Somehow, it continues. There’s another ‘A’. We still don’t know who killed Alison. It’s almost as though the previous four books were a total waste of time. And Cycle Two begins.

In the flashback prologue we are re-introduced to every single Rosewood Day student whose name has ever been mentioned in the books, all of whom are entranced by some nonsensical annual treasure hunt/time capsule thing the magnitude of which, Shepard assures me, does not need explaining. All I learn from this is that the whole of the school grounds must be full of buried flags, which no one either currently or in the future could be interested in. I suppose the whole matter can serve as a microcosmic representation of Rosewood’s attitudes in general though: the focus is entirely on the privilege of winning the competition and the glamour of being recognised, but no one stops to think what the actual purpose of burying time capsules full of decorated flags is, since there is no purpose. It’s all just fuss and glamour around an empty centre, designed so that someone can be the best at something and everyone else can be losers.

At any rate, once we have heard once again about how embarrassed both Hanna and Emily are of their hair-colour (“poop-brown” and “chlorine-greenish” respectively, as we are told repeatedly in each book) the story proper begins. The four girls are now having group sessions with a grief counsellor, which means we have to hear every plot-point from the previous four books reiterated. The counsellor’s advice is to put all the items which remind them of Alison into a bin-bag and bury them, which is not only quite stupid but also pretty much what they decided to do off their own bat at the end of the last book. So I’m not really sure what their families are paying the “very best grief counselor in the Philadelphia area” for. Particularly since none of them seem especially grief-stricken. Still, I suppose they may as well waste money on unnecessary pseudo-therapy as on anything else.

The rehashing of old events from the previous books drags on tediously for some time, leavened with the occasional new development. Apparently the ‘A’ blackmail notes have become a nationwide phenomenon, which seems rather wishful thinking on Shepard’s part. Otherwise nothing much is happening. Hanna is so stupid she keeps trying to send Mona texts about ”mani-pedis”, forgetting that Mona is in fact dead, and that prior to her demise she tried to kill Hanna. Mike continues to be a sexual pervert, but a girl has unwisely agreed to go on a date with him. Aria does the talking-to-someone-at-an-art-show-and-realising-too-late-he’s the-artist storyline, but she’s not concerned because she can tell by the way the artist in question sexually assaults her just after they meet that he thinks she’s sexy, and since he is a man this is flattering and she would like to sleep with him. Spencer is annoyed that she is being lightly punished for the essay competition cheating thing, which is still being mentioned as though it was in any way interesting. Spencer’s male equivalent Andrew continues to clumsily express sexual interest in her, despite her numerous previous rebuffs. Emily watches a Christian rock band at her local church and notices that the male lead singer has the same shoes as her. She then gets a feeling like electricity flowing through her, and is suddenly not a lesbian anymore. Apparently Jesus can cure gays after all. I’m uncertain how much of this is deliberate, and how much is down to massive stupidity.

Quite a lot of time is taken up with Hanna wondering how she could possibly have failed to notice for 3½ years that her best friend was a deluded psychopath who knew all her secrets and wanted her dead, even though they were incredibly close and loved each other like sisters. Hanna is pretty thick, but it does stretch credulity that even someone as dense as her could have been completely unaware of the situation. Strangely however, having the characters of the book as baffled as the reader as to how they are supposed to take the plot seriously does not make the books any less awful.

The new plots continue the sub-soap-opera awfulness of the earlier books. Spencer’s grandmother dies and leaves each of her grandchildren $2 million, except for Spencer. I was too distracted by the disgusting privilege of the Hastings family to care why, but I assume it’s because Spencer will turn out to be illegitimate/adopted. Meanwhile Aria’s new inappropriate love interest turns out to have all the combined flaws of her last two, being both older and involved with someone she knows, in this case her own mother. Since absolutely nothing of interest came of the previous two unsuitable liaisons I don’t have high hopes for this storyline. Ian is released on bail due to his mum developing Plot-Convenient-Cancer, and immediately afterward the girls all receive another ‘A’ message. This means that ‘A’#2 is obviously not Ian, but naturally we have to sit through page after page of various people assuming that it is, and telling the police as much. After all, they all saw him on the news report putting his hand into his pocket. And what’s kept in pockets? Mobile phones, obviously. Case closed.

The usual nothing-much occurs. Emily takes up a lot of pages falling in love with stereotypical sensitive-musician-type Isaac, who is as intensely boring as she is. Hanna decides to be best-friends with her three worst enemies, which is hard to care about if you’re not 10 years old and an idiot. Aria’s family bond with her mum’s new boyfriend over their mutual hatred of all Icelandic people, who are apparently weird. Hanna continues to drop her boyfriend every time she has any friends and then expect him to pick up the pieces when she falls out with them. Ian suddenly appears and tells Spencer that there’s something very important she doesn’t know related to Alison’s death, but he can’t tell her what it is yet because it’s not near enough to the end of this cycle. Mike continues to harass Emily for being a lesbian. Spencer jumps onto the prophetic dream bandwagon, seeing a vision of an older and a younger Alison (aged 13 and 12 respectively) arguing with each other over Ian. Luckily she can tell the difference because she is able to match any outfit of Alison’s with the time and date she wore it anywhere up to 4½ years ago. As can all of Alison ‘s other friends. Obviously. It increasingly seems that I am supposed to believe that Alison is literally haunting people’s dreams whenever the plot is getting a bit thin, although why she can’t find anything better to do as a ghost than offer the vaguest of useless clues and bicker with herself over boys I’m not sure. Alison’s family appear now-and-again and we are informed that they are behaving weirdly, although nothing in the writing indicates this. After endless running away crying and making a scene in public places Emily finally tells her new boyfriend that she used to go out with a girl, and he graciously “accepts” this, which is exactly as you would expect from the smug type of Christian he represents.

