Review: Perfect

Title: Perfect

Author: Sara Shepard

Publisher: Harper Teen

Pages: 308

Series: Pretty Little Liars #3

Rating: 4 stars

**Warning: Contains spoilers for books 1-2**

From the book jacket: 

In a town where gossip thrives like the ivy that clings to its mansions, where mysteries lie behind manicured hedges and skeletons hide in every walk-in closet, four perfect-looking girls aren't nearly as perfect as they seem.

Spencer, Aria, Emily, Hanna, and their best friend Alison were once the girls at Rosewood Day School. They clicked through the halls in their Miu Miu flats, tanned in their matching Pucci bikinis, and laughed behind their freshly manicured fingernails. They were the girls everyone loved but secretly hated - especially Alison.

So when Alison mysteriously vanished, Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna's grief was tinged with...relief. And when Alison's body was later discovered in her own backyard, the girls were forced to unearth some ugly memories of their old friend, too. Could there have been more to Alison's death than anyone realizes?

Now someone named A, someone who seems to know everything, is pointing the finger at one of them for Alison's murder. As their secrets get darker and their scandals turn deadly, A is poised to ruin their perfect little lives forever.

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My thoughts about this one in terms of character development and general drama are pretty much the same as they were for the first two. The characters are relatable (although less so in this one, I felt like) and the drama is a little overdone but still definitely engaging. What made Perfect different from Pretty Little Liars and Flawless was the plot.

While "A" is still definitely present, this book is a lot less about the girls freaking out about being stalked and a lot more about finding out a) who killed Ali, b) who the stalker actually is, and c) putting their lives back together as A messes around with everything that matters to them. Hanna has always been the hardest-to-relate-to character for me, and in Perfect I started to really connect with her. As always, some of what goes on is way over the top, but it worked here.

Shepard's tackling a lot of issues - not only murder and stalking, but bulimia, homosexuality, divorce, family problems, cheating (in more ways than one), and being afraid of yourself. She manages to pretty much pull it off, though. I don't want to inadvertently spoil something (this one's got so much mystery that spoilers really suck), but I will say this: the ending of this one definitely makes me want number four ASAP, because I want to know what happens next. The plot of Perfect is probably the most engaging yet, at least in the second half, and I want to know what comes next!

Links:

Pretty Little Liars website