Four Pretty Liars and Been Very Bad Girls

Flawless: A Pretty Little Liars Novel (book #2) by Sara Shepard

Picking up where we left our Pretty Little Liars, Flawless is the sequel to the first introductory book.  And if you thought things were going badly in the first book, they just keep getting worse for Aria, Hanna, Spencer, and Emily.  A is still the big bad wolf, who knows everything somehow and is about to ruin everything that each girl’s lies has perfectly knit together.  Even though the girls know that Alison is gone, somehow her deceitfulness and meanness continues to move the girls like puppets for Alison’s play.  Even though the girls aren’t friends anymore, they are being brought together by their one big lie and secret. 

Spencer has ended her relationship with her family by kissing her sister’s boyfriend, Aria has a secret about her dad that would split her family up for good, Emily has a crush, but not a normal crush, it’s on her new friend Maya, and Hanna is in a world of mess with her boyfriend Sean, her mom and the cops.  Everything is crashing around the girls as A sits back and laughs. 

Things I liked: I usually dislike when an author uses the title of the book in an obviously annoying way.  But, Shepard throws the word Flawless into a sentence and the way it’s used, makes the audience glide right over it.  Then later, you get to thinking and remember that, oh, she described Hanna’s teeth as Flawless, nice…

In Aria’s AP English class the discussion turns to “unreliable narrators.”  I was never an English major, nor did I think about this type of a concept in high school or college, but when this concept was introduced to me in this book, a light bulb went off over my head.  I want to research this concept.  I love it!  Of course Aria starts to think about this in her current situation, about how Ezra just told her they needed to start over and forget their few passionate moments in the bar bathroom, but the audience does not need to overlook this very obvious insight into the Narrator of these books.  There is a very interesting thought blooming in my head about what’s going on with these characters and the narrator.

 Here are a few plot lines that are developing and I can’t wait to see what happens.  Beware, if you haven’t read any of these books, some of this could be seen as spoilers even though I’m not giving much detail.  From this point on there could be spoilers.

Aria and Sean?  What an excellent idea!  I love it, when they met in the rain, I thought Shepard did a great job of staging a great romance.  I really do wish the whole Aria and Ezra (otherwise known as her AP English teacher) idea goes away, it’s ridiculous and that could get him sent to jail, I don’t care if Aria acts like a college student, she’s not!

 I love the idea of Spencer and Andrew.  I wish she could see that he’s not trying to compete with her, he’s just trying to be sweet and hook up!  I wonder why she has blinders on it and can’t see how thoughtful and caring he is.  With a hint of obsessiveness, you know with the thought of him driving by her house several times a day “just to check on her.”  It’s a little creepy in a teenage stalkerish kind of way.

As you can see, I enjoyed the second book better than the first.  I didn’t realize that I liked it as much as I did until I started writing this blog, now I can’t wait to get book #3!  If anyone has these books that I can borrow, I would love it!  I don’t want to buy them (sorry Sara Shepard, I’m cheap and trying to put my husband through college, gotta save money where I can), and the library only has this book out of the series.  Well, keep reading my friends!