All the Changes From the ‘We Were Liars’ Book Versus Series

We Were Liars, the new Prime Video series from showrunners Julie Plec and Carina Adly Mackenzie that's a juicy mishmash of YA romance, vacation mystery, and Succession-y family drama, also happens to be based on the very popular novel by E. Lockhart. If you're too curious about what was different in the book or how the show handled *that* ending, here's the 411 on the adaptation.

The basic story, characters, and relationships are the same. There will be spoilers ahead, uh, obviously. Starting with the big one because I am no liar! We Were Liars is about a seventeen year-old girl named Cadence Sinclair working through post-traumatic amnesia after a fire she helped set killed her cousin Johnny, her cousin Mirren, and her childhood best friend/boyfriend Gatwick "Gat" Patil. Her amnesia and trauma is represented by the ghosts of those three dead teenagers, who used to call themselves "the Liars" when they spent summers growing up on the Sinclair family's private island called Beachwood.

Every time a living person tries to tell her what happens, she has a panic attack and forgets all over again. The fire occurred after a dramatic summer caused the Liars to become disillusioned with their picture perfect, privileged family. On the show and in the book, we see that fateful summer unfold as Cadence remembers the truth. There are some small changes to the narrative in the adaptation. For example: Mirren's younger brother Taft is simply not in the show! His character is basically combined with Johnny's younger brother William. Here are the bigger changes:

The timeline is condensed.

In the book: Grandma Tipper dies between Summer 14 and Summer 15, and the fire happens at the end of Summer 15. We spent time with Cadence at home in Vermont recovering from her physical injuries and recalling sporadic memories. She spends Summer 16 in Europe with her father. Almost two years later, during Summer 17, Cadence returns to the island seeking the truth and reunites with the Liars' ghosts.

In the show: All of the tragic events happened in Summer 16. We never see Cadence's life in Vermont outside of a hair dye montage. Just one year after the accident, Cadence goes back on the island for all of what would have been Summer 17, working with the ghosts of the Liars to figure out what happened.

The ghosts of Mirren, Johnny, and Gat are going through it.

In the book: Johnny gets more and more distressed, Mirren gets more and more sick, and Gat gets more and more angsty about resuming his relationship with Cadence. The house where they're "staying" gets progressively messier with clutter and dirty dishes.

In the show: The ghosts are the tiniest bit, well, friendlier and there's no mess for Cadence to clean up. I guess that wouldn't make for compelling TV.

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Cadence tells more fairy tales in the book.

In the book: Cadence processes her mental state by telling the reader fairy tales in which she casts her family members and Gat as kings, princesses, princes, fire-breathing dragons and outcast mice.

In the show: There are fairy tales in voiceover, and the Sinclair family Father's Day tradition has some on the nose King Lear vibes... but that's it. Instead, since the show is only partially from Cadence's POV, we do learn a little more about her cousins and aunts. They have interests and love lives that the book doesn't get as into.

The exact reasons why the Liars died in the fire are a little different.

In the book: The ground floor caught fire too fast because Cadence, who was in charge of that section, used too much gas and started on the wrong side of the house to ensure a safe exit for everyone. That trapped Gat in the basement and her cousins (and the dogs) upstairs.

In the series: Gat was waiting outside in the boat, and ran into the fire when he didn't see Cadence and her cousins leaving the house as planned. Mirren and Johnny got trapped because they were distracted–Mirren by one of her paintings in her mom's room and Johnny by one last opportunity to smash things–and the smoke rose more quickly than they anticipated. Cadence thinks she threw off the plan by running upstairs to grab her grandmother's black pearl necklace. But since she ran back inside moments after to try and rescue the sleeping dogs they all forgot about (I'll never be over that BTW) what happened is not so much her fault as it is in the book.

The truth is out there in both versions.

In the book: Cadence suspects that her mom, Penny, knows the truth about the fire. But the important thing is that Cadence has resolved to be a better, more considerate person and own her responsibility and her place in her "evil" family.

In the series: Cadence's grandfather, Harris, definitely knows the truth about the fire. He names her as a successor to her family's complicated legacy and urges her to keep the lie he's told the family and the press: that the fire was an accident and she was a hero who tried to save everyone. But she runs away, neither admitting to what really happened or maintaining the fairy. She's still very against the family. Will this be resolved in a potential Season 2? There's always room for more character growth... right? There are some references in the series to things that book readers would only know if they'd read the prequel Family of Liars, like another horrible summer and what happened to the fourth Sinclair sister Rosemary, so fingers crossed!