A bestselling series of young adult thrillers, Pretty Little Liars follows four high school girls (Spencer Hastings, Hanna Marin, Aria Montgomery and Emily Fields) whose clique falls apart after the mysterious disappearance of their lead queen bee, Alison DiLaurentis. three years later, the four girls start receiving strange text messages from someone who refers to herself as “a”. The texts threaten to reveal the girls’ deepest secrets, things they thought only Alison knew.
Published in 2006, Pretty Little Liars launched the series and marked Sara Shepard’s debut as a teen author. The novel is loosely based on Shepard’s experiences growing up in suburban Philadelphia, although, thankfully, she says she never had a serious problem with a stalker. After the success of the first book, Pretty Little Liars expanded into a 16-book series with two companion novels.
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Novels deal with serious topics, such as bullying, underage drinking, infidelity, eating disorders, mental health issues, unexpected pregnancy, death, violence, and murder. the series is divided into four story arcs, each consisting of four books. each arc tells the story of a different “a”. Throughout, Spencer, Hanna, Aria, and Emily get into trouble due to their unwillingness to own up to the truth.
Warning: The following article contains spoilers for the Pretty Little Liars series.
who are the main characters in pretty little liars?
spencer hastings
spencer hastings is the winner of the bunch. She is highly competitive and constantly strives to be the best at everything she does, from aspiring to be named valedictorian of her class to standing out as the star player on her field hockey team. She comes from a prominent and wealthy family that has lived in Rosewood for a long time and is well known in the community. Ella’s family tends to pay more attention to and favor Ella’s older sister Melissa, which frustrates Spencer. Spencer is tall and thin and dresses in a preppy style. in the books, she is described as having wavy blonde hair, blue eyes, a small upturned nose, and a pointed chin.
hanna marin
hanna marin is one of the most popular girls in school, but behind closed doors, she struggles with an eating disorder. she is very insecure about her appearance and worries about what others think of her, especially since she used to outweigh her when she was younger. Hanna is impulsive, flighty, and can be a bit of an airhead. Her parents are divorced and she doesn’t get along with her stepmother or her stepsister. Others see Hanna as extremely beautiful. she has long dark brown hair and hazel eyes.
aria montgomery
aria montgomery is the artsy girl in school some people call “weird,” but that doesn’t really bother her. Aria is bubbly, independent, and prefers to march to the beat of her own drum. she is a vegetarian, she loves art, she loves making short films and she loves to travel. just like aria she doesn’t quite fit in at her high school, her family looks weird in rosewood. After Alison disappeared, Aria moved with her family to Iceland for three years. Aria is described as having shoulder-length black hair and blue eyes. she is tall with a slim, ballerina-like physique.
emily fields
emily fields is the shy girl of the group, and also the sweetest. she is very empathetic, compassionate towards others, and very forgiving, often to the extreme. she loves with all her heart, and sometimes that love of hers blinds her and makes her a little naive. Emily is bisexual, which her family doesn’t want to accept at first, but eventually they give up. competitive swimming is a big part of emily’s life. in fact, nothing so much that her auburn hair is usually slightly greenish from all the chlorine in it. muscular for her athletic lifestyle, she has a freckled face and green eyes.
alison dilaurentis
alison dilaurentis was the most popular girl at rosewood day high school until she disappeared. At the beginning of the Pretty Little Liars series, everyone thinks that they have found Alison’s body and that she is dead. but the truth is much more shocking. Alison actually had a secret twin sister who she switched places with and eventually killed. Alison was always the mean girl in high school and is a very vindictive person with a manipulative personality. Alison has wavy honey blonde hair and blue eyes. Currently in the series, her hair is dyed brown to hide her identity.
what happens in pretty little liars?
arch 1
pretty little liars
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The first novel features high school students Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna. every girl has her own secrets of hers. Spencer is developing feelings for her sister’s boyfriend. Aria has an affair with her English teacher, Ezra Fitz. Emily has a crush on the new girl in school, Maya St. Germain and Hanna may be the popular girl in school, but she’s secretly shoplifting and battling an eating disorder. When the girls start receiving text messages threatening to reveal their secrets, they all think she might be Alison, her friend who disappeared three years earlier while they were at a sleepover together. So when Alison’s body is found buried under the gazebo at her old house, the girls are shocked. The novel ends with the Four Liars receiving a text message at Alison’s funeral that reads, “I’m still here bitches. And I know everything. -a.”
