Pretty Little Liars (Pretty Little Liars, #1) in WACKY READING CHALLENGES

Apr 22, 2015 Sassafrass rated it really liked it

Shelves: z-challenge-books-2015, z-2015, mystery, young-adult, z-ravenclaw-mmp, z-scribd

Wow, just wow. These girls are messed up! One minute I wanted to strangle them and the next I felt sorry for them. But, I really did feel like they were overall a waste of space. The only one who seemed to be about anything was Emily.

With that being said, I still kept reading, kept trying to figure out what was going on and what was going to happen. And as much as they got on my nerves, I'm going to keep on reading! LOL

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Feb 01, 2021 Hannah Peterson rated it it was ok

I'm not entirely sure why I decided to read so many of these. It was entirely on a whim, while I was simultaneously reading The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee - I think perhaps I just needed something extremely fluffy to balance out all the heavy genetics. I'm pretty sure the last time I read these books was over a decade ago and I guess I just wanted to see if they were the same as I remembered.

I can't say I really enjoyed them, but they were definitely sort of "can't look a I'm not entirely sure why I decided to read so many of these. It was entirely on a whim, while I was simultaneously reading The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee - I think perhaps I just needed something extremely fluffy to balance out all the heavy genetics. I'm pretty sure the last time I read these books was over a decade ago and I guess I just wanted to see if they were the same as I remembered.

I can't say I really enjoyed them, but they were definitely sort of "can't look away" compelling to return to as an adult. The entire story relies on shock and secrets and cliffhanger chapter endings to keep the reader's interest, but it definitely works! I also think that part of what I kind of enjoy about these books is that they are set on the Main Line (wealthy suburbs outside of Philadelphia), which is basically exactly where I grew up. So there's a certain sort of fun I find reading them, catching the Philadelphia specific references and being in on the stereotyping of this specific sort of privileged people.

That being said, I can't in good faith recommend any of these books - it's very clear as the series progresses that the author didn't really have a plan for all the twists and turns at the beginning, so things are constantly being retconned in later so that the big reveals kind of make sense. I also didn't remember how frequently the theme of "one of the teenage girls is sleeping with a man who is definitely way too old for her and it's actually pretty creepy that he's even interested in her" comes up - nearly every girl in this story has a relationship like this at some point and they're often cast as being more "naughty romantic" than actually deeply concerning. I didn't really notice that when I read them as a 14 year old and that's a bit disturbing in retrospect. A major theme of these books is that these very young girls have quite a lot of manipulative power over other people (often adults) and now that I'm older, that doesn't sit very well with me.

But I did still read 9 of them in two weeks. ...more

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Jan 01, 2016 Kimberlee rated it liked it

Rarely would I recommend just skipping the book and watching the series, but that's exactly what you should do.

The story revolves around 4 (5 if you count the memories) girls with charmed lives that still find a way to complain and be generally awful. It is interesting enough in a soap opera kind of way, but they are entirely one dimensional. At least in the TV series there's enough character development and redeeming qualities that you care about them. The book revolves around 5 girls with bad ...more

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Nov 30, 2016 Debra Barstad rated it really liked it

I loved this book. I also love the show so it was nice to see that the show matched up nicely with the book. I will be reading the rest of this series as I go. I would recommend this book to anyone that likes the show as well as a fast read for YA.

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