Ruthless - Sara Shepard

Ruthless by Sara Shepard

Release Date (UK): 6 December 2011
Publisher: Harper Teen
Pages: 341

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For years scandal has rocked Rosewood, Pennsylvania--and high school seniors Aria, Emily, Hanna, and Spencer have always been at the center of the drama. They've lost friends, been targeted by a ruthless stalker named A, and narrowly escaped death. And it's not over yet. Aria's love life is on the fritz. Emily's exploring her wild side. Hanna's kissing the enemy. And someone from Spencer's past--someone she never thought she'd see again--is back to haunt her. But none of that compares to what happened last spring break. It's their darkest secret yet and guess who found out? Now A is determined to make them pay for their crime, and the only thing scarier than A is the fear that maybe, just maybe, they deserve what's coming to them.

I adore the whole Pretty Little Liars franchise; I enjoy the books and love the TV series, so when Ruthless came out I had to get my copy straight away!  As always, the four girls are constantly running into problems left, right and centre and A is never far away. 

Ruthless is very much Spencer’s story and we get to see a very different side to her, one that we haven’t seen before.  Normally she has been the smart, consciences girl but in this book this almost gets turned on its head – she takes risks and uses other people to get where she wants to be, never mind the consequences; she becomes selfish.

For the other girls life is still very complicated.  Emily meets a new love interest but as always everything is not as it seems and only causes her more heartache.  And Hanna becomes involved in a Romeo and Juliet relationship, but we all know how that ends!

Aria's story isn’t very predominant in Ruthless, though I can say that Ezra does return.  I was really excited by this at first - I am a huge ‘ezria’ shipper of the TV series, but in the book his return failed to meet my expectations.  He’s very different to the character he was when he left; in this book he is very needy and impatient and in one particular scene he made me fall out with him big time!  I was actually really surprised with myself when I began to like Noel in the end.  But, this book has left me wondering what happened to Aria in Iceland?  I think I read somewhere that the next one will be more focused on Aria’s secrets, so maybe we will find out!

‘A’ is just as ‘A’ always it – full of surprises and just when the girls think they know who it is, they are forced to question everything they believed.  We’re onto the third ‘A’ now so it could be just about anyone.

Overall I will always continue to read the PLL series because they are my guilty pleasure, but in this case I did feel that, especially in some parts of the book ,it had been written just because ...  Because the TV show and the books are so popular so this would be a way to get more money out of it, etc.  But all good things must come to an end, and I would prefer that it ended on a high then for it to be strung out and become pointless.