Flawless
In the second novel in the series, A continues to harass the “Liars”, Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna. She threatens each of the girls separately with revealing her secrets if they don’t do as she says. the liars try to keep their secrets hidden and do what they say while trying to discover the identity of their stalker. things come to a head at a charity dance party, where the girls are sure she will attend. Spencer becomes convinced that Toby is a, and after Emily spends time with Toby, she becomes convinced that he is the one who killed Alison. However, before they can act on her suspicions, Toby commits suicide. Emily gets the final proof that Toby wasn’t a: another text from a telling her that she’s not done until she says it is.
perfect
after aria falls out with her family at the end of flawless, she becomes homeless and moves in with her boyfriend, sean. However, Aria continues to see Ezra, but that relationship ends when Sean reports it to the police. emily wants to go to the police about a, and in response, emily to the whole school. meanwhile, spencer comes to terms with the fact that he has fainting spells and fears she was the one who killed alison. After Hanna and Mona get into an argument, Hanna finds solace in an “uncool” boy named Lucas. then he gets a text from a and recognizes the number. But before Hanna can reveal A’s identity, he runs her over. the novel ends with the liars receiving a chilling text: “she knew too much. -a”.
incredible
Due to a head injury, hanna loses her memory and no longer knows the identity of a. emily’s family finally accepts her sexuality, but just as her relationship with maya is falling apart. Aria takes an art class with Jenna and begins to suspect that she might be one. Meanwhile, Spencer is still worried that she is the one who might have killed Alison, but then becomes convinced that it was actually the work of his sister Melissa. when hanna’s memory finally returns, he realizes that her cute friend of hers has been a friend of hers all along. Mona tries to convince Spencer to turn Melissa over to the police for killing Alison, but then Spencer gets a text from Emily, telling her that Mona is one. Mona reveals that she first planned to blame Spencer for Alison’s death, but then decided to blame Melissa. Mona tries to convince Spencer to join her. A fight breaks out between them, ending with Spencer accidentally pushing Mona off a cliff to her death.
arch 2
evil
is a new arc in the pretty little liars series, and a new one has sprung up. Now the girls are convinced that Ian is really Alison’s killer, but he denies it. Emily falls in love with a boy, a Christian singer named Isaac. Hanna’s rivalry with Ella’s stepsister Kate Randall is heating up. Aria develops feelings for a man she met at an art exhibit, who ends up dating her mother. and Spencer begins to suspect that she is adopted. At the end of the novel, the girls find Ian’s body in the woods behind Spencer’s house. when they return with the police, the body is gone.
assassin
it appears someone else has been framed for alison’s death, ian is not the killer. the girls begin to wonder what the new A’s intentions are. Does he really want to harass them or does he just want to solve the mystery of Alison’s death? After discovering that Jason Dilaurentis, Alison’s older half-brother, was a patient at Radley Sanitarium, Hanna, Aria, and Emily now think that Jason had something to do with Alison’s death. Aria sees a fire behind Spencer’s barn and notices someone trapped by the flames. she comes to the rescue and makes a shocking discovery: it’s alison.
no heart
all the liars insist they saw alison in the fire, but no one believes them. she sends emily to lancaster, where emily comes to believe that alison was not the girl they found under the gazebo. Aria goes to see a medium, who gives Aria a message from Alison that reads, “Ali killed Ali.” hanna’s father sends her to a clinic fearing her eating disorder will return. there, hannah meets a girl named iris and becomes convinced that iris had something to do with alison’s death, spencer discovers that her father had an affair, and alison is actually her half-sister, at the end of the book, spencer, hanna, aria, and emily realize that a has forced each of them to believe that a different person is responsible for alison’s death. Ultimately, a man named Billy Ford is arrested for murdering Alison.
searched
In the last book of the second arc, the Liars are shocked to discover that Alison had a twin sister. Named Courtney, Alison’s twin has spent most of her life in a mental health facility, and her family has kept her existence a secret. jason dilaurentis was never a patient at radley, he was visiting his sister there. “courtney” then reveals to the girls that she is actually alison. The real Courtney pretended to be Alison the night of her mysterious disappearance, and it was Courtney who was murdered. Alison tried to tell her family who she was, but they didn’t believe her and sent her back to the institution. But the twists keep coming: It turns out that Alison switched places with Courtney a long time ago, and she was actually Courtney the girls became friends with years ago. alison is the real killer… and she now she wants to kill the rest of the girls. they are able to escape. At the end of the novel, Alison is assumed to have died when the house burned down, but her body was never found.
arch 3
crooked
When the four liars are on vacation together in jamaica, emily sees a girl she suspects might be alison. As the details of what happened on that trip to Jamaica slowly unravel, it is revealed that the Liars “got rid” of the girl they thought she was Alison. then the girls start getting messages from a new one and think that alison is still alive. The girls see on the news that the body of a teenage girl, Tabitha Clark from New Jersey, was found floating in the water in Jamaica. The cops think her death was an accident, but the liars realize they killed an innocent girl.
ruthless
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The stress is getting to Spencer, and she starts seeing hallucinations of Tabitha and her roommate Kelsey, who she framed for drug possession to stay out of trouble. spencer begins to believe that kelsey is a. Emily meets Kelsey at a party and they immediately hit it off. But when Emily confesses that Spencer framed her for drug possession, Kelsey overdoses and is sent to the reservation for treatment. There, they learn that Tabitha was also a patient on the reservation.
impressive
When a woman named Gayle arrives in Rosewood, the Liars begin to suspect she might be one. but she murders gayle, and then the girls find out that ella gayle was tabitha’s stepmother. At Gayle’s funeral, Tabitha’s father announces that his daughter’s autopsy showed no trace of alcohol. This means that Tabitha was murdered and he plans to reopen the investigation into her death.
burnt
As they begin to uncover clues, the Liars are led to believe that A is more than one person this time. Ella Aria befriends a boy named Graham, but then she realizes that he is Tabitha’s ex-boyfriend. the girls begin to suspect that graham is working with naomi under cover of a. Just as they plan to clear up Tabitha’s death, the four girls discover that they weren’t responsible for his murder: he was the one who beat Tabitha to death.
arch 4
crushed
Rosewood Day Prom is just a few weeks away and the Liars are stressed. they are still trying to figure out who it could be. As Hanna, Spencer and Emily become convinced that A is Aria’s boyfriend, Noel, Aria doesn’t want to believe it. Spencer meets Chase, who writes on her blog about theories surrounding Alison Delaurentis. She helps Spencer gather more information about Alison. At the prom, Aria confronts Noel about Alison. Noel admits that he loves Alison but doesn’t know if she’s still alive. The next day, Hanna gets a text telling her to go to the shed behind Rosewood Day. There, she finds Noel tied up. a texts the liars and tells them they haven’t made any progress.
deadly
The Liars go to the police, trying to convince them that Alison is still alive. when they share a’s text messages, police dismiss the evidence, saying all the texts came from their own phones. Alison eventually shows up again and tries to kill the girls, telling them that the police will think they killed themselves because they missed her so much. It turns out that Alison was one with the help of Nick, her boyfriend. The police rescue the girls and catch Nick, but not Alison.
toxic
high school is out and it’s summer again in rosewood. but a is still out there. Even though the girls seem to be putting their lives back together, the threat of forever looms. Aria is becoming famous for her paintings. hanna will star in a movie about her life. Spencer has started a campaign against bullying. Emily is reconnecting with the girl who stole her heart. and then, just as they start to feel safe, she goes back to take all four of them down once and for all.
ruthless
everyone thinks the liars are the ones who killed alison, and they’re awaiting their trial. Emily fakes his death so she can secretly pursue Alison. The other girls, unaware of Emily’s plan, lose control in her absence. Just as their lives are falling apart, Alison resurfaces and is arrested. finally, the liars are free from one forever.
pretty little liars companion novels
little secrets
little secretstakes us back to year three, to a winter break no one has ever heard of. what happens on winter break stays on winter break, right? think again.
ali’s pretty lies
This is the prequel to Pretty Little Liars, set in the months before Alison’s disappearance.
Who stars in the TV adaptation of Pretty Little Liars?
Pretty Little Liarswas adapted as a television show, starring Troian Bellisario as Spencer Hastings, Lucy Hale as Aria Montgomery, Ashley Benson as Hanna Marin, Shay Mitchell as Emily Fields, Sasha Pieterse as Alison dilaurentis and janel parrish as mona vanderwaal. The series ran for a total of 160 episodes, starting in 2010 and ending in 2017. In 2019, a spin-off series called The Perfectionists loosely based on Shephard’s 2014 novel The Perfectionists, i>was released.