Review: Unbelievable by Sara Shepard

Unbelievable
Author: Sara Shepard
Series: Pretty Little Liars, #4

Summary: FOUR PRETTY LITTLE LAIRS' CHARMED LIVES HAVE TURNED INTO LIVING NIGHTMARES.

Emily's been shipped off to Iowa to live with her uberconservative cousins. Aria's boyfriend is behind bars--because of her. Spencer's afraid she was involved in Ali's murder. But Hanna's fate is far worse: She's clinging to life in the hospital because she knew too much.

If these girls don't start listening to me, Hanna's going to look like the lucky one. -A

Review

NOTE: This review contains spoilers of the previous Pretty Little Liars books as well as Unbelievable. If you have not read this series, I suggest skipping this review and reading my review of Pretty Little Liars instead. If you have read the series or you don't mind spoilers then you may proceed! :)

I don't even know where to begin with this review! There is so much that happens between the beginning and the very end of this book, it's hard not to mention some of the things that happen to the girls without giving in to spoilers. But... I'm going to do my best not to give away too much. Especially the juicy parts.

If you've never read this series, I'll give you a little background info. so you'll have an idea as to what this series is about. Alison DeLaurentis was the it girl as Rosewood Day School. She was insanely beautiful and popular and all the girls hated her, yet wanted to be her. That is except for her four best friends: Spencer Hastings, Aria Montgomery, Hanna Marin, and Emily Fields. These girls did everything together: have fun together, get into trouble together, kept secrets together (and some juicy secrets at that). You see, Ali was beloved, but she was also hated by many. She made fun of everyone and was an all around bitch. She was a master manipulator and could blackmail anyone. She liked to dangle secrets that she knew about each of the girls over their heads, always threatening that she could tell the others. But mostly Ali was fun. She could get you to do things you wouldn't normally in your wildest dreams even consider, and she brought you out of your shell. But then Ali started acting strange: private phone calls and texts, secret meetings with older boys, hanging out with older girls.. Emily, Spencer, Hanna and Aria were terrified Ali was going to leave them behind... and then she did. But not the way they all thought. Ali was murdered. And three years later, the girls are still dealing with past secrets they just want to leave behind...

No one can wear a mask for very long. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

This quote is the epigraph to Unbelievable and it is so fitting to what happens in this installment. I'll go ahead and let you in on a little secret: A. Is. Revealed! I know, I know. It's all so exciting right? Well let me tell you a little bit about what happens in the days leading up to the big reveal..

Hanna is hit by a car, presumably A's doing, and is now in the hospital fighting for her life. Emily is in Iowa with her insanely strict and incredibly conservative aunt and uncle and her cousins, though from the looks of things it may not be as bad as she thought (or it could be worse), and she's having a little trouble in paradise with Maya.. Aria is stuck living with her father Byron and his girlfriend Meredith (the woman he cheated on her mother with) because her (now ex) boyfriend Sean kicked her out after he caught her making out with her English teacher, Ezra Fitz (who is now in jail because Sean turned him in to the cops) which all happens after Aria's mother kicked her out because Aria knew for three years that Byron was having an affair with Meredith. And Spencer is slowly going insane trying to recall the events of the night that Ali disappeared, and the images she has remembered so far points her to having murdered Alison herself.

What transpires between this moment within the book and the ending is a multitude of crazy events, pointing in all different directions as to who A really is and who killed Alison. I'll give you another spoiler here (because I don't think it really spoils much): Hanna does survive, except she can't remember the moments leading up to getting hit by an SUV, or the 'accident' itself. All she remembers is receiving a dress for Mona's party and waking up in a hospital. She can't recall the romantic moment she had with Lucas and she can't recall ever knowing who A is. All she knows is that Mona is suddenly her best friend again and she couldn't be happier.

The ending of this book came as a little bit of a shock, although not entirely since I've seen the television show and it follows along with the book in some areas, so the big reveal of who A is wasn't a huge surprise to me. However, some of the events leading up to the reveal, and even after, were new to me. I'm really excited to start Wicked because you know that A, be it the same or different person, is still out there, as well as Ali's killer. I'm anxious to learn what really happened that night after Ali and Spencer had their huge fight and just what the DeLaurentis family is hiding. Overall, I think this is the best book in the series so far, but I'm finally catching up in the book series to where I left off in the tv show so I'm hoping to have some big surprises in store throughout the rest of the series.

I rate this book: