| | |  | Amazon Kindle | Home » » » Pretty Little Liars | | | | | | | Description: | | Everyone has something to hide—especially high school juniors spencer, aria, emily, and hanna.
Spencer covets her sister's boyfriend. Aria's fantasizing about her English teacher. Emily's crushing on the new girl at school. Hanna uses some ugly tricks to stay beautiful. But they've all kept an even bigger secret since their friend Alison vanished. How do I know? Because I know everything about the bad girls they were, the naughty girls they are, and all the dirty secrets they've kept. And guess what? I'm telling. | | | Product Details: | | | Average Customer Rating:
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Average Customer Review:
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38 of 45 found the following review helpful:
 As satisfying as a pint of Ben & Jerry's...without the caloriesOct 03, 2006
By Erika Sorocco
The summer after seventh grade started out fine, but when Alison "Ali," one of Rosewood, Pennsylvania's most popular girls vanished, things changed. While her closest friends (Spencer, Aria, Hanna, and Emily) have all moved on, and are now juniors in high school, she was never seen again. The girls, wanting to move away from the secrets Ali took with her, broke apart, and made new friends. Putting the scandalous past behind them. Spencer began competing non-stop with her older sister, Melissa, for her parents affections, but one little slip-up, and her good girl image is shattered; Aria moved away to Iceland, but has returned, only to find that everyone she used to know (including the guy she was always crushing on) has stayed the same, stagnant, stuck in one place; Emily has tried to move on, and forget about the feelings she held for Ali, but when a new girl moves into Ali's old room, she must come to terms with the truth; and Hanna, who went from "little piggy" to Paris Hilton-wannabe, has found herself in deep water, being questioned by the police on an almost weekly basis. But now, they must confront their old secrets, and join forces once again, for someone known only as "A" is onto them. Someone who knows things about them that only Ali knew. Someone who gets off on sending them threatening messages. Now the girls are confused, since Ali was never found, how on earth could she be contacting them. She should be dead. She should be on some other plane, millions of miles from them. But maybe...she's not.
I have one guilty pleasure. No, it's not chocolate, or sweets. In fact, it has nothing to do with food. It's books about the rich. Their scandalous lives, and the constant shopping they spend most of their time doing. But no YA book has come even close to the amount of scandal found within the pages of Sara Shepard's PRETTY LITTLE LIARS. From page one I was intrigued by the secrets that these four (or should I say five?) girls shared. From blow-ups to make-ups, and everything in between. The characters found within these pages are beyond young and beautiful. There's an evil that lurks around them. An evil that is unexplainable and addicting. Each girl possesses her very own unique personality. Personalities that will draw readers in, in droves, and keep them reading long into the night. From Spencer's wandering eyes; to Aria's fondness for older men; and Hanna's thirst for attention; to Emily's constant confusion regarding her relationships; every reader will find the ability to mesh with one of these...scandalous characters. As satisfying as a pint of Ben & Jerry's...without the calories.
Erika Sorocco
Freelance Reviewer
32 of 38 found the following review helpful:
you won't want to put this one down!!!May 04, 2007
By Jenni
"jenni35"
Okay, I found out about this book from one of my freshmen. She brought it in one day and asked me if I could please read it, because she absolutely LOVED the book and needed someone to talk to about it....and said that her friends weren't really "into reading." I took the book home, thinking that I'd get around to it later.....maybe next week. Maybe not. I was wrong. I started reading when I got home and couldn't put the book down. You won't want to put it down either. It really IS that good.
Other reviews have basically told the story here: five friends are bound by a secret, referred to as "the Jenna thing," until one of the girls, Alison, goes missing at the end of their seventh grade year. Skip ahead to eleventh grade, when the remaining four girls begin receiving alarming text messages. It's a mystery that grabs you and won't let go.
I've seen several copies of this book (and #2 Flawless) floating around our school lately, thanks to word of mouth advertising. I'm 30something and LOVED the book...my students are 14-18 years old and also love it. Friendship, mystery, boys, all of the big topics pop up in this book. Grab a copy and get hooked!
11 of 13 found the following review helpful:
 Who is "A"?Jan 13, 2009
By Shon
Imagine you are BFF with the most popular girl in school. Everyone else wants to be you. Of course you love the power you have that so many people are envious of you, but secretly you truly wonder if being her BFF is a blessing or a curse. Now imagine it's the start of the summer between seventh and eighth grade and you and your BFF are celebrating by having your annual summer sleepover. Things don't go quite as planned and the two of you end up fighting and she walks out of your house. The very next morning you hear from her mom and you just know something terrible has happened. Suddenly days turn into weeks and before you know it the summer has ended, school has started and still no word from your BFF. She just simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Although you do not wish her any harm, you have to admit, there's a part of you that's relieved that she's gone. You start to feel freer and less burdened because all the secrets she knows about you, have vanished along with her. Horrible to think, some might say, but if they knew what she knew about you, they might feel exactly the same.
