Prime Video’s New Psychological Thriller Series Crushes Nicole Kidman’s ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ on Rotten Tomatoes

Although its main characters may be able to fib their way around a beach town, there’s no way for We Were Liars to trick its way out of a Rotten Tomatoes score. And for this, it seems like critics are pretty split down the middle, as the debut series of the Prime Video series has landed a 75% critics’ approval rating on the online platform. Book adaptations are a tricky thing to get right — just ask the cast and crew of the Nicole Kidman-led Hulu series, Nine Perfect Strangers, which came in quite a way behind We Were Liars with a 52% critics’ approval rating. But there’s still some wiggle room for the new title to improve its score or possibly lower it, as it just arrived on the streamer one day ago.

Pulling its story from the novel of the same name by E. Lockhart, We Were Liars centers around a group of friends and family members who summer on the private island owned by the wealthy and seemingly perfect Sinclair family. The New England getaway has everything its visitors could want, but a shocking event turns the once-friendly and loving relationships on their heads and leads to nothing but suspicion, uncertainty, and a summer spent unraveling the twisted web of deceit to uncover the truth.

At the center of the psychological thriller is Emily Alyn Lind (Doctor Sleep), with a supporting cast made up of names including Rahul Kohli (The Fall of the House of Usher), Shubham Maheshwari (Haven Dust), Esther McGregor (Bleeding Love), Joseph Zada (Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping), Candice King (The Vampire Diaries), Mamie Gummer (The Good Wife), Caitlin FitzGerald (Masters of Sex), and David Morse (The Green Mile). The project hails from the immensely talented team of Julie Plec and Carina Adly Mackenzie. The former is perhaps best known as the co-creator behind The Vampire Diaries as well as its spin-offs The Originals and Legacies, while the latter is credited with creating the gone-too-soon CW series, Roswell, New Mexico.

What Critics Are Saying About ‘We Were Liars’

As mentioned, for the most part, critics are pretty split about how they view Prime Video’s latest teen drama. Collider’s Isabella Soares gave the title a glowing review, approving it with 8 out of 10 stars and hailing it as “Prime Video’s best teen drama since The Summer I Turned Pretty.” Soares went on to praise the performances of the stacked ensemble, writing,

“What allows for We Were Liars to break through the mold is its emphasis on multiple generations… Balancing the teenagers’ storyline with that of the adults adds to this Prime Video drama (and the novel it’s based on), making it more dense than previous YA hits like Gossip Girl and The O.C., whose adult characters rarely received the same level of narrative attention as the younger generation.”

We Were Liars is now streaming on Prime Video.