Heartless (Pretty Little Liars #7)

Back in the present all four girls wake up in hospital and straight away begin their usual procedure of wildly flinging about a series of unfounded accusations built on the previous book’s baseless theories. Their target this time is Officer Wilden, who responds by producing the evidence he conveniently brought with him that he wasn’t at the scene of the arson. Since the latest theory is that Wilden is in cahoots with Jason his evidence that he wasn’t personally present shouldn’t make any difference, but it does and they move on immediately.

Everyone other than Emily has decided that the sighting of Alison was a group hallucination, even though they mutually held a full conversation with her. Apparently this is a common side-effect of smoke inhalation, as Shepard is at pains to inform us twice per page. Then various plots dragged out over the last book are suddenly wrapped up in the spaces left between the endless recaps of previous events. Spencer actually bothers to ask if she’s adopted and it turns out that Olivia is in fact her surrogate mother, something which probably should have been mentioned to her before now. She also admits having given away the thousands of dollars meant for her university expenses but is forgiven because her parents are shockingly rich and therefore it doesn’t really matter. Hanna is delighted to be dating Mike, whose extreme vile misogyny she excuses as a “raunchy sense of humor”, but this is interrupted when the school psychologist decides without meeting her that she has PTSD and her father tells her he is sending her to a mental institution. Although she has been having really badly-written visions for a while now, so perhaps it’s for the best. Aria’s father is also behaving a little oddly, persuading Aria that what they saw in the woods was Alison’s Vengeful Shade seeking justice. Finally, Emily is given an Amish costume and alias by ‘A’#2 and told to take a bus to a random location to meet a stranger, all without telling anyone where she’s going. Naturally, she does so unquestioningly.

Spencer’s mother is added to the list of ‘suspicious people’, as usual for no reason whatsoever, and we are once more reminded of previous not actually suspicious suspects Jenna and Maya. Everyone misses as much school as their parents choose without ramifications, which I suppose it the privilege of those who are buying their children’s education. The press have somehow managed to work out the name of the series in which they are characters, and started calling the four girls collectively the Pretty Little Liars. Aria goes to a séance held at one of those ridiculous Magic Shops that always crop up in shows like Buffy and Charmed, full of lazily stereotypical goth items like patchouli incense, clove cigarettes, purple candles and skull-shaped trinkets. They also sell coffins, which as we all know are what goths sleep in. Here she meets Noel Kahn, who is apparently such a tired cliché he has actually managed to get into mysticism/witchcraft/Satanism (he clearly has no idea of the difference) by listening to Led Zeppelin records. Even Shepard thinks this is a bit ridiculous, but can only compound the unoriginality by later suddenly giving him a tragic dead brother to explain his interest in the occult. At any rate, he and Aria meet the world’s most over-the-top becaped medium, learn nowt and go home. Meanwhile Emily makes sure she is totally untraceable and then heads to the middle of nowhere, just like her mystery blackmailer demanded, and seconds later she is welcomed into the bosom of an Amish family who don’t know her. Then Suggestible Spencer suddenly remembers some details about her mother’s behaviour on the night of Alison’s death, but none of them are of any use.

Hanna is enjoying herself at the mental institute, where they hand out Valium on request without bothering to assess her as a patient or even speak to her. There is a brief moment of panic when she has to sit next to “losers” and genuinely worries that uncoolness has somehow diffused through the air from them into her pores, but then a rich Alison lookalike with “Chanel-black” nail polish (not sure how that’s different from traditional “black” black), turns up and save hers. Back at home her charming boyfriend Mike is busy telling his father’s girlfriend “that her boobs had really grown since she’d gotten knocked up”, which is totally acceptable interfamilial talk.

Emily’s Amish adventures continue, clearly researched entirely via TV reality shows and (the text itself admits) Wikipedia, which explains why all the Amish characters talk and act in exactly the same manner as the non-Amish characters even though they’re supposedly from a very strict community. It turns out Emily’s new Amish friend Lucy had a sister Leah who went missing, just like Alison, which is obviously very interesting and hopefully means that there’s a local serial killer preying on teenage girls who will soon eliminate the rest of the cast. This leads Emily to reflect that “In a parallel, Amish universe, she and Lucy would probably be good friends.”, although in fairness they could just as well be friends in this universe. I can only conclude that Emily could only be friends with Lucy in a reality where not one single non-Amish person was around to witness her associating with someone wearing an outfit completely bereft of brands, no part of which has ever featured in Teen Vogue!. However there are witnesses, and so their brief but touching nearly-friendship cannot be.

All the characters continue to periodically discover secret photographs, overhear mysterious whispers or suddenly remember new facts. The majority of these are either obvious red herrings or not actually relevant in anyway. Spencer continues to have a dully perfect boyfriend who buys her jumpers, which apparently constitutes a storyline. Hanna continues to bully people who tried to befriend her when she was alone, in yet more spectacularly infantile ways. Aria and Noel, who she has now decided might as well be her boyfriend since he has spoken to her more than twice, decide to hire a another medium since the last séance was so useful. Everyone continues pissing money up the wall with a causal insouciance which is extremely aggravating to all normal, right-thinking people.

Spencer’s snooping reveals some incriminating e-mails from 3½ years ago (although surely by now it’s nearer to 4 years ago? Why does time not pass in Rosewood?)* which her father inexplicably keeps saved in a file on his hard drive, even though they’re only 2 lines long each and contain nothing he would need to re-read. Emily finally finds out that Officer Wilden and Leah the Missing Amish Girl were involved with each other, meaning that most likely he killed her and therefore the body that everyone thought was Alison was Leah all along, coincidentally buried in Alison’s garden. This seems an impressively unfounded extrapolation based on coincidence and stupidity, but Emily has stubbornly convinced herself of it even so. We learn that Hanna’s therapy costs $1000 dollars a day, which is clearly both disgusting and alienating to any reader still suffering through this series. Hanna meanwhile finds herself suddenly unpopular at the mental institute because the inmates find out she has problems, which doesn’t seem that unexpected in the circumstances. The press suddenly decide for no reason to accuse all four girls of murder, which seems a bit off but strangely doesn’t lead to any sort of libel case, even though the families are fabulously wealthy.

In order to move the plot along Emily decides to do something about her suspicions. Since “she couldn’t call the police—Wilden was the police.” (obviously there are no other police or authorities in Rosewood) she decides to break into the police station to read their secret case files, on the advice and with the assistance of her blackmailer. Which doesn’t seem entirely sensible to me. Although no worse than Aria’s plan to trespass in Alison’s garden in the company of what appears from the description to be a cartoon witch, in an attempt to bring evoke Alison’s spirit. Said witch-psychic, who appears from her skeletal, beclawed appearance to herself have risen from the dead, appears from nowhere to illegally enter Alison’s garden, spout nonsense and instantly vanish. Apparently I’m supposed to take this seriously.

Spencer meanwhile has been a lot more productive. A quick chat with escaped murder suspect Ian, currently on the run but none-the-less in communication with all his school friends, reveals that Spencer’s father and Alison’s mother were having a long term affair of roughly 13 years, covering the period of both their marriages, but no one ever mentioned it before even though half of Rosewood, including Ian, knew. Furthermore he takes time out of his busy schedule of being on-the-run from the law and a wanted murderer to suddenly mention how he’s always though Spencer, Melissa and Alison always looked alike…hint, hint. Conclusion – Alison is obviously Spencer’s secret half-sister, but it was never mentioned and their parents married different people and acted like the whole thing has never happened because…something or other. Of course!

Hanna is sadly lagging behind somewhat, still having her useless dream visions. This time, instead of going all Laura Palmer, Alighost takes to crying blood-acid tears like some combination of the Virgin Mary and Ripley. Which to be honest isn’t a great deal of help. Aria has also got somewhat side-tracked: having asked the conveniently possessed medium the one question you are allowed to ask the dead (not sure where this rule has come from): “Who killed you?” and received the answer “Ali” she has now come to the conclusion that Alison killed herself and buried her own body in concrete, before presumably returning from the grave to wreak vengeance upon herself.. Although to be fair at this stage I wouldn’t rule anything out as being too ridiculous. Soon enough she is arrested for withholding evidence, specifically Ian’s class ring which isn’t evidence of anything, whilst Jason repeatedly tries to tell her something important but finds himself physically prevented from doing so apparently by the force of plot requirements. Simultaneously Emily pops back into the story and is also arrested, which is actually fair enough since she is reading private police files.

We also have to go through the whole victim-trapped-in-car-with-potential-killer business once again, with the protagonists this time being Spencer and her mother. Why anyone ever gets into a car driven by anyone else in this series is beyond me, as it inevitably leads to terror and police chases. Or in this case accusing your parents of murder (incorrectly), adultery (correctly) and fathering illegitimate children (again, correctly) at a polite social function. Following this faux pas Spencer is also arrested, leaving Hanna as the only free member group. Hanna wisely uses her extra time in running aimlessly about making wild surmises about how exactly how Iris, her insane and yet dull roommate at the mental institute, could have come to know Alison, even though this have come about via any number of silly plot devices. Having flung some accusations about in classic PLL style, she then completes the quartet of arrests.

Once in custody due to a combination of a police cover-up that makes no sense and the force of an article in People magazine, the girls are immediately placed in a cell together in order to allow them to conspire. After comparing clothes they exchange stories and realise that absolutely everything they have done in this book was incredibly stupid. Just after this the police make a similar realisation about their own actions in this book, and all four girls are immediately released. Suddenly everyone has decided that one of the suspicious-looking builders who nobody questioned at the time is the murdered. Which makes sense, because he has a gold tooth. Spencer, astounded by the idea that the killer could have been “such a stranger, an outsider” and not her mother as she had hoped, checks CNN and finds that his name is Billy Ford and there is “overwhelming evidence” against him, although we don’t get to hear any of it. We also hear that he was apparently all aspects of ‘A’#2 including Fake Ian, even though he couldn’t have known all the necessary facts and had no reason to do any of the things ‘A’#2 did. Also, for some reason he has killed Jenna and buried her in a trench that was being dug in her back garden. Not sure why, when, or how I’m supposed to care. At any rate it would seem that even if he escapes custody the girls of Rosewood are safe as long as they refrain from digging graves on their own properties, so I’m not really sure where the element of danger or excitement is supposed to come in.


[* Shepard confirms in the next chapter that it was indeed four years ago. If she can’t even keep track of her own timeline consistently I don’t see how her readers are supposed to]

Most Ridiculously Prudish Mother-Daughter Conversation

“Basically . . . we used my egg and your dad’s . . . you know.” She lowered her eyes, too demure and proper to say sperm aloud.”

“bowls of cut-up melon and cottage cheese. Hanna couldn’t think of a more vomit-inspiring food combination.”

“her legs already looked thinner from the organic fruits and veggies she’d been eating.”

“beautiful beaches, perfect, cloudless days, and shrimp cocktail and red velvet cake —Ali’s favorite foods. Every guy there had a crush on her and every girl wanted to be her, even Princess Diana and Audrey Hepburn. She was still fabulous Alison DiLaurentis, ruling heaven just as she ruled earth.”

“Just sit there and shrug. Or say you have your period and don’t feel like talking.”

“It’s like the House of Usher.”

“ “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Just like the sister in the story who had been entombed in that old house, Ali’s body had been trapped under the concrete for three long years.”