You know you’re being a spoiled complainer when you come across overly dramatic material and wonder how no one thought to turn it into a telenovela. In Brazil, our telenovelas are spectacular and can last up to eight months. Abroad, soap operas often take years to produce and are frequently poorly made. So instead, there are long series, usually 8 to 10 episodes, where melodrama stretches on without the slightest shame of flirting with kitsch. We Were Liars is one of those cases—except that if you don’t already know the bestselling book that inspired it, you may be surprised by the twist that only comes in the final episode. Whether you’ll have the patience to make it that far, though, is another matter.

Based on the best-selling novel by E. Lockhart and adapted for television by teen-drama veterans Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries) and Carina Adly Mackenzie (Roswell), We Were Liars arrives on Prime Video as a tragedy framed by idyllic landscapes, fragmented memories, and the wreckage of a lineage marked by selfishness, racism, and resentment. Like the book, the series centers around Cadence Sinclair Eastman and her crew, known as “The Liars”—an inseparable quartet of teenagers raised in the shadow of old money and strict social norms. What starts as a chronicle of glamorous summer holidays on a private New England island soon becomes a blend of Big Little Lies and The Sixth Sense, with both symbolic and literal corpses scattered along the way. It also carries a somewhat Kennedy-esque air, since it’s about a traditional, wealthy American clan who spend their summers on their private island near Martha’s Vineyard (where the Kennedys own property).

The show opens with Cadence‘s unconscious body washing ashore, immediately sounding a narrative alarm: nothing we see will be reliable. The young heiress, granddaughter of patriarch Harris Sinclair (portrayed with ritualistic coldness by David Morse), returns to the island months after a mysterious accident that wiped her memory and left both physical and emotional scars. What happened that summer? Why won’t anyone—her mother, her aunts, or the cousins she grew up with—tell her the truth?

The answer, of course, is devastating. But the adaptation’s strength lies not only in preserving the book’s famous final twist (yes, the Liars have been dead the whole time) but also in expanding on the original’s latent themes with darker psychological and social layers. The series takes on the form of an atmospheric thriller divided into two timelines: the “before” of the fire and the “after,” in which Cadence speaks with ghosts without realizing they are, in fact, ghosts.

The Sinclair family is presented as a relic of American aristocracy: rich, white, aesthetically perfect—and morally bankrupt. Grandfather Harris is the emblematic figure of this crumbling empire. Cadence, by confronting him, exposes the veiled racism behind his decisions, especially regarding her relationship with Gat (Shubham Maheshwari) and her aunt Carrie’s relationship with Ed, a man of Indian descent. The series expands this racial tension—only hinted at in the book—and places it at the core of the generational conflict: Cadence reads Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, while Harris trots out the classic liberal excuse that he “would’ve voted for Obama a third term, if he could.”

But the poison isn’t only at the top of the Sinclair pyramid. The three sisters—Penny, Carrie, and Bess—reveal emotional bankruptcies that manifest in their children. The show dives into broken marriages, betrayals, hidden abuses, and the passive-aggressive competition for attention and inheritance. Carrie is the mother of perfectionist Johnny, whose suffering is given new depth as a closeted gay teen trapped in cycles of shame and bullying. Bess is caught in an extramarital affair, while her husband drains her trust fund without remorse. Penny, Cadence’s mother, emerges as the quiet keeper of silence—the one who benefits most from her daughter’s amnesia.

The teenagers, the Liars, inherit not just wealth but a rotten emotional structure. The idea to set fire to the family’s estate—the Clairmont mansion—comes as a symbolic act: a desperate attempt to destroy the nucleus of generational pain. “What if we made a mess so big only a Sinclair could clean it up?” Cadence asks before suggesting the plan. The metaphor, however, spins out of control. The fire doesn’t just consume the past—it consumes the arsonists themselves. The twist, faithful to the book, reveals that Cadence survived the blaze while the others died trying to rescue the dogs—and each other. A cruel irony, considering she hesitated to save her grandmother’s pearl necklace. Once again, materialism triumphs over morality.

The final episode intensifies the tragedy: Cadence throws the pearls into the sea and tells a Time magazine reporter that she “no longer believes in fairy tales,” rejecting her role as a Sinclair heiress. But the series doesn’t end there. In a final scene that doesn’t exist in the book, Carrie encounters Johnny’s ghost in her home, hinting that the Sinclairs’ collective trauma is far from over—and possibly paving the way for a second season based on Family of Liars, the 2022 prequel by Lockhart. Maybe?

Thus, We Were Liars reveals itself to be more than a teen drama with a twist. It’s a study in guilt, privilege, and the (individual and systemic) lies that uphold seemingly perfect families. The direction relies on visual contrasts—the vibrant island sun against Cadence’s internal nightmares—and the young cast, led by Emily Alyn Lind (the only decent part of the Gossip Girl reboot), balances youthful charm with tragic weight. But perhaps what’s most striking is how the series questions the very notion of legacy: the idea that to inherit something is to inevitably continue reproducing the same cycle. Cadence, in the end, chooses to break that cycle. But the question that lingers—like the mist over Beechwood Island—is: what about those who remain? Has the fire burned out, or merely changed form?

That is the true dilemma of We Were Liars: no one comes out unscathed when the past is built on ashes of lies—lies as convenient as they are deadly.