Geraldine O'Hagan's Reviews > Pretty Little Secrets: A Pretty Little Liars Collection

** spoiler alert ** Terