Abandoned by Booklikes

Pretty Little Liars follows four girls who used to be best friends until their de facto leader disappeared the summer before they started 8th grade.

Spencer Hastings, Hanna Marin, Aria Montgomery, and Emily Fields were all best friends before Alison DiLaurentis (known as Ali) disappeared one summer evening. All of the girls had secrets that only Ali knew and though they were sad at her disappearance, all of them felt relieved since she knew some things about all of them that they would never want anyone to know. Fast forward a few years and it is now junior year for these girls at their private school in Pennsylvania. All of the girls have drifted apart from one another and have various upheavals going on in their lives at the moment. All of them start receiving mysterious text messages from a person called "A" who reveals their past mistakes and seems to have knowledge of things in the present that they would not like anyone to know.

I thought that the writing was very good and the story moved fast. Each chapter alternates between either Spencer, Hanna, Aria, or Emily. Ms. Shepard has each chapter labeled with their names but honestly each girl's voice is do distinct that you will not have any trouble telling the narrators apart. Out of the four girls I have to say that I liked Spencer the most followed by Emily. Hanna I felt really sympathetic for and Aria got on my last nerves throughout the entire book.

At times certain things in the book (such as everyone being totally ok with these teens drinking and no one ever carding them) caused me to be taken out of the book. This novel touches upon so many different threads (bullying, bulimia, perfectionism, etc) but manages to keep all of these threads from being tangled up with one another so I was able to read the book and enjoy it.

I can say I am not a really big fan of books that end on cliffhangers but I realize that this is a series and for you to find out who "A" is and all of the other secrets the Liars have not divulged yet you will have to continue to read the series. I honestly don't have time for that right now with all of my other books I must get through, but I probably will circle back to this series in a few years just so I can finally figure out who "A" is and what in the world was the Jenna thing that the Liars kept talking about but not providing any details in the book to the reader.