Review: Perfect by Sara Shepard

Perfect
Author: Sara Shepard
Series: Pretty Little Liars, #3

Summary: IN ROSEWOOD, PENNSYLVANIA, FOUR PERFECT-LOOKING GIRLS AREN'T NEARLY AS PERFECT AS THEY SEEM.

Aria can't resist her forbidden ex. Hanna is on the verge of losing her BFF. Emily is freaking out over a simple kiss. And Spencer can't keep her hands off anything that belongs to her sister.

Lucky me. I know these pretty little liars better than they know themselves. But it's hard keeping all of their secrets to myself. They better do as I say . . . or else! -A

Review

NOTE: If you haven't read the Pretty Little Liars series, I suggest skipping this review. It contains spoilers from not only the preview two books, but also Perfect. If you don't want to be spoiled about this series then I suggest reading my review of the first book in the series Pretty Little Liars instead. If you have read the series or you don't mind the spoilers, then you may proceed! :)

"Have you ever had a friend turn on you? Just totally transform from someone you thought you knew into someone . . . else? I'm not talking your boyfriend from nursery school who grows up and gets gawky and ugly and zitty, or your friend from camp whom you've got nothing to say to when she comes to visit you over Christmas break, or even a girl in your clique who suddenly breaks away and turns goth or into one of those granola Outward Bound kids. No. I'm talking about your soul mate. The girl you know everything about. Who knows everything about you. One day she turns around and is a completely different person. Well, it happens. It happened in Rosewood."

Just when you think it can't get any worse... it does. For Spencer Hasting, Aria Montgomery, Hanna Marin, and Emily Fields, Rosewood was the it place to live. Being best friends with Alison DeLaurentis was even better. They were the girls of Rosewood Day School and had everything at their disposal. Then something goes terribly wrong. The Jenna Thing happens, setting all the girls on edge. Spencer and Ali begin fighting about everything. Ali holds each of the girls secrets, secrets that only she knows, over their heads, threatening to tell the other girls about them. Ali begins to get secret texts from someone, and doesn't share the information with her supposed best friends. She begins hanging out with older girls, slowly leaving Emily, Hanna, Aria, and Spencer behind. So when Ali disappears one night, of course they're upset and heartbroken, but there's a small part of them that feels, well, relieved. That is until three years later, her body is found under a slab of concrete behind the house that she used to call home. Now the girls are shaken to the core. Who could have killed their best friend, Ali? The girl that they all loved and idolized. The girl that brought them all together. The girl who got them all out of their little shells and helped them to grow and have scandalous fun...

Some answers about the night that Alison DeLaurentis just cannot be found. The one person who saw her just minutes before that fateful incident cannot remember it at all. Of course she can't tell the others about this: they'll all start assuming that it was her that killed Ali. But slowly Spencer begins regaining her memory of that night: the fight that she and Ali had just before Ali's disappearance and what the contents of the argument were about. Spencer begins to fear that it was, in fact, her that killed Ali that night, and blocked the memory out of her mind so as not to relive that horrific event. And after stealing her sister's paper and using it as her own, her teacher decides to nominate her for a Golden Orchid award (the most prestigious writing award at a high school level). Everyone (classmates, family, friends, teachers, newspaper journalists.. everyone) is fawning over her. But her sister isn't too happy about it, considering it was her paper she stole. And neither is the life-ruining, vindictive A..

Hanna and her best friend Mona Vanderwaal's friendship is slowly falling apart. It doesn't help that on the night of their Frenniversary, Hanna has to bail because Officer Wilden wants to speak with her and the other girls about the night Ali disappeared. Then a terrible accident (caused by A, making it not an accident at all) happens to cause Mona to completely unfriend Hanna altogether. Hanna's world starts spiraling downward. On the upside, she begins hanging out with a guy named Lucas who she at first thought was an uber-dork, but is slowly finding that dorkiness can be quite charming. On the downside, she has discovered who A truly is, and A is not happy about it...

Then there's poor Emily, going through a sexuality crisis. Just when she was slowly beginning to get comfortable with the idea that she's gay, A ruins it all. Now her family has more or less shunned her, and if she doesn't go through with the "gay-away" Tree Tops program, she's going to be shipped off to Iowa to live with her sex-hating, super conservative aunt and uncle and their children.

And what's going on with Aria? Well... let's just say she's having the worst luck ever. She's been kicked out of her mom's house, her (now ex) boyfriend Sean hates her because of A's consistent sabotage and the fact that she just can't seem to stay away Ezra Fitz, or should I say Mr. Fitz, her English teacher.

What is revealed about A and the night Ali disappeared? Well, I can't give that away now can I?? I will say that it's slowly starting to point towards a certain someone. Someone closer than you think. And the fact that this person seems to be slowly going crazy is almost enough to confirm it, but we all know that nothing is what it seems the town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania. Especially when it comes to Alison DeLaurentis and her disappearance/murder. 

The third installment of the Pretty Little Liars series continues on with more drama, more suspense, more mysteries, and more "Oh my god! Did that really happen???" moments. You'll be hanging on every word, every character description, every scene description, trying to discover who the real A is and who killed Alison, and as soon as you finish, you'll be dying for the next book. It's impossible to just read one of these books, because Sara always leaves off with a killer cliffhanger or note from A, saying something like "it's not over yet! It has only begun, and if you don't do what I say, you'll regret it." I highly recommend that you pick up the Pretty Little Liars books. If you watch the tv show, you'll definitely love the book series.

I rate this book: