendships and love between kids who are spending summers together but not the rest of their lives.”

“I aspired to writing about a wonderful summer, with people that adore you, where a group of teenagers creates a culture and a world where they have inside jokes, particular pursuits, and annual family rituals,” she continues.

Another part of the teenage experience is the telling of lies – both to fit in and to survive. “Thematically this is a story about young people who tell lies to each other and to the older people in their family, but it’s also about self-mythologizing family and the stories that they tell about themselves to themselves and to the rest of the world,” she elaborates.

With a central plot involving amnesia, We Were Liars presents challenges that force her characters to confront the serious consequences of their actions. “How do you go on when you have done something terrible?” Lockhart ponders. “That’s a story question that comes up in a lot of my books.”

Getting We Were Liars Made For Television

It wasn’t smooth sailing finding a television home for We We Liars. Initially, it was in development for a feature film. “It had five different screenwriters and two directors attached,” Lockhart recalls. Then the project remained static in development. It was resurrected with another streamer, before Julie Plec and Carina Adly MacKenzie set the project up at Prime Video.

Plec and Mackenzie staffed the writers’ room with voices from diverse backgrounds. “That included four writers of Indian descent who also had lived experience that they could bring to the characters in the story who are of Indian descent, Gat (Shubham Maheshwari) and his uncle Ed (Rahul Kohli).” This allowed such characters to be represented with more integrity and depth than in the novel.

The novel was written in first person from the perspective of Cadence Sinclair “an amnesiac, entitled, hyperimaginative, passionate teenage girl. That gives the story a very particular voice and a very particular perspective,” Lockhart says.

She argues that a television show shouldn’t necessarily be a first person narrative – even with extensive voiceover. This allows for a deeper examination of the other “messy and complex” characters in the story.

E. Lockhart wrote the final explosive episode of We We Liars to conclude the series in her signature style.

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