Pretty Little Liars
Ratings132
Average rating3.4
4.5 stars
This was REALLY good. I really liked it. I didn't expect it to be so nice!! :D
edit 7/12/2015
nothing to add. Still feeling the same.
I read the re-released version as it was the only option at my library and it was very off-putting. Some of the references were updated to “appeal to modern audiences” but in all honesty they still seem out of touch with teenagers today. Overall it was a quick read, not too deep or complicated. Great if you need a book to read while on vacation but nothing that will really suck you in.
Cliched characters. Nevertheless an engaging read throughout
Now, I need to read the next part - to get the closure. It seems!
pll was high school Tori's favourite show and reading this brought back so much of the nostalgia and fun that the tv series held for me. although there are definite differences I think they still hold up well as an entity and in their own separate media and I enjoyed this a lot so perhaps I'll continue reading the series
I was actually shocked by how much I liked this. To start with, let me sum up what my usual taste is. I grew tired of YA books before high school so I haven't read any for many years. I was prepared for an immature, underdeveloped and bland plot BUT I was wrong, delightfully so.
The books starts with a chapter that takes place around three years before the current setting and it wasn't promising. But it builds and adds to surprisingly deep characters with huge issues.
Hanna, one of the four girls, is a teenager struggling with parental abandonment, self esteem issues and she's running into a lot of trouble with the law. Not to mention, her relapsing back into bulimia if she had ever been in a true remission of the eating disorder.
Spencer, perhaps the girl with the least chapters or mentions in the book. Many in the reviews have found her unsympathetic based on their perception of her sister. She's competitive, saddled with parents whose love is obviously conditional and who would leave her all alone in emotional shock because they're angry with her . Spencer is a brat almost constantly- the most paranoid about her grades and about this “A” person. But we see Spencer's been pitted (although it is not known if it was intentional or if either sister realizes it, or wants to call a cease-fire to their war) against her older sister her entire life. With this information, you can piece together pretty quickly that Spencer's attraction to her sister's boyfriends might be a further escalation of this conflict, made by the warped mind of a screwed-up teenager . It's unforgivable but Spencer is still sympathetic after cheating with her sister's fiancee, going into emotional shock but being left alone by her parents in her yard .
Aria has the second most chapters in the book, I would say. She's a weird character and not what I expected. She's not a punk princess but an entitled girl.
Emily is the most sympathetic and has the most chapters. She's at least bisexual though it may be strictly lesbian (I couldn't tell from the text) and a young athlete. Befriending the new girl sends her on a wild ride with huge consequences.
A lot smarter than I remembered. Lots of great intellectual references that were beyond my sixth grade mind's understanding but I certainly appreciated them now.
I don't really know how I feel about this book. It felt really weird, and I kept comparing it to the TV Show which it's very different from. However, since the show is about to end I figured why not try out the books it's very loosely based on and doesn't actually end up following at all?
I could see these being easy, guilty pleasure reads for me. Er... maybe, is 16 books really easy? We'll see.
As far as content? Hello marketing and product placement. I'm pretty sure every page contained like 5 brand names. Which was kind of annoying, as well as making it feel extremely dated. Half of the brands mentioned aren't even popular anymore.
Anyways, at the end of the day I love the show and I'm willing to give the books more of a chance than just the first one. I own 7 of the books so my goal is to read all 16 by the end of the year. We'll see how that goes though.
Not the best book, read pretty quickly, felt super dated. As much as I hate to say it, so far the book is not better.
《I'm still here, bitches. And I know everything. — A 》
As I watched the first seasons of the TV series I already know what's going on and what's going to happen, but nonetheless I've never lost the interest in the story throughout the whole book and I kept up pretty well remembering everything back again.
The book gives me a kind of “lighter” feel (because of the writing style, I suppose? It obviously can't be because of the plot, duh.), so I can say it's been a fast and lovely read (it actually took me a short time to read it, even if I went through a sort of reading slump that stopped me for 5 days :/).
I'll be trying to go on straight away with the series (I hope so lol)!
It pisses me off that all of Sara Shepard's books end in the middle. 4* for loving the book, 2* for hating this stupid game of having to hunt down the next book because the first one ended before it was over.
I could not finish this book... it was too full of immoral and disgusting behavior. But Duh... I should have known based on the title. It's marketed to young girls and I really would be nervous about any young girls I know reading this trash.
The writing is very fluid and it was easy to read about all the teenagers and their very different personalities. Sadly, Alisson aka bitch from hell is a bit too stereotypical, and I found out there are 15 volumes for the series, so it had to be absolutely fenomenal for me to go on.
This is one of those series that I've thought about reading often, but something else grabs my attention and it gets put on the back burner. I finally decided to start these and try to get through the whole series before the end of the year. Maybe a little too ambitious...
It definitely grabs you right away. Secrets and lies and mystery. It reminded me a bit of Gossip Girl. The spoiled kids, the mysterious person who seems to know everything they shouldn't. There's absolutely no way you can read this book and be done with it. There's even more questions at the end of Pretty Little Liars than there were at the beginning, but for once it's doesn't bug me it just makes me want to start on Flawless right away!
Not sure how many stars to give this, since 2 is “it was ok” and 3 is “I liked it.” I didn't LIKE it, but I did immediately read the sequel, so that's something??
It's VERY fast-paced and compelling. Also it doesn't really have a real ending–which is why I was compelled to immediately read the next one, just for closure if nothing else.
I haven't seen the show at all to compare, so IDK?
I saw the first episode and was curious about the book. I really enjoyed the book. The plot was interesting.