Review: Killer

Title: Killer
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: Harper Teen
Pages: 321
Series: Pretty Little Liars #6
Rating: 4 stars
**WARNING: Contains spoilers from books 1-5.**


I'm not even going to bother posting the jacket cover description because it is so ridiculous and not related to the plot of the novel. It includes the line "Spencer is stealing - from her family." She's not. The other lines about what the characters are up to are equally irrelevant, and the rest of it is just background (Ali's dead, the girls are being stalked. We've known this since book one).

That said, these books just keep getting more and more mysterious. And I love the cover for this one. The purple is great. I think it's my favorite cover in the series, at least so far, and I've seen the other two, so I'm pretty sure this one is my favorite.

Anyway, though, the story. It is so difficult to define a specific plot for any one of these novels - they're like one big extended plot, which is probably why each one makes me want the next one ASAP. Hanna still annoys the heck out of me and Aria is still my favorite; the whole story with Spencer in this one seems kind of out of character but totally understandable, and I feel so much sympathy for Emily, especially with the whole Isaac thing set up in the previous book. Hanna excepted, I love the characters, and I love the way Sara Shepard develops mysteries.

The major thing that's going on in Killer is that the girls are tracking down who killed Ali. I won't say who (spoilers are horrid), but at the end of this one, it seems like they pretty much know who did it...I can't wait to find out where it goes in the next one.

So overall, great plot, good characters, and I've already put Heartless on hold at the library!

Links: 
Pretty Little Liars website

Review: Wicked

Title: Wicked
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: HarperTeen
Pages: 310
Series: Pretty Little Liars #5
Rating: 4 stars
**Warning: Spoilers for earlier books in the series.**
From the book jacket: 
In idyllic Rosewood, Pennsylvania, where Burberry earmuffs keep diamond-studded ears warm, four very pretty girls have done some very wicked things...

High school juniors Hanna, Spencer, Emily, and Aria have paid dearly for their sins. A stalker named "A" terrorized them for months and revealed their darkest secrets. But now that A's true identity has been revealed, the girls can finally go back to their pretty little lives.

Only, once a pretty little liar, always a pretty little liar - and these girls just can't help but be bad. Hanna will do anything to be Rosewood's queen bee. Spencer's digging up her family's secrets. Emily can't stop thinking about her new boyfriend. And Aria approves a little too strongly of her mom's taste in men.

As the secrets get darker and the scandals juicier, the consequences turn deadly. After all, girls who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. And in Rosewood, someone is always watching...

**********

I am enjoying these books, but I must confess, the book jacket descriptions are really annoying. I think the characters are all relatable to some degree (some more than others), but the jacket copies make the books sound like they're about a bunch of super-popular witchy gossip-queen girls who are all about doing every awful thing they can think of. (Only one of them is like that, and even then not the "do every bad thing she can think of" part. I mean, Hanna is my least favorite character, but she's not evil.)

However, jacket flap aside, I enjoyed Wicked. It went by too quickly! One thing about these books is that the plotlines all run right into each other and it's sometimes hard to pick out the one definite story arc that defines each novel as independent of the others. Or maybe it's just that there's so much going on! At any rate, I definitely want to read Killer ASAP.

Sara Shepard really does an excellent job of establishing mysteries that leave you wanting to know more, and she doesn't give us too many clues. All too often I figure out the plots of stories way before the characters do, and I love that with this series, I haven't. Okay, so the jacket flap pretty much gave away what each of the girls are going to be up to in the novel (even if the issue in question doesn't come up until halfway through the book), but I still don't know who New A is or who killed Ali or anything like that. I haven't solved the big mysteries yet.

I feel like I'm rambling a bit. This is probably the least coherent review I've posted to date (I blame the fact that I've been really busy and consequently sleep-deprived, although it's probably just that I'm in a rambly mood today). But to sum up my review of Wicked in just a couple of sentences: Definitely an excellent continuation of the series, but I'm starting to think that I'd enjoy these books a lot more if I just gave up on reading the covers.