The trial is eventually reached, but unfortunately doesn’t get very far as it turns out that Ian has escaped the Rosewood police, who are on typically effective form, and disappeared. In response the police amp up the security on the girls, although for some reason this personalised security only applies when they’re at a party. Spencer fails to tell the police that she has seen Ian, basically because she can’t be bothered. Everyone continues to drone on incessantly about the flag-hunt thing from 4½ years ago, which they have suddenly simultaneously decided is massively relevant. The magical website which Spencer joined automatically finds her a potential birth mother by using only Spencer’s name and address, which seems a touch unlikely. Hanna continues to be more stupid that a normal human mind can comprehend. Spencer joins in by deciding to dig up the bin-bad they buried at the beginning of the book because she thinks Alison told her to do so in a dream. Inside it she finds a sketch Aria drew of Alison and Ian 4 years ago, and uses it as actual concrete evidence of their feelings and emotions at that time. The only actual clue she finds is yet another hint about the flag-hunt thing, which I very much do not care about. Meanwhile, in yet another example of Rosewood’s excellent parenting, Hanna’s father punishes her for bullying her step-sister by decreeing that they can now only attend social events if they are together. Which I’m sure will resolve matters. Then for some reason the girls all end up running about in the dark outside, exactly like they were told not to, in danger from ‘A’. As usual none of them die, but since something dramatic has to occur to conclude the book Ian is found dead. Which is entirely his own fault for telling someone that he had a big secret, but refusing to disclose it, since according to the rules of badly-written drama that’s exactly the same thing as signing your own death warrant.


Worst Item of Interior Décor

“A large, wrought-iron statue of the Eiffel Tower”

Mentioned six times. No idea why. Hopefully it will be an “amusing” murder weapon in the next book.

Stupidest Names
Savannah
Wolfgang (Admittedly an alias, but still…)
Xavier Reeves
Smithson Pierpont Hastings
Alexandra Pratt
Sienna Morgan
Briony Kogan
Jackson Hughes
Hester Pembroke
Binky Byers
Olivia Zeigler

Laziest Mistake

“Aria shrugged. As seventies rock went, she was more of a Velvet Underground girl.”

Really? Because 3 books ago she couldn’t remember which “old album” had a picture of a banana on the cover. So I guess she’s not that big a fan.

Stupidest Review of a Band
The Rolling Stones – disliked by Aria because “MickJagger was thinner than she was, and Keith Richards was downright terrifying.” Not sure why singer thinness is an issue, and “downright terrifying” seems ever so slightly over the top. No mention of their music, so I’m going to assume that Aria has never actually listened to any, as her musical knowledge seems somewhat limited and she is too self-obsessed to notice things that don’t involve her.

Michelangelo Montgomery at Home: A Selection of Statements Made to his Mother and Sister

“I only date girls with money.”

“You know what I think makes women look better? Implants!”

On his sex life : “That’s for me to know and for you to obsess about.”

“We’re getting a prime seat at Steam so we can check out Hanna Marin and her hot stepsister.…You talk to Hanna sometimes—do you know if they sleep in the same bed?”

“You know, she’s pretty sexy for a blind chick. I’d do her.”

Most Over-Competitive Attitude

“Every December, Rosewood Day Elementary held a schoolwide snowflake-making contest, and the winning designs were displayed in the elementary and high schools all winter. Spencer used to feel so devastated when her classroom lost—the judges announced the winner right before winter break, so it kind of ruined Christmas.”

Rosewood Day’s competition-mania is certainly breeding some healthy young people. Honestly, I’m not even what criteria you would use to judge a snowflake.

Least Interesting or Informative Character Detail

“Fake peach, Hanna decided, was her least favorite scent in the whole world.”

Most Painful “Lesbian-Specific” Christmas Presents
A poster of a female athlete in a bikini, to replace the previous male athlete in speedos picture; a box-set of “The L-Word” and from Emily’s father a box of jasmine tea because “he’d read on the Internet that “uh, ladies like you” preferred tea to
Coffee.” How ignorant are these people? And has Emily’s father seriously been googling “What do lesbians like?”, and come up with jasmine tea?

Most Ridiculously Childish and Emo “Falling in Love” Moment

Emily instantly realized the band was covering her favorite Avril Lavigne song, “Nobody’s Home.” She’d listened to it over and over … feeling like she was the confused, empty girl Avril was singing about.

Oddest Character Extrapolation Based on a Name

“The guy’s name was Wolfgang, for God’s sake. What if he spoke in rhymes? What if he was the guy who impersonated Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for the Hollis Conservatory’s Great Composers of History festival? What if he showed up in a doublet and hose and a powdered wig?”

I admit that Wolfgang is indeed a worrying name, but none of these theories seems terribly likely, does it?


Most Unfortunate Common Characteristic on which to Base a Relationship

“They’d compared favorite books and TV shows and discovered they both liked M. Night Shyamalan movies, even though he was terrible at dialogue.”

He’s also terrible at movies.

Least Appropriate Comment in Front of Your Father

“I hate honeydew,” she said primly. “It tastes like sperm.”

Most Unusual Example of School Discipline

“Because she’d plagiarized an econ paper, Rosewood Day had mandated that if she didn’t get an A this semester, she would be removed from the class permanently.”

So plagiarism is okay if you’re clever enough to have not needed to do it? And being removed from a class you have trouble with is a punishment? I don’t understand.

Oddest Misunderstanding of Sexuality #1

“Emily hadn’t even been offended, and that worried her too—if gay jokes no longer bothered her, did that mean she wasn’t gay?”