This is how it is for Aria, Spencer, Hanna and Emily. Alison, Ali, disappears during their slumber party. After her disappearance, the four friends gradually drift apart until no one can even recall they were once friends. It's now three years later and the teens are about to start their junior year. Spencer is very anal, in competition with her older sister about everything (and a certain someone); Hanna is now the new "it" girl, but carries a terrible secret about her drastic makeover; Aria is back from Iceland with her family and has a crush on a new boy, unfortunately she just found out he's her new English teacher; and Emily is the all-american good girl doing what she can to please her parents, that is until she meets Maya...
All four have secrets, secrets that they want to stay buried. Secrets that only one other person knows about: Ali. During the first week of school, each start to receive texts about their secrets, threatening to expose them. Each text is simply signed "A" and naturally the girls think Ali is back. But is she? Not only does "A" haunt them with their past, "A" knows what they are hiding now. It's as though each girl is being watched.
I really enjoyed this first book of the series and devoured it in one sitting. It's fast-paced, with short chapters and you just want to keep reading to learn more about what each girl is hiding. The story goes back and forth between past and present, but it's not confusing at all. After each girl receives a text, the author will go back to the past to explain its relevancy. Actually, I thought it added to the suspense.
Although this is a young adult novel, I have reservations about preteens reading it. There are mature themes discussed in the book and if younger children read it, I suggest the parents read it as well and have a conversation about these topics.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Pretty Little LiarsMay 06, 2008
Pretty Little Liars HarperCollins Publisher, 2006, 286 pp., $8.99
Sara Shepard ISBN 978-0-06-0887320-2
Ever receive a message from someone, have no idea who sent it, then find out they had the wrong number? Hannah Marin, Spencer Hastings, Aria Montgomery, and Emily Fields wish that was the case, but unfortunately, it's not. For them they are receiving messages from someone named "A," but it's not the wrong number. Know how they can tell? "A" is reminding them of all the secrets they try so hard to hide. Most of these secrets have been ones their former best friends, Ali DiLaurentis, knew. But Ali is dead, right?
Hannah, Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Ali were best friends; they have been since the summer before seventh grade when all of their parents volunteered them to work Saturday afternoons at Rosewood Day School's charity drive (except Spencer who volunteered herself.) The girls quickly bonded and soon became best friends. At the end of seventh grade everything was going great for all of them; they were just about to have their end-of-the-school sleepover. But when Spencer and Ali get into a fight, suddenly things take a turn for the worse. Ali leaves and doesn't return. By the next evening the police are called, and Ali is reported missing. The girls all appear worried, but secretly they are all relived. Ali knew all of their secrets. The things you never want to get out. The life changing secrets. And if Ali is dead, then she can't tell anyone, right? Wrong! Three years later, the girls are getting text messages from "A" -and "A" knows everything, and is taking ever chance to make these girls paranoid and scared. Every creak, every sound, makes these girls jump, wondering if "A's" around; because "A" would have to be to know not only all their seventh grade secrets but their new secrets too.
Who is "A"? Where's Ali? Is she dead or just missing? Is "A" Ali? Is "A" Ali's murderer? Is "A" going to tell everyone their secrets? These are the questions running though each of the girl's minds.
Read the exciting series: Pretty Little Liars, Flawless, Perfect, and Unbelievable (coming out May 27, 2008) to figure out all these questions. After Unbelievable, Shepard plans on writing four novels. Pretty Little Liars is one of the best books I've read; it's breathtaking -- the things these girls will do or how far "A" is willing to go. The book will leave you sitting on the edge of your seat and is unbelievably hard to put down. Pretty Little Liars was inspired by Shepard's upbringing in Philadelphia's main line.
-Lindsay Wowkowych, 13
Rush-Henrietta, NY
Roth Middle School
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Very Misleading Product! :-\Nov 24, 2011
By K. Picun
"VeganStar85"
This product is extremely misleading. This book is not a "TV-tie-in", at all, aside from the fact that they put the girls from the show on the cover. This is the same exact book as the first book in the Pretty Little Liars series, with a different cover slapped on it. :-
I recently read the original book, and got the "TV-tie-in" in hopes of reading something a little more like the show (which I like much better). But, as soon as I opened the book, I could tell that it was the same version that I'd just read. And, upon further inspection of it, I could tell that it is not amended to reflect the contents of the show.
If this was a TV-tie-in, they would have changed details like the girls' ages (making the time that Alison disappeared when they were in early high school, not mid-way through Jr. High), and changing the physical descriptions of the characters to fit who's who on the show (as they do not fit the particulars laid out for their respective characters in the book).
Being that I didn't want to read the whole book over, I could be wrong about it being EXACTLY the same, but I don't think that I am. This is marketing greed at some of its worst, and truly disappointing! :-(
If you haven't read the first Pretty Little Liars book, and want this edition because you prefer the cover, then you can get it...But, if you've already read it/own it in its original form, the only thing this version is good for is a collectible if you like the cover because you're a big fan of the show. I only paid $3.60 for this book, and I'm mad...I'm glad that I didn't pay more!!!
There are a few kinds of "TV-tie-ins"...Sometimes, books are written about episodes of shows, sometimes, tangential stories are written that fall 'between the episodes' (further adventures of characters from the TV world [that could, also, be done, after a show ends
~*Kristin Star*
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