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hannahpewee 's review for:
Pretty Little Liars
by Sara Shepard
I love the PLL TV Series - it's a total guilty pleasure that I adore watching. As the show wraps up, I thought I'd delve into the book series. I went into this first book knowing all the spoilers, and that the book series is EXTREMELY different than the show. However, I was willing to set that all aside and approach the book series with an open mind.
What I got was mixed feelings. Let's start off with the positives: the plot is completely captivating. Someone stalking our 4 main girls, knowing their every little dirty secret - it makes for a fun and engaging read. I finished the book in one sitting. The writing is average - nothing stellar, but easy to read, conversational, and straight-forward. However, it does have its problems, as I will discuss below.
However, where the book struggled was largely due to the 4 main girls. In the TV series, Aria, Emily, Hanna, and Spencer are flawed, but likable. They make mistakes, but do their best to be good people and look out for their loved ones. In this first book, I felt this wasn't the case. All of the girls come across as vain and vapid. All of them (except perhaps Emily), have passages in the book where they just sit back and admire their own beauty and wealth. Whether it'd be spending 20 minutes in a photo booth taking sexy photos of themselves (Aria), flashing strangers on the streets (Hanna), or having their sister's boyfriend feel them up, multiple times (Spencer), the girls are all unlikeable. While the mystery of A is intriguing, I didn't feel any connection to how the girls are portrayed here.
In addition, one way the writing style struggles is all the constant name-dropping. Brands are thrown around left and right, I don't think there's a single chapter that doesn't describe someone by their designer jeans or shoes. When setting up a scene, throwing out a designer isn't going help me visualize what the person looks like. Saying a character is wearing "John Fluevog" boots means nothing to the average reader.
Overall, while I continue to adore the show, I'm hesitant to continue further into the series. Since I know almost every spoiler of the book series, I have to admit that the mystery of A is better in the books. Who they are, why they became A -- it's much more satisfying of a reveal than it is in the show. However, having such unlikeable main characters, in addition to spotty writing, makes it hard to want to continue with the book series.
What I got was mixed feelings. Let's start off with the positives: the plot is completely captivating. Someone stalking our 4 main girls, knowing their every little dirty secret - it makes for a fun and engaging read. I finished the book in one sitting. The writing is average - nothing stellar, but easy to read, conversational, and straight-forward. However, it does have its problems, as I will discuss below.
However, where the book struggled was largely due to the 4 main girls. In the TV series, Aria, Emily, Hanna, and Spencer are flawed, but likable. They make mistakes, but do their best to be good people and look out for their loved ones. In this first book, I felt this wasn't the case. All of the girls come across as vain and vapid. All of them (except perhaps Emily), have passages in the book where they just sit back and admire their own beauty and wealth. Whether it'd be spending 20 minutes in a photo booth taking sexy photos of themselves (Aria), flashing strangers on the streets (Hanna), or having their sister's boyfriend feel them up, multiple times (Spencer), the girls are all unlikeable. While the mystery of A is intriguing, I didn't feel any connection to how the girls are portrayed here.
In addition, one way the writing style struggles is all the constant name-dropping. Brands are thrown around left and right, I don't think there's a single chapter that doesn't describe someone by their designer jeans or shoes. When setting up a scene, throwing out a designer isn't going help me visualize what the person looks like. Saying a character is wearing "John Fluevog" boots means nothing to the average reader.
Overall, while I continue to adore the show, I'm hesitant to continue further into the series. Since I know almost every spoiler of the book series, I have to admit that the mystery of A is better in the books. Who they are, why they became A -- it's much more satisfying of a reveal than it is in the show. However, having such unlikeable main characters, in addition to spotty writing, makes it hard to want to continue with the book series.