No. Why would the gender of the people you are sexually attracted to be inexorably linked to your tolerance of jokes/harassment? Also, why is Emily so stupid?

Oddest Misunderstanding of Sexuality #2

“ “So, does this mean you’re…bi? Or what?”
“I don’t know what I am,” Emily answered quietly. …Maybe I just like…people. Maybe it’s the person, not necessarily their gender.” “

So bi then. Like he said. What exactly does Emily think bisexuality means, if not exactly what she just specified?


Once again, the majority of this book was just rephrasing of previous scenes from the series, with occasional new nonsense sprinkled in. Surely there has to be some significant new plot development in the next book to keep this series dragging on?

I suppose I’d better continue with the series. After all, the quicker I read them the quicker they’re all gone. My difficulty is not so much with how bad the books are (after all, there’s no harm in a bit of trash every now and then) as how incredibly boring. It goes against the tenets of trash writing, which should be so entertaining in its drama that you forgive the ridiculousness. If you’re going to read something bad, it should be absurdly, histrionically bad. (See [b:Flowers in the Attic|43448|Flowers in the Attic (Dollanganger, #1)|V.C. Andrews|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327880853s/43448.jpg|3311885] or [b:What Ever Happened to Baby Jane|374988|What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?|Henry Farrell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174270122s/374988.jpg|364858] for example) Sadly there is no Grand Guignol horror or grotesque excess here, as there should rightfully be. Just mundanity and handbags.

The prologue flashback is even less interesting this time, since it’s yet more information I do not want about the bloody flag-hunt business (see all of the last book). We also learn that Rosewood is the type of place that turns 6-year-olds learning to read into an official competition. Because if you can’t be the best at something, it’s not worth doing it at all. It also turns out that all 4 of the girls turned up at Alison’s house to steal her flag-piece at exactly the same time, independently of each other. I know there’s somewhat of a herd mentality at Rosewood, but that seems pretty impressive. Hopefully this psychic-bond all the children share will be developed later and the books will take a more [b:Midwich Cuckoos|161846|The Midwich Cuckoos|John Wyndham|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172294996s/161846.jpg|812592] (Village of the Damned) direction. Otherwise we learn nothing knew, and have some old and boring information hammered into our heads once again.

Back in the present we pick up exactly where we left off. Ian is still dead. We are clumsily reminded that we are now supposed to be suspicious of Officer Wilden, because Shepard says so. She neglects to say why, but that’s as standard. Then Ian’s body disappears, as tends to happen in these type of stories. Everyone immediately panics. Then the process of obsessive recapping begins.

There isn’t a great deal of forward momentum in the plot for the main bulk of the book. We learn that Aria has moved in with her father to avoid being sexually harassed by her mother’s boyfriend, failing to warn either her mother or anyone else about the borderline rapist who they all trust. Then Aria’s father suddenly declares that he has bought a house in the middle of the Rosewood Murder Triangle, but forgot to mention it earlier because it hadn’t occurred to Shepard yet. Emily’s boyfriend teaches her to eat peanut butter and honey butties, which are indeed nicer than peanut butter and jam, but don’t really add much to the story. We are reminded to suspect Jason, Alison’s brother, because he’s vaguely shouty and looks just like Alison. Hanna fondly reminisces about the time when the time when they were all children and Mike deliberately lurked about in the dark in the middle of the night to sexually assault Alison, but accidentally groped Hanna instead; she appears to find this sweet. Spencer’s dull essay storyline and her dull Andrew –the-obvious-boyfriend storyline continue to coalesce into one single lump of boredom. Everyone keeps going on about how much they want Ian to fry for Alison’s murder, which is not only cruel but inaccurate since although Pennsylvania, disturbingly enough, is one of the US states that still insists on the death penalty, their preferred method is lethal injection. Shepard keeps telling us what every boy in the series smells like in weird detail. We learn that only old ladies drink mint tea, which added to last book’s revelation that lesbians all drink jasmine tea makes me presume that there’s a very strict hot-drink hierarchy in Rosewood, which will hopefully be revealed in full in an exciting future volume of this series. Also, the Warhol banana appears again. I’m beginning to think it’s some type of a clue, it appears so frequently. Maybe Nico killed Alison?

The most exciting development is that it’s flag-hunt time again! Whilst we wait to find out how that thrilling saga will unravel, we are treated to endless scenes of Emily and her perfect boyfriend, who even loves the smell of chlorine in her hair, and who lives in a house with “Prayer Changes Everything” embroidered on the cushions. They possibly have sex, although it’s hard to tell because Ms Shepard never goes any further in her descriptions of these things than the boy involved touching the edge of the girl’s bra, which seems to be a bit of a fetish in Rosewood and also means another chance to describe clothes. Meanwhile Spencer arranges a meeting with a woman who the internet has told her is her birth mother, even though she hasn’t even asked if she’s adopted yet. To fill in time whilst waiting for this meeting she copies her father’s entire hard drive onto what is a very capacious CD in order to search it for adoption documents. Meanwhile her mother continues to disown her for being stalked and having had her best friend murderer, which constitutes top-quality parenting in Rosewood.

After a while the girls get together and conclude, pretty much by making it up as they go along, that Ian faked his own death in order to distract them whilst he escaped from Rosewood, but then stayed in Rosewood anyway. This makes no sense whatsoever. My theory is that Ian faked his own death because Sara Shepard needed a cliffhanger ending for [b:Wicked Pretty Little Liars 5|3047850|Wicked (Pretty Little Liars, #5)|Sara Shepard|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1236780950s/3047850.jpg|3821158], which I think hangs together a lot better (the theory, not the awful book). Then everyone proceeds with their lives, eating branded foods I’ve never heard of and constantly just catching in the corner of their eye what might or might not be a stalker. Emily does that bad-drama scene where the heroine finds a picture of herself with the head cut off and panics, presuming that the photo’s owner is out to get her. She also receives an annoying ‘clue’ photo from ‘A’, which no one can be bothered with.

