We Were Liars' writer credits social media for fame

E Lockhart grateful for creative TikTokkers

It is the stuff of every writer's fantasies: wow the world with a bestseller and then watch it played out on screen as a beloved TV series.

It was certainly the dream cherished by We Were Liars author E Lockhart, who penned the 2014 bestselling YA novel about the wealthy Sinclair family in their extravagant home on a private island. And now with her novel having found new life as an eight-episode Prime video series of the same name (thanks, in part, to a revival by Tiktok), Lockhart reminisces to The Hollywood Reporter about how her book may have never have taken off the way it has without the intervention of social media.

"We Were Liars was my best-selling book when it first came out, and then, as it always happens, it was no longer a best-seller, and I went on to write other novels," recalls the novelist. "And then in 2020, when we were all living through the pandemic, Tiktok creators started making a new kind of book recommendation video that was very exciting and very creative."

The We Were Liars adaptation, which Lockhart reveals had been in development ever since the book came out, follows a non-linear structure in which an amnesiac Cadence is trying to piece together a tragedy that has occurred. Ugly secrets and well-knitted lies to bubble to the surface before exploding into a delicious twist that continues to enthral viewers and readers alike. The show stars Emily Alyn Lind, Esther McGregor, Shubham Maheshwari and Joseph Zada.

With quirky reviews from content creators reeling viewers into the world she had created, Lockhart elaborated how new readers discovered her book. "Instead of simply saying, 'Hey, here's a book I like. Maybe you would like it too and here's why,' they were making aesthetic videos that brought readers into the world of this privately owned island off the coast of Massachusetts with pictures of kids jumping off cliffs to go swimming and bonfires on the beach and summer love and all of that."

Such recommendations proved to be the springboard that started conversations. "The other kind of videos they made were very vulnerable videos of themselves reading the ending to the novel and responding to it," said Lockhart. "And sometimes they were throwing the book across the room. Sometimes they were weeping copiously, and snot was dripping out of their nose and mascaras running on their face. And so people were either exercising their creative [outlet] or sharing their vulnerability."

Lockhart credits such committed reviewers for bringing We Were Liars into the limelight again. "I felt very lucky that my book was one of several that got that kind of attention," she admits.