‘What if the texts were from Ali’s ghost? And spirits from the dead sometimes contacted the living to make amends, right? It was like their final homework assignment before graduating to heaven’ They are bound together by the past and the mysterious A that has been sending them threatening messages about the secrets no one but Alison knew. We all have those friends that we drift apart from but when you reconnect it is like no time has passed, and for these girls, they seem to have found a home in one another. The girls don’t really even interact with one another until the final ten pages of the book and it was charming to see the tension fall away as they took comfort in one another. You get a sense of each character, their complicated histories with Alison and each other, and their deepest secrets that Ali held over their heads.

Shepard did a good job isolating the four former friends throughout this book. Aria, Hanna, Spencer, and Emily are going about their lives, still haunted by the secrets that Ali held over their heads, and embarking on adventures that they would hate for others to find out about. Now it is right before the start of their junior year at Rosewood Day, a prestigious prep school, and the girls that were once inseparable are like strangers to one another. It’s been three years since Ali disappeared from a sleepover with her four best friends. It’s really weird to read a book that you are intimately aware of but never read. If you’ve watched the television series it is important to note that there were adjustments to the timeline and events from the book (as always, got to make it more interesting for tv). ‘Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.’ -Benjamin Franklin. It made the most sense to me to review the arcs of the series in one post, so here is my review for books 1-4 of Pretty Little Liars!

I wanted to do something a little different with my review for Pretty Little Liars. The way the series is written is each arc is really one story (so books 1-4 roughly follow seasons 1 and 2, ending with the first A reveal). Many people told me that the book series was better (which is often the case with adaptation) and completely different. I legit watched closely like an investigator 🔍 and took notes to figure out who A was, but by the end of the series I was spite-watching it just to see how it ended. As you may have noticed, I’ve been reading the Pretty Little Liars series by Sara Shepard for the first time and honestly rather enjoying myself! The television series was something that I loved until it got super convoluted and it was obvious no one had any idea where things were going.

Pretty little liars books in order