Spencer goes off to New York on her own to meet a stranger called Olivia who claims to be her birth mother, and they immediately go shopping for designer clothes. No questions are asked about this alleged adoption, which so far exists entirely in Spencer’s imagination, until they have thoroughly exhausted all the best shops. Eventually Olivia tells some vague story about giving Spencer away because as a rich and privileged eighteen-year-old she wasn’t sure she could cope with a baby. Immediately thereafter Spencer offers to finish school a year earlier and move to New York so they can be closer, and Olivia suggests renting her an apartment. I don’t know if this kind of behaviour is normal for rich people, but it’s definitely incredibly stupid. Then Olivia flies away in her personal helicopter, as you do, accidentally leaving Spencer with a mystery folder which sadly turns out to contain nothing interesting.

Aria becomes more proactive about her fetish for inappropriate men, deliberately hanging around a train station until she meets potential murderer and weirdo Jason and propositioning him. He immediately takes her to a bar named after the Bates Motel from [b:Psycho Robert Bloch], which means that it would be too obvious if he were ‘A’. They immediately exchange secrets and flirt heavily. Hanna is meanwhile impressing Aria’s brother by her amazing knowledge of music, specifically that she has heard of Led Zeppelin. This is apparently quite impressive in Rosewood. More amazingly still she knows two of their songs and is able to sing along to them, which obviously makes her pretty cool. Mike is as creepy as ever, taking Hanna on a date to try on some tiny bikinis he has already picked out for her and then deliberately bursting in when she is changing. Luckily Hanna is flattered to have any male attention, since she is an idiot, and so doesn’t do anything about this. We also learn that whilst Mike was in Europe he learned how to say “underwear model” in Mandarin, which makes sense as long as you consider “abroad” to be one big place where all the people speak in the same set of funny languages which you can use to impress girls. Even though he is vilely sexist and is dating Hanna and Kate at the same time both of them continue to fight over him as though winning his brief approval of them as a sex object will validate them as a person and cement their victory over the other. It’s quite difficult to believe that two people could be this simultaneously stupid.

Plot becomes even more sparse as the book continues. Spencer’s parents horrify her by suggesting that she get a job. Hanna remembers something, but can’t remember what she remembers. In a particularly impressive show of idiocy Spencer decides to steal a large amount of money from her parents in order to rent a massively luxurious New York apartment. This makes sense because a man she has never met, who is married to the possible birth mother she has met once, will definitely reimburse her fully as soon as he finds out. Plus she feels entitled to the apartment because…actually, I’m not sure why. Just because. Many characters suddenly become emotional, start stuttering and leave the room for reasons not explained for several chapters. Isaac’s mother threatens Emily, but she doesn’t tell him for a while in order to drag matters out for a few more pages. When she does he immediately admits that his last girlfriend said the same thing, but is still certain that both his ex and Emily are crazy liars and the fact that they came up with the same fabrication is coincidence.

Hanna has yet another Haunted Oracular Dream which yields the first clue which sounds even vaguely interesting, Alighost’s: “Sometimes, I don’t notice I’m singing”. Which reminds me of a combination of Laura Palmer’s two dream clues “Sometimes my arms bend back.” and “Where we're from the birds sing a pretty song, and there's always music in the air” A finger-snapping dwarf and a mynah bird would really liven the story up around now, but sadly it is not to be. Instead we move on to some fluff about proms and dating, which takes a long time to go nowhere. Also at around this time the obsession with clothes reaches such a pitch that we’re informed that exact outfit a UPS delivery man is wearing as he makes a one-line appearance delivering organic baby booties. Meanwhile Jason, Jenna, Melissa and Officer Wilden continue to behave “suspiciously” whilst not actually doing anything that unusual or interesting. Somebody uses a Rottweiler to trick Aria into breaking into Jason’s house, which doesn’t seem to make any sense or achieve anything. Spencer’s supposed birth mother turns out to be a con-artist and steals all her university money, which I don’t care about and which entirely serves Spencer right. Mike finds out that Hanna is only using him, and hypocritically finds this offensive; simultaneously Hanna decides she is actually deeply in love with Mike after all. Then they make-up because they are both too vacant to hold a grudge. The whole thing is ridiculous.

As the end mercifully draws near everyone attends yet another of these benefit things that seem so popular with the rich and vain, delightfully enough held at what used to be a home for mentally ill children but is now a luxury hotel. Although it’s now refurbished the decorators have helpfully left a few rooms untouched, in order to allow a suitably overused gothic background for events. This is possibly another set stolen from the US [b:Ring Ring 1|38379|Ring (Ring, #1)|Koji Suzuki|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320424323s/38379.jpg|1921329] remake, although with clichés this ingrained it’s hard to identify a particular bad horror film. Emily blunders into one of these rooms, blunders upon an old inmate ledger full of sensitive information which has been left lying around in public view, and 5 seconds later finds Jason’s name. The whole thing is so far beyond terrible that there’s no criticism worth making .

