Pretty Little Liars is a series of eight books: Pretty Little Liars, Flawless, Perfect, Unbelievable, Wicked, Killer, Heartless, Wanted...or at least it was when I finished reading all of them. The ending did leave an open door for future Pretty Little Liars events but I didn't think of checking it out. There were four more Pretty Little Liars books published in 2011 and 2012, I'm going to get them as soon as I finish reading what I'm currently reading (which is Anna Karenina btw) and I'll do another review for the last four books.
Meanwhile, let me tell you about these eight books.
The whole concept of the book is twirling around the disappearance of Alison Dilaurentis, Rosewood's it girl. Not too soon before her disappearance she becomes best friends forever with Hanna Martin - the chubby girl in the newly formed gang, her parents get a divorce and her father remarries a "perfect" housewife that has a daughter which Hanna thinks it's just more beautiful than her , Emily Fields - raised in a strict family she discovers she likes girls when she is crushing on Ali(son), Spencer Hasting - competition is everything to the Hastings so Spencer struggles to live up to their expectations and last but not least Aria Montgomery (which is my favorite character) - raised in a strange family that seems to have it all until her dad has an affair with a student of his.
Alison switched her 2 best friends Naomi and Riley to hang out with Hanna, Emily, Spencer and Aria all of a sudden which shocked the girls and everyone at school a bit but no one really mind since Ali had strange ways. The girls adore Alison and become her worshipers doing everything Ali tells them to. But their happiness just couldn't last for too long so one night Alison disappears and never returns...months after her disappearance her body is found and just when everyone thought they could move on with their life, that's when things get crazy.
The girls start to receive strange threatening messages from A, messages that demand the girls do specific things or keep quiet about what they know and so on. The whole A character makes it clear that he/she is not joking and proves it when it runs over Hanna with a car. The girls become even more close than before and decide to start searching for the truth, who killed Alison and why. The books have so many twists and turns, it's really captivating, the whole idea of Alison being their friend turns 180 degrees when the girl share their stories of how Alison got them to do what she wanted or what she thought was right threatening to reveal their secrets to everybody if not. This A was definitely crazy after knowing all of their secrets, one of the things she kept telling the girls was how "the secrets keep us together". While searching for the truth the girls realize it was only Ali that knew their secrets and they had not idea of Ali's secrets. The whole Ali character goes to pieces when they start doubting Ali's every action, and it gets even crazier when A knows everything about the girls which makes them believe A is Alison.
The thing I adored about the book series was that it had action and even a grim sense of humor, I felt pity for the girls every time they been through some rough stuff but at the same time, that's what made the A character so important. The girls are on the edge of losing everything they ever had, they get arrested, Aria's mom kicks her out of the house and A leaks some private info about her to her current boyfriend so he kicks her out as well, Spencer get nervous breakthroughs and at one point believes she was the one that killed Alison. Emily's parents send her away to some really strict relatives when they discover she is gay but she manages to runaway. And when Hanna's mom is going away to work in another country her dad with his new wife and daughter move in Hanna's home to live with her. With a little help from A, they manage to drive Hanna insane (well, she really wasn't but from the outside that's what you would say) and she is sent to a mental hospital.
The book is really captivating, the characters have very well shaped personalities, friends turn into enemies when you least expect it and the girls bound becomes stronger than ever. The ending of the eight book was...woow... amazing, it was such a big twist I reread the last 4 pages at least three times to make sure I understood what it was written, it was really well thought and it was more than I expected. One things that bothered me at the books was how the chapters flipped from one character to the other. I found it hard to remember everything that Aria went through before I read about Hanna, Spencer and Emily so I had to put an extra effort and I have to admit that's why sometimes I let the book down. I would just try to remember everything that happened in each girl's separate life. And another thing - the last one, would be that the third, fourth and fifth book weren't really that intriguing, but I don't know if I can really blame it on the books or on my desperate need to also check the TV series...so maybe it was me who knew things before they happened and that's why I didn't find them so intriguing, who knows...
But, to end this review, I would really recommend the book if you like twisted, complicated stories. I like to give an opinion from the beginning of the book on what's really going on but this book... I wasn't able to tell, which was surprising.
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