Book Review: Pretty Little Liars

                                                       Pretty Little Liars Review

Pretty Little Liars is about four former friends Spencer, Aria, Emily and Hanna whose friend Allison went missing years before the series began while the five girls were having a sleepover. Allison was someone the girls all admired but also someone who used the secrets that she knew about them in order to control the girls actions by holding them over the girls heads. The four remaining friends drifted apart soon after Allison went missing and became strangers to each other. Spencer spends her time being an overachiever because it's what's expected out of her and because of her need to be better than her sister Melissa who her parents clear love more than her. Aria had spent the few years living in Iceland and found who she truly wants to be someone who is adventurous and artsy. Emily has been working hard on the swim team and overall being the perfect daughter her parents expect her to be. Hanna has transformed herself and has become very pretty and popular along with a former unpopular girl named Mona who is now her best friend.

The girls were fine with living their lives as they have been for the last few years before they started getting messages from a mysterious person how calls themselves A Who not only knows their misdeeds that their currently doing but also knows things about their pasts that only Allison would know. The girls while spooked by the messages spends most the book just living their separate lives and just hoping that the messages will go away. During the book Spencer spends her time getting close with Melissa's boyfriend Wren, Aria starts and stops a relationship with Ezra who is her English teacher several times, Emily starts a journey of self discovery when she starts to fall for her new friend Maya and Hanna spends her time shoplifting and trying to convince her boyfriend who recently to a virginity pledge to have sex with her.

This is book pretty similar to the TV series which really just made me want to start re-watching the series and I find it interesting how this book ends at the same spot that the pilot did. So far I feel like the changes that the TV series made early on were for the better since I liked the characters a lot more from the start there and I liked how first episode had a much tighter timeline for the plot and I know it's because the show only had about 40 minutes to get the audience hooked while the book had as much time as it wanted to have to tell it's story but in this case less was more. Another thing that I didn't like about this book was how Spencer's parents acted like she was the bad guy for Wren and her kissing even though Wren is close to ten years older than Spencer who is a teenager so I feel like her parents should be more worried that she was being taken advantage of rather than acting like she was a home wrecker for ending a relationship that clearly wasn't going to last, I feel like this would have bothered me a little less if I read this when I was younger but it just feels really wrong reading it now.

This book was overall pretty good and it did a good job of establishing who the characters were as individuals before getting them all together at the end of the book and then deciding to put a spotlight on what the main plot of the series was going to be at the end of the book too. Overall while I enjoyed the book I couldn't help but compare it to the TV series which makes it a bit hard to judge it on it's own merits but does show that it's first book was a pretty well adapted for television. Please tell me your thoughts about this book or series as a whole.