Hanna however has decided that the murderer is Officer Wilden, on the basis that he has a hooded top and keeps singing the Elvis Costello song “Alison”, although sadly not the most appropriate lines:

Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking
When I hear the silly things that you say

Then it’s the usual conclusion, where the girls get together and voice their suspicions by reciting every single thing that has happened to them in this book, before racing crazily about in a panic because one of them is in danger. The potential victim is once again Spencer, who is at home in her barn reading [b:The House of Mirth|17728|The House of Mirth|Edith Wharton|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328729186s/17728.jpg|1652564] and demonstrating that she has failed to understand it by identifying with the heroine. However she quickly tires of her efforts to centre a classic work of literature around herself and starts to read her sister’s notes from school instead. Immediately she finds one with clues relevant to the drama currently occurring. Directly afterward the other girls arrive, and fugitive Ian turns out to be online at that exact moment waiting to answer their questions. He accuses Wilden and Jason whereupon Spencer, the world’s least credible witness, immediately changes her “memories” to fit this story. Then someone sets the barn on fire, just for a bit of drama at the end of the chapter. Everyone escapes this rather inefficient murder attempt instantly, and the four of them then run directly into the plot-twist I have been hoping for 6 books wasn’t coming. I reach new heights of despair, and the book ends.


Most Ridiculous Local Shops
Either

“the eco baby store …that sold organic baby booties made out of recycled soda bottles for a hundred dollars.”

or

“a pet store that sold homemade dog food and costumes for cats.”

Character Having the Most Difficulty Keeping Up

“ “Just because the A notes weren’t coming from Ian’s phone doesn’t mean they weren’t coming from Ian… he could have gotten a disposable cell or a phone in another name.”
Emily put her finger to her lips. She hadn’t thought of that.”

Why not? It’s exactly what A#1 did a few months back. It’s simply not possible Emily could be that stupid, surely?

Least Psychological Understanding Demonstrated

“There was no way Jason abused Ali…. In fact, Jason had always seemed fiercely protective of Ali.”

Clearly indisputable proof of his innocence.
More convincingly, there’s no actual evidence or indeed indication that he did, beyond the fact that some of the girls like to imagine so. Which seems to me to be a more reasonable argument in favour of giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Worst Date Talk

Mike suggestively complimented Hanna on her sucking abilities and advised her to save some sucking power for later.

Most Random Physiological Reaction

“Emily swallowed hard. She tasted peanut butter in her mouth, the sensation she always got when she was about to have a fight-or-flight reaction.”

I know that peanut butter is very popular in the US, but I had no idea that their citizens were able to spontaneously produce in times of stress. Must be very useful in times of potential starvation.

Worst Attempt at a Hotel Theme
A Palace of Versailles motif featuring a DJ dressed up in a Louis XIV wig and a large tapestry of Napoleon. The whole thing is apparently based on the vague ideas that every single French historical figure lived in the same building, a giant gilt hall of mirrors, during the era “Old-Days France”. And since the décor also includes “a stained-glass window that featured a portrait of a piefaced minstrel and his lute” it would appear that Medieval Europe has somehow got mixed up in there somehow.

Most Unnecessary-Sounding Beauty Treatment

“an oxygen facial”

Can’t you get oxygen on your face by walking around outside?. For free? I guess I’m missing summat here.

Worse and worse. The whole last part of this book is too terrible even to be a joke. Even if everything turns out to be some type of elaborate set-up it wouldn’t excuse the clumsy execution or the complete lack of sense or realistic behaviour exhibited by any of the girls. The moment when Emily casually wandered through a doorway leading straight from the luxury hotel set into the cobweb-strewn gothic asylum set was the breaking point for me. Unless the whole series turns out to be some sort of meta-textual story-within-a-story taking place in the mind of a mad girl running about in a movie backlot then it’s irredeemable. And I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen.

How is this still happening?

As usual nothing happens in the prologue, although we are reminded of those suspicious builders from the first book. Then onto the exact same story arc as last time – as with the previous cliff-hanger figure (Ian), Alison has now vanished as quickly as she appeared. Which means a book’s-worth of characters obsessing about finding her and doubting her reality. Even Emily despairs “But it couldn’t be happening again. It couldn’t.” Sadly, it is. Also, we catch a brief glimpse of Mona Vanderwaal’s parents and discover that she did actually have a funeral. Since there has been no previous mention of the aftermath of her violent death I had begun to assume that the odd teenage girl was just collateral damage in Rosewood. Unless that girl is Alison, obviously.

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.”

Spencer’s mother, proving that she is too immature to have a child in the first place. Which didn’t stop her buying one.

Worst “Meal”

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

This also marks the first time I have agreed with Hanna about anything.

Stupidest Names
Lucy Zook
Emily Stoltzfus
Equinox
Giada
Veronica Macadam (Is this supposed to be McAdam? Due to the spelling I could only think of the road surfacing material)
Felicia Roderick
Esmerelda the Medium
Billy Ford - about as realistic as “John McAlias”

Most Pretentious Job Title
An “aesthetician”. Which translates as someone who works at a beauty spa.

Strangest Misunderstanding of the Benefits of Healthy Eating

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

I’m no expert, but I’m fairly sure that eating organic doesn’t change your leg shape. Particularly not in a fortnight.

Most Pathetic Depiction of the Afterlife

“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.”

There’s not really any point in mocking it really, as it does the job itself. I would like to say though that I’m pretty sure Alison didn’t rule Earth, however popular she may have been in the tiny and unimportant suburb of Rosewood.

Worst Advice for Escaping Group Therapy

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

Whilst we can no doubt all agree that periods are unpleasant, and tend toward decreasing your interest in group activities and life in general, I have yet to meet anyone who would agree that they reasonably excuse you from speaking.

Least Workable Literary Analogy
Noel Kahn on the Hastings’ burnt barn:

“It’s like the House of Usher.”

Except that it’s not at all, in any way. The reference does however allow him to use the phrase “she’s not really dead, which is presumably supposed to remind us of Alison. Which hopefully means she will appear soon as a demented revenant wrapped in winding sheets, a harbinger of doom for all. Fingers crossed.

