Book Review: Pretty Little Liars

 Greetings! So, last month I decided that I was going to re-read and re-watch some of my favorite movies/books/shows from a few years ago [to see how they held up], and I decided to start with Pretty Little Liars. 

 I read them a few years ago [I think may have technically been my introduction to YA? Before that, I only remember reading middle-grade novels] and I remember really liking them. There's sixteen books in this series, but I only read the first eight. There's also a show based on the books, but I've never watched that either. I initially intended just to review the first book, but this sort of turned into a series review.

Oh, and before we start, spoiler warning. I spoil a lot for the eight books I read.

Author: Sara Shepard

Genres: YA, drama, mystery, thriller

Summary: Set in the suburbs of Philadelphia, this book follows the lives of four teenage girls-----Hanna, Emily, Spencer and Aria. The girls used to be friends in middle school, until the disappearance of Alison DiLaurentis, the leader of their clique. Now, several years later, the girls are getting mysterious text messages from someone who knows their deepest, darkest secrets.

What I Liked:

-I really liked the mystery in this series. If you read it, you'll end up really wanting to know who A [the person sending creepy texts] is, and I feel like both of the reveals were interesting.

-Also, the suspense.

Sara Shepard does a really good job of making a creepy, spooky atmosphere, as well as writing storylines that made you wonder, ''What's gonna happen?''

-These books are also pretty easy to read. Not sure if that's a plus or not, but reading them was just.....kind of fun?

-I also liked some of the characters at various points throughout the story. I didn't hate any of the main characters, but I didn't love them either.

What I Disliked:

-The content.

Content doesn't usually bother me, but here it really did. I think it was more about the way it was written, if that makes sense.

For example:
-Aria has a fling with her teacher. Granted, he didn't know how young she was at first, but he should've acted like a semi-responsible adult [and just a decent human being, in general], once he found out, and broken up with her once he found out how young she was. He didn't.

-And then there was the fact that Spencer almost always got crushes on her sisters' boyfriends, which just made her seem like a really horrible person.

-Hanna being caught shoplifting, and her mom having sex with a police officer to get her out of trouble [seriously?]. 

-If I'm remembering correctly, Aria's mom boyfriend hit on her, which is really weird and gross and....ugh. 

-Pretty much everybody in these books was just a horrible person. I can like and appreciate anti-heroes, but everyone was way more anti than hero. Here are just a few examples of how horrible the characters could be:

-Spencer's parents basically ignoring her unless she did something truly extraordinary. They also treated her sister way better than they treated her, and they're never really called out for it.

-Ezra dating his student. 

-Hanna's mom making excuses for Hanna's shoplifting, and the previously mentioned having sex with a cop thing. 

-Wren cheating on his girlfriend with her 16-year-old sister.

-Emily's parents are super racist and homophobic, and, again, are never really called out for it.

-Aria's dad continuously cheating on his wife and asking Aria to keep it a secret.

There's a lot more, but that's what I can think of off the top of my head. 

-Also, everything is so ridiculously over-the-top. For example, you cannot convince me that a group of sixth-graders would come up with a game called ''Olympian Sex Goddesses'' and have competitions about who can kiss the most boys. The stuff they do as sixteen-year-olds is pretty unrealistic, too, just not quite as much.

-This is a smaller thing but I cannot stand how Sara Shepard uses brand names on almost every page. You can just say someone's wearing jeans and a blue shirt. You don't have to name brands. 

-So many of the little metaphors really only apply to rich people so it made it less enjoyable for me to read. 

Characters:

Spencer

Ah, Spencer. She's the brainy one, and one of those kids who is a members of about a million clubs and does things only because it looks good on her college applications. She has a fling with her sister's boyfriend, steals one of her essays so she could get a better grade, and briefly suspects that she killed Alison. I really, really hated her in the first book [mostly due to her fling with Wren], but I ended up liking her a little better in the later books. She, Hanna and Aria kind of act the same, though, which annoyed me. They all have similar flaws. I would keep Spencer's perfectionist traits, and her judgemental, uptight  I-know-best flaws and just cut out the petty mean girl-ness and the cheating plotline. It made her really unlikable. Also, she seemed kind of obsessed with her sister, and that was super weird.

Hanna

Hanna becomes the new 'It Girl' after Ali's disappearance. She struggles with bulimia and insecurity. 

She was my least favorite of the girls because she was just so self-absorbed and everything she did was so that she could stay popular. I think I could have loved her if they'd taken her eating disorder more seriously and had her learn and grow as a person [eventually stopping shoplifting and learning to value social status less], but she didn't, so she was just annoying, and I think I had the most ''Really?'' moments with her.

Aria

I really wanted to like Aria. She's the 'quirky, artsy one' of the group, and I should have liked her [she has pink streaks in her hair, she smells the grass, she talks to her pig puppet, but she ended up just being kind of annoying. Her main problems are being attracted to her teacher and keeping the fact that her dad was cheating on her mom a secret. I didn't mind her being kind of stuck-up, but, like with Spencer, I wish they'd cut out her mean girl-ness, because I hated that. She also made a lot of really horrible decisions [although, to be fair, they all did].

Also, she was missing that spark that would've made her truly unique and a fun character. I think did grow a little bit as a character, throughout the series, which I did appreciate.

Emily

Emily was my favorite of the main characters. She's not my new favorite character of all time, but I felt less like screaming at her than I did with the other girls. She's a closeted bisexual who blamed Ali's disappearance on herself and to make up for it, she tried to be the perfect daughter, which included participating in swimming, which she doesn't really like and dating a boy she's not attracted to. She wasn't perfect and she made plenty of bad decisions herself, but she was, by far, the nicest of the girls. Also, her struggles felt a little more relatable. I can't think of anything off the bat that I'd change about her story.

Alison

Alison was fine. I mean, she was a major jerk and a horrible friend, but that fit really well with her character, so I don't have any complaints here. 

So, Pretty Little Liars is not quite as good as I remember it being, but that's okay. Tastes change over time, and I think I'm more critical of things than I was back then, which is a good thing. 

Not everything was bad about these books! Like I said the suspense and mystery was very good, and the characters all had their good moments. 

My Rating: 2 1/2 stars

So, let's chat. Have you read Pretty Little Liars? What did you think of it [hopefully you liked it better than I did]? Did you watch the show? Should I watch the show?