Links: 
Pretty Little Liars website

Review: Unbelievable

Title: Unbelievable
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: Harper Teen
Pages: 335
Series: Pretty Little Liars #4
Rating: 4 stars
**WARNING: Spoilers for Books 1-3**
From the book jacket: 
Behind Rosewood's grand facades, where the air smells like apples and Chanel No. 5 and infinity pools sparkle in landscaped backyards, nothing is as it seems. It was here, back in seventh grade, that five best friends shared everything - Seven jeans, MAC makeup, and their deepest, darkest secrets. For Aria, Spencer, Hanna, and Emily, it was a dream come true...until Alison, the most beautiful of them all, suddenly vanished.

Now someone named A has turned their charmed lives into a living nightmare. Emily has been shipped off to her hyper-conservative cousins in Iowa. Aria is stuck living with her dad and his home-wrecker girlfriend. And Spencer fears she had something to do with Alison's murder. But Hanna's fate is far worse than all of that - she's clinging to life in the hospital, because she knew too much.

With A's threats turning dangerous and Ali's killer still on the loose, the girls must uncover the truth - about A, about Ali, and about what happened to Hanna - before they become A's next victims. But as they unravel Rosewood's mysteries and secrets, will it bring an end to the horror...or is this just the beginning?

---------------

I was really excited to start this one after the end of Perfect - I wanted to know what had happened to Hanna. At first I was a little disappointed: it felt like it took ages for the plot to get moving, because it was split between four different points of view and so there were little cliffhangers all the time and it was just very spread out. BUT! It did get moving, and the mystery of A comes to a big climax in Unbelievable.

Sara Shepard really does do a great job with the mystery. I did figure out the big secret she was throwing at us a few pages before it was officially revealed, but for most of the novel I genuinely had no idea who the culprit was. She managed to resolve a lot of issues (which is good) and still leave enough there to make me want Wicked ASAP.

The issues are changing, too, which is good. The characters are still their same old selves (for the record, Hanna is still my least favorite, but I love the other three) and they're still dealing with their issues, but it's changing. Their secrets are out, so they're facing a whole new set of hurdles. Plus, the mystery of "the Rosewood Stalker" is escalating and they're dealing with that. There was still more preppy-popular-fashion-stuff than I liked because I don't relate to that well, but the story and characters are well-created, so I can overlook the other stuff. I think Unbelievable may have been my favorite book in the series to date.

Also, a random side note: these books are really hard to review once you get past the first one, because the plot is so wrapped up in the mystery that it's difficult to find something to say that's not some kind of spoiler, and I hate spoilers. But I shall keep trying, because I'm really enjoying these books. :)

Links: 
Pretty Little Liars website

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.

----------

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

Review: Flawless

Title: Flawless
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: Harper Teen
Pages: 330
Series: Pretty Little Liars #2
Rating: 4 stars
**Warning: Contains spoilers for Book 1 (none for this one, though)**
From the book jacket: 
In the exclusive town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania, where the sweetest smiles hide the darkest secrets, four pretty little liars - Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna - have been very bad girls...

Spencer stole her sister's boyfriend. Aria is brokenhearted over her English teacher. Emily likes her new friend Maya...as much more than a friend. And Hanna's obsession with looking flawless is literally making her sick. But the most horrible secret of all is something so scandalous it could destroy their perfect little lives.

And someone named "A" is threatening to do just that.

At first they thought A was Alison, their friend who vanished three years ago...but then Alison turned up dead. So could A be Melissa, Spencer's ultracompetitive sister? Or Maya, who wants Emily all to herself? What about Toby, the mysterious guy who left town right after Alison went missing?

One thing's for certain: A's got the dirt to bury them all alive, and with every crumpled note, wicked IM, and vindictive text message A sends, the girls get a little closer to losing it all.

----------

Normally, I get kind of annoyed by books that are super-girly and full of brand-name-loving rich kids, but Pretty Little Liars is an exception to that. The references to everything that makes Hanna (and, at one time, Ali) so popular and all the brand names are the hardest parts to get through, but there's a complex plot that more than makes up for it.

At the end of book one (yes, I warned you there'd be spoilers for that one), Alison turns up dead. Since she's dead, she obviously can't be the one sending Hanna, Spencer, Aria, and Emily all sorts of mysterious and threatening text messages and emails - so who is? And then, of course, there's Toby. Toby knows the girls' darkest secret: he knows about "The Jenna Thing," an incident they've kept secret for four years that could very well come back to haunt them. He's been at a reform school in Maine since then, but now he's back, and he's showing up everywhere.

On top of that, there are all the other events from the girls' lives. Aria's issues with her family - and her English teacher; Spencer's problems with her sister and her boyfriend; Emily dealing with her sexuality; Hanna's daddy issues. There are so many different things going on in this book. As far as the characters go, Aria's probably my favorite and the one I find the most relatable, but they're all very engaging and real.

My two major complaints about Flawless were that the drama seemed kind of overdone in places and that (some of) the characters are so focused on brand names and popularity. That said, the drama, the plot, and the characters do make you want to keep reading and find out more about who these people are, what their secrets could be, and who's behind it all. I will definitely be looking for book three as soon as I can!

Links: 
Pretty Little Liars website

Review: Before I Fall

*This review was originally written before the creation of Bookworm Boulevard. It has been reformatted and reposted here for archiving purposes.

Title: Before I Fall

Author: Lauren Oliver

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 470

Rating: 5 stars

Description from Goodreads:

What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all - looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12th should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it's her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. In fact, she relives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she ever imagined.

Oh my goodness. Where to begin? Before I Fall is amazing. So, I have to confess, for the first few chapters of the book, I didn't like it at all. I hated the main characters (except Kent, who the main characters hate), and I expected the constant talk of sex, drugs, alcohol, and obsessive popularity to get really old really fast. I was prepared to hate the book.

I was wrong. Yes, at the beginning of the novel, Samantha ("Sam") Kingston and her friends, Lindsay, Ally, and Elody, are - there's no other word for it - bitchy. They're mean to everyone, they're bullies just because they can be, they can get away with anything and do whatever they want. They talk about sex a lot, and they drink a lot just because they can, and they smoke and cut class and all that other stuff that gives teenagers a bad reputation.

But then Sam dies. And after her nightmarish last day, she wakes up again the same morning. She relives her last day seven times over. During this miraculous final week, she changes. Sam starts to understand things about the world around her, and about herself. The question is, will one day be enough to change everything?

By the end of the novel, I didn't hate Sam or her friends at all. I sympathized with Sam, I wanted to just give her a big hug and make things okay, and I will confess that there were a couple of parts near the end that almost made me cry. I sat down and read the entire second half in one afternoon. It was fantastic. Lauren Oliver has some kind of magic with storytelling, to be able to create a character so real and to change the reader's attitude toward her so completely. It is absolutely worth the first couple of chapters (although the prologue may be compelling enough on its own; very well set up) to get to the rest of the story. READ IT. Please. It took me a little longer than I liked to get into it, but once I did, it was absolutely fantastic. Definitely, definitely check this one out.

Links:

Lauren Oliver's website

Lauren Oliver's blog

Review: All Unquiet Things

*This review was originally written before the creation of Bookworm Boulevard; it has been reformatted and reposted here for archiving purposes.

Title: All Unquiet Things
Author: Anna Jarzab
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Pages: 352
Rating: 4 stars
Description from Goodreads:
Carly: She was sweet. Smart. Self-destructive. She knew the secrets of Brighton Day School's most privileged students. Secrets that got her killed.

Neily: Dumped by Carly for a notorious bad boy, Neily didn't answer the phone call Carly made before she died. If he had, maybe he could have helped her. Now he can't get the image of her lifeless body out of his mind.

Audrey: She's the reason Carly got tangled up with Brighton's fast crowd in the first place, and now she regrets it - especially since she's convinced the police have put the wrong person in jail. Audrey thinks the murderer is someone at Brighton, and she wants Neily to help her find out who it is.

As reluctant allies Neily and Audrey dig into their shared past with Carly, her involvement with Brighton's dark goings-on comes to light. But figuring out how Carly and her killer fit into the twisted drama will force Audrey and Neily to face hard truths about themselves and the girl they couldn't save.

I will admit it took me a while to get into All Unquiet Things, but after the first few chapters I was completely hooked. Long story short, it's essentially a murder mystery. A year before the story starts, Carly Ribelli is found dead with four gunshot wounds to the chest. Her uncle, the father of her cousin and best friend, Audrey, was convicted of the murder, but Audrey doesn't believe her dad is guilty. So Audrey enlists the help of Carly's ex-boyfriend, Neily - who was still in love with Carly - to help her figure out who really did it. The story is a mix of murder mystery and high school drama; the focus is on the murder mystery, but the clues are embedded in the high school drama.

The story alternates between Neily and Audrey's perspectives. It's really well-written, maybe a bit slow at times but still very engaging, and the story - oh my goodness. Some of it is a bit hard to believe, but Anna Jarzab makes it believable. And the characters are so real and well-developed and amazing. They each have their own distinctive voices, but the transitions from one narrator to the other are (mostly) very smooth. There is some language and content that might not be appropriate for younger teens, but to anyone who doesn't mind that stuff, I would absolutely recommend this book.

Links:
Anna Jarzab's website

Review: Pretty Little Liars

Title: Pretty Little Liars
Author: Sara Shepard
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 286
Series: Pretty Little Liars #1
Rating: 4 stars
Description from HarperTeen: 
Never trust a pretty girl with an ugly secret.

Gossip thrives among the Mercedes-Benzes, mega-mansions, and perfectly manicured hedges in the exclusive town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania. Behind their big Gucci sunglasses, beneath their perfectly pressed Polos, everyone has something to hide, especially high school juniors Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna. Spencer covets her sister's gorgeous new boyfriend. Aria is having an affair with her English teacher. Emily is infatuated with the new girl at school. And Hanna is using some ugly tricks to stay beautiful. Deeper and darker still is a horrible secret the girls have shared since sixth grade - a secret they thought was safe forever.

Then the girls start receiving threatening messages signed by someone named "A." Could "A" be Alison, the ultra-popular girl who disappeared three years earlier? Alison was their best friend. She knew everything about them. But if Alison isn't "A," who is? And how could anyone else know so much about the bad girls they were and the bad girls they've become? Suddenly, their secrets - the big ones, the little ones, the long-buried ones - no longer seem so safe. Suddenly, nothing is safe in Rosewood.

I have to confess that when I started this book, I was not prepared to enjoy it. I liked the idea of the mystery and the girl who disappeared, but I was afraid there would be too many designer-labels and "popular" girls that I couldn't relate to. I am very pleased to say that I was wrong.

The characters in Pretty Little Liars are incredibly relatable. Aria's the English nerd who's trying to figure out who she is and wants a guy with more to him than just looks. Spencer's always had a lot of pressure on her from her parents to do well in school. Emily's the younger sister who's living in her older siblings' shadow and a little scared of disobeying her parents. Hanna, probably the hardest to relate to for me, is dealing with her step-sister being Daddy's favorite and feeling like her parents don't think she's good enough. Each of the girls have their issues that they're dealing with, and they're also dealing with the unavoidable social changes of high school - changing friend groups, changing interests, romance or the lack thereof. Plus, it's one of those books that really just says "Hey, everybody has issues. People are people, regardless of social status." These characters, obnoxious though they can be at times, are ones that you can't help feeling drawn to.

And the mystery of A and Alison's disappearance is very well done. I've already said I like the characters, but even if I didn't, I think I'd be reading the rest of the series just to figure out who A is and what happened to Alison. There's enough to it so that readers aren't just like, "oh, whatever, sideline mystery," but it doesn't tell you so much that you can figure it out halfway through. The mystery is very well crafted and I am definitely going to pick up Flawless ASAP.

And, okay, Pretty Little Liars also has a fair amount of guilty pleasure appeal. The torrid affairs, the parties, and all the deep, dark, juicy secrets - it's the kind of stuff that you know you shouldn't want to read about, but you can't help wanting more anyway.

I felt like some of it got a bit over-the-top in places; some of the drama could have been toned down a bit and still worked just as well if not better. But on the whole, I really really enjoyed Pretty Little Liars. I read it straight through; put it down for bathroom breaks and family dinner, and not much else. Definitely a fun read for just about any teenage girl.

Oh, and one more thing. The cover. I'm not a huge fan of the yellow background, but the idea of the dolls to represent the girls? Love it. If I started going on about the metaphorical significance of the dolls, we'd be here all afternoon, but I think it works really, really well. So, three cheers for Sara Shepard, and another three cheers for the cover designer.

Links:
Pretty Little Liars website