In case we’ve missed all this, Shepard adds a few pages later:

“ “[b:The Fall of the House of Usher|175516|The Fall of the House of Usher|Edgar Allan Poe|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172434265s/175516.jpg|15570703].” 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.”

The phrase “just like” here meaning “Pretty much nothing at all like. But I can only think of one horror story, so…”


There is literally no internal integrity to the story – people’s actions are based on what will result in the most narrative drama and new facts from the past suddenly turn up whenever Shepard feels like handing out a new clue or adding someone else to the suspect list. All the characters are identically inconsistent and lack any basic common sense, their actions bizarrely contradictory and deeply uninteresting. Each individual book follows the same pattern of negating the events of the previous book, baldly stating the new suspects without regard for sense, dawdling about restating the previous plot and adding filler stories that don’t fit with the main narrative and finally throwing in a random-accusation-based cliff-hanger at the conclusion. The result is a transparently manipulative story of no depth or meaning whatsoever, which is thereby impossible to care about.

The conclusion of Cycle 2 is eventually reached.

The prologue is yet another retelling of Alison’s last night and the dull happenings in the barn. The only addition is that we learn that both Hanna and Emily, whilst “hypnotised” by Alison, had visions of her trapped at the bottom of a well. Which I suppose is just another sign of the innate psychic abilities that the girls possess, despite being the 4 least spiritual people I have ever had the misfortune to read about. This might seem odd, but see the reams of stupid dreams in previous volumes for evidence that Shepard wouldn’t hold back from supernatural phenomenon, however stupid.

Anyhow, back to the adventures of a bunch of girls who can’t eat a waffle for breakfast without telling you what brand it is. Our four leading ladies are now awaiting the trial of Billy Ford, the second person to be accused of Alison’s murder. Billy also apparently killed Jenna right at the end of the last book for reasons which were less than clear, and it now emerges that he is for good measure being accused of killing the missing Ian (previously blamed for Alison’s murder). Which would at least explain where Ian has been, even if it makes no sense whatsoever on any other level.

Spencer is absolutely convinced of Billy’s guilt for the same reason she was absolutely convinced of her mother’s guilt, or her sister’s, or Ian’s, or Jenna’s, or Jason’s, or Officer Wilden’s, or indeed her own – that reason being her massive gullibility and limited mental capacity. This same problem has caused her to self-pityingly lament the break-up of her parents’ marriage, since it will inevitably lead to dysfunction and neglect., as of course do all divorces. Although since spoilt Spencer wouldn’t know neglect if it walked up and stole her designer handbag out of her manicured hand, I’m not sure what she’s basing her personal concerns on. Aria is mainly concerned with going to a valentine dance and her disgust at how tacky Jenna’s shrine is, although she does very briefly touch on the “niggling inconsistencies” in the latest murder/blackmail story, such as it not making any sense whatsoever, before instantly moving on. Hanna is so made up to be going out with sexist pervert Mike (top qualities according to her: his meanness and the fact that he is not a prude) that she has no time to think about anything else. Then some spectacularly childish bullying occurs and she and Mike are suddenly not cool anymore, which is massively traumatic for them. Although not quite as interesting as the murders, which we could be hearing about. Emily is doing nothing, which is at least preferable to the stupid Amish thing from the last book. And the local press have obtained large amounts of what is clearly restricted evidence and are busily prejudicing any potential jury members by broadcasting it all ad nauseum.

Suddenly Alison’s mother calls a press conference, in which to dispense clues and incriminate people in order to provide a plot for this book. Here she reveals possibly the stupidest plot twist yet, rivalling even the untouched-child- mental-institute-inside-a-hotel storyline: Alison apparently had a secret twin sister!. An identical twin called Courtney, whom nobody has mentioned or seen until now, when she is being revealed simultaneously to the neighbourhood, her long-lost relatives and the world press. On reading this I managed to restrain myself from groaning and banging my head on the table, but only just. It’s very lucky I’m reading this as an e-book, because any physical copy would have been thrown across the room or torn asunder at this point.

How to continue after this cataclysmic horror of a storyline? What is left to be said? Surely once a text has lost any semblance of sense, reason or narrative integrity it has rendered itself outside of literary rules and above criticism? However none of the other characters seem to have taken this turn of events as badly as I have, and proceed to many chapters worth of vaguely wondering if Courtney is really Alison and slight attempts to fit together the many abstract plot fragments into a cohesive whole; attempts which are tragically doomed to failure. When this becomes too much of a strain they drink herbal tea and get their dogs groomed instead. Courtney starts at school and seamlessly replaces her long-dead twin sister, which nobody thinks is a bit weird. Hanna continues to kick the people closest to her when they’re down in her endless quest to bully her way to popularity. Emily suddenly remembers that whole lesbian thing, now that Alison #2 is around. We are reminded repeatedly to suspect Melissa. Aria becomes jealous of Courtney’s flirting with Noel, her latest boyfriend. Hanna invites her worst enemies to an exclusive fashion show to prove how cool she is, which is exactly the kind of stupid shit she’s always doing. Meanwhile Billy Ford suddenly has alibis for the time of both murders, slightly running what the Rosewood police previously thought of as an “airtight case”.

Impressively things take an even more ridiculous turn when Courtney tells Emily that she is Alison after all, but there was really a twin called Courtney, and their parents managed to mix the two of them up on the weekend of the murder and send Alison back to Courtney’s mental institute by mistake when Courtney was murdered in Alison’s place. How exactly the DiLaurentises were able to commit their pre-teen daughter to a long-term mental institution and then mix her up with the sister she barely knew and therefore couldn’t possibly have adequately impersonated is not explained. Also I am forced to presume that Courtney visited exactly the same cosmeticians and hair stylists as her sister even whilst incarcerated, in order that there’s any possibility of this making any type of sense for even a second. Despite the fact that Courtney actually tells Emily that Real Courtney (not her, the other one) was a monomaniac who used to impersonate Alison and steal facts from her diary in order to impersonate her Emily is immediately convinced by the whole story, no questions asked.

