Pretty Little Liars #11: Stunning

** spoiler alert ** This is the eleventh book in the Pretty Little Liars book series, and the third book in the third story arc. Stunning is mostly about Emily’s secret that she had a baby, and how she gave the baby up for adoption. This was only hinted at and briefly touched upon in both Twisted and Ruthless, but the books didn’t go very deep into it until now. I liked Emily’s baby storyline as I felt like it was interesting and deepened Emily’s character. They didn’t give Emily’s character many big storylines in the television adaptation, so I liked how they gave Emily a strong storyline in the third story arc. I think that it was smart to give Emily a heavy storyline like this as it’s a strong secretive, scandalous storyline that surpasses the intensity of previous storylines in previous story arcs, which is something you want to do in a long-running book series. This book does a decent job at raising the stakes of the overall series. One of my least favorite aspects of the television adaptation is the romanticization of Aria and Ezra’s student/teacher relationship, so I was satisfied when the depiction in the books moved away from romanticizing the relationship and began to focus on highlighting that Ezra was not a good person. I liked seeing this edgier side of Spencer in this book, especially when she blackmailed Harper towards the end of this novel. I liked this story, it still wasn’t as strong as the books in the first two story arcs, but I like that it raised the stakes and was entertaining as a singular story in the series.

SO I love the story Sara Shepard has spun between these girls and their personal stalker. You get to know each individual character as the series progresses. Shepard does a fantastic job of throwing in twists and turns you never see coming, but no matter how many issues and plots are going on in one book, they all get solved at one point or another. This book is one of those in between books. It was good. Don't get me wrong. Aria, Spencer, Hanna, and Emily all have their individual problems and their big problem with A. I was a little disappointed with the lack of interaction from Spencer. She was so distant in this book. I felt it kind of focused too much on Hanna and more on Emily. But I guess at this point, their stories are alittle bigger. I LOVED IT EITHER WAY.

This series is enthralling

The pretty little liars are back and full of secrets. When Aria finds out that Noel's family isn't quite as perfect athey may seem, she has to choose whether or not to keep the secret from Noel and potentially the world. Hanna turns out she has a little A in her as she turns into quite the stalker in this book. Unfortunately this doesn't work out so well for our little liar. Emily works hard to keep her secret safe from her family but A doesn't make it easy for her. Spencer meets a potential friend at an early admission banquet but that friendship doesn't turn out the way Spencer had planned. Spencer can't seem to get that friendship right-with a little help from A of course. Since the show came out I have been enjoying this series. This book was a good one but I haven't been feeling the last few books in this series. Don't get me wrong, they are still suspenseful and interesting but I think we need to get more than what we've been given to keep me interested. Nothing in it was very surprising and some of the stories got a little dull but all in all it was worth the read and I recommend it to any PLL fans out there.

This book was just plain weird. RANDOM THOUGHTS 1) Some of the plot points just felt really forced. 2) Aria's story line was absolutely unnecessary. 3) I predicted the ending when I was about 150 pages in. Which is never a good thing. 4) Hanna spent the whole book trying to get Mike back - that didn't interest me at all. 5) I liked Spencer's story line but I normally love anything to do with Spencer...so that was a let down. 6) 'The flash of blonde hair and the high-pitched giggle'. Seriously... is there any need to repeat those two lines over and over again? 7) I just felt that there wasn't any type of character development at all. With that said... I still find these books addicting :\ BURNED - DECEMBER 4th 2012

I just want to see how this nightmare ends!