Next Courtney convinces Spencer that she is Alison. Spencer briefly questions the idea that the body in the garden was actually Courtney since it was wearing Alison’s ring (a matter not brought up in the last book when we were supposed to believe that the body was Leah the random Amish girl who everybody has forgotten about ) but 3 paragraphs later is welcoming Alison home. Then Hanna is told and instantly accepts the whole thing, although admittedly she is distracted due to having once again made a tit of herself at some tedious upper-crust social function. Finally Aria meets Courtney leaning on the creepy well from the prologue and grinning like a Halloween pumpkin in the light of the moon, and is fed the whole “I’m Alison” bit. Either because of the horror-film setting or the fact that she randomly finds some photos of the girls on the night of the murder buried next to the well, she is ever-so-slightly less than 100% convinced.

After the four separate scenes of each individual girl being told the same story we move on to a period of even less action, if that is possible. As usual the text is at least 50% reused material from previous books. Little new actually occurs. Melissa is insistently placed in supposedly incriminating situations, being sighted at least once per chapter publicly arguing with one of the other suspects, loitering at a dark corner or deviously running in the night-time, clearly the crazed murderer’s hobby of choice. In light of this incessant pointing toward her supposed guilt I can only assume that she is completely innocent. Spencer becomes convinced that the mysterious face at the window in the latest murder photo-clue to suddenly turn up is definitely her sister (the old one, not either of the new living-dead twin sisters). However since Spencer suffers from a rare form of prosopagnosia where all faces in life and in her memory appear to her to be the face of whoever creates the best plot twist I’m not over-convinced by her panic. Meanwhile Hanna repeatedly fails to notice that Courtney doesn’t know a lot of things which she should know if she’s really Alison and Project Runway gets 2 mentions for no particular reason, unless Shepard is getting paid to advertise it. Also, there is a spate of a new mannerism whereby people slap their sides whilst talking. I’m not sure what emotion it’s supposed to convey but it’s obviously an important one, since it’s so suddenly widespread.

Soon Spencer’s stupid ideas about Melissa have spread to all the other girls except Aria, and even though all of their other unfounded allegations throughout the series turned out to ridiculous and were immediately disproved they jump straight onto the “Melissa killed Alison/Courtney/whoever” bandwagon, mainly on the basis of surmises and incidents that prove nothing, are barely connected to the murder and make little sense. Directly after this they find another incriminating photo open and ready for them on Melissa’s computer. Technically it’s actually an old incriminating photo from a previous volume, back in the days of A#1, but a new and convoluted story about its origins and meaning is swiftly tacked on top of the old details, with which it fails to line up in any way. They also find an appointment card from Courtney’s mental institute and decide that Melissa has most likely checked herself in to get treatment for her Stupid Fictional Insanity and will hopefully be gone for 20 years, that being how mental institutions work. Then everyone loses interest in the murder/commitment/disappearance stuff and starts getting ready for a party instead.

Once they are at the party scene that occurs 2/3 of the way through every book everyone continues with their usual behaviour. Hanna bullies people and dances like a cheap stripper. Emily moons after Courtney. Spencer glories is having a dull boyfriend and being popular and reflects how perfect her life is, without mention of her sister who may be a murderer in the midst of a mental breakdown (Melissa not CourtAli, although actually the description would fit any of the 2 to 3 girls. It’s that type of family. Then suddenly Courtney steals Aria’s perfect boyfriend (not the same as Spencer’s perfect boyfriend. This one has dark hair. That’s the only difference, so far as I am aware) and Aria responds by immediately dumping him and becoming Alison’s best friend again. Five minutes later (literally) the 5 girls are off on a trip to Courtney’s isolated holiday home in the mountains, which can only end well.

They arrive at the remote house to find it still has 5 rocking-chairs sat out on the porch from when they last visited, time having been frozen in Rosewood and its environs for the last 4 years. Once there all the girls but Courtney don bikinis and strut around without embarrassment just like no teenage girl has ever done. Courtney outlines her plan to erase the memory of their last sleepover (when she/Alison disappeared) by completely recreating it, which doesn’t seem like the most logical plan. It’s also not a particularly appealing plot-line, since I’ve already had to plough through innumerable retellings of the original, extremely dull sleepover. However since none of the girls have minds of their own they readily agree, rushing upstairs to be hypnotised and on the way noting without concern the big, open ditch in the garden.

The hypnotic efforts of a non-professional deluded airhead naturally immediately lead Spencer to have a vivid hallucinated flashback experience of the original murder night sleepover, meaning we have to hear about it yet again. This time Spencer spontaneously recalls that the person at the window was one of the twins, and that “Alison” had in fact been wearing her special ID ring that night, but it said ‘C’ and not ‘A’, which means…all sorts of stupid and silly stuff. In fairness nothing Spencer has ‘remembered’ previously has turned out to be true, so it’s hard to give this whole thing too much weight. To wrap things up past-vision dream CourtAli suddenly turns into Alighost and shouts yelling ominous and unclear rubbish, none of which matters at all, in a desperate attempt to distract from how stupid and convoluted the plot has become. It doesn’t work.

Spencer wakes to find that, in astoundingly predictable style, Courtney has disappeared. This is actually about the 4th time this book she has vanished, but this time she stays missing more than the 5 minutes necessary for a chapter cliff-hanger. In her place the girls find a note explaining that Courtney is actually Alison, but the Alison they used to know was actually Courtney, who was killed by real Alison in the guide of Courtney before she was shipped off to a mental institute in Courtney’s place. Or something. Not sure who’s been haunting everyone, since that doesn’t make sense whichever way you go with it. However before anyone has any time to object CourtAli sets the building on fire in a desperate attempt to draw matters to a close. At exactly the same time the girls discover Melissa hidden in a cupboard underneath Ian’s rotting body, in a shockingly poor attempt to simultaneously explain both all of Melissa’s red-herring behaviour and where exactly Ian has been all this time. It does neither. Finally matters reach a frenzied pitch of farcical ludicrousness when everybody escapes via a tiny secret passage CourtAli happens to have in her bedroom, which must have slipped her mind. Despite this planning she also somehow manages to die in the fire, even though she set it herself and had access to all the exits in the house. I’m not sure how, so don’t ask.

Everyone sits outside while the fire burns out, still in their bikinis for all I know, not calling the fire brigade, escaping or talking to each other. Eventually, some hours later, they suddenly begin to attempt to explain away all the plot-holes to each other in the most pathetically artificial conversation I have ever read. They fail. They also realise that they have somehow managed to lose the note explaining everything. Which was pretty stupid.

We move on to 5 months later. Despite the time gap no one has figured out, among other things, why Alison took the incriminating photos placing her at the murder scene, why she didn’t dispose of them, how she managed to get access to Billy Ford’s laptop to plant fake evidence, or what the hell the purpose of any of her actions was. The girls have all been much too busy swanning about enjoying being celebrities to worry about any of that. Also a lot of issues I don’t care about are wrapped up: Hanna’s mother suddenly decides she loves her again and returns from Hong Kong to throw out Hanna’s evil father, stepmother-to-be and step-sister-to-be, leaving Hanna as Queen Bee just as she wants. Hanna has an epiphany, realising that it doesn’t matter all that much if she is the most popular girl at school or just in the top ten, since either way she is still gorgeous, rich and a horrid, spoilt little attention-whore, or a she puts it “fabulous”.Which is a nice little moral message for all the readers. She also makes up with her pervert boyfriend Mike on the proviso that she give him several stripteases, which is just lovely. Aria’s problems with her mother and her mother’s stalker boyfriend, which have vaguely dragged on for 4 books, are resolved in a sentence and dismissed. She also forgives her perfect boyfriend for the whole cheating thing and gets a new baby sister, which she is pleased about even though the newborn is criticised for her poor dress-sense, as some of her knitwear isn’t entirely on-trend. Spencer and her sister are now friends, and they and their mother unhesitatingly forgive their father for that little incident with the 15-year affair leading to an entire secret family who lived next door, some members of which blackmailed, harassed, kidnapped, drugged and tried to murder both his official children, as well as killing the boy both of them were sexually involved with. After all, these things happen. Finally Emily isn’t doing anything at all since she has no personality or life. The only remaining issue (apart from the thousands of unanswered questions which are being ignored) is what happened to Alison, since they never found her body in the fire. Is she still alive? Or is Courtney still alive? Or are both of them still alive? Or is their extra-evil triplet still alive, and set to return to Rosewood and wreak vengeance for some imaginary slight? Frankly I couldn’t care less. This series should have been one book at best, and yet there are still 4 more to come even though Shepard herself promised that this was the last. God only knows what extra layers of nonsense she’ll have to add to stretch this junk that far.

Most Offensively Named Fashion Item
A “Foley + Corinna hobo”
10-second research on Google tells me that “Foley + Corinna” is some type of bland high-fashion clothing brand. Apparently it’s not the only brand to see nothing inappropriate in naming a $500 bag after homeless people. This is why I hate fashion.

Most Worrying Physical Description

[Emily]… forced her flat, flipper-like swimmer’s feet into a pair of red Mary Janes.

I had no idea that excessive swimming could cause genetic mutation in an amphibious direction. Possibly Emily should cut down on the aquatics? Although it’s unlikely this will happen, since the only two things approximating character traits with which she is currently endowed are “sometime-lesbian” and “swimmer”. So if she gives up swimming then the next time she forgets about her lesbianism she will instantly become a completely blank space with strawberry blonde hair.

Most Ridiculous Cod Psychology

“the best way to get over a terrible memory is to reenact it.”

Most Over-Generous Description of the Plot

“They’d missed so many clues. Ali had set a brilliant trap…and they’d walked right into it.”

I think brilliant is ever-so-slightly overstating the case.

Most Ignorant Misunderstanding of European Music

“Aria’s iPod, probably full of weird Scandinavian yodeling bands”

Yes, because that’s all they listen to Iceland.
Least Understanding of Forensics Shown By a Professional

“I was there moments after the house exploded,” he said. “It’s very possible Alison’s body incinerated instantly.”

Instantly? That’s quite a fire.

This book makes the least sense yet of the series, which is remarkable when you consider the competition. The casual ease with which it touches on stolen identity, murder accusations and mental illness is breath-taking in its awfulness. The central plot is so absurd as to be unreadable unless as a failed joke – an evil twin hidden in a mental institution at the whim of her parents even though her character is completely indistinguishable from her non-incarcerated sibling? Said evil twin suddenly being released at a ridiculously inappropriate time and thrown without guidance or guardianship into her dead sibling’s life and a badly-written and oddly inconsistent media spotlight? Police incompetence and journalistic immorality of staggering proportions which is never noticed by the community of privileged legal experts and marketing geniuses? An entire town who questions none of this because they’re too busy going to the mall and attending dances? Please god the next cycle concludes with the revelation that the whole thing has been merely the fever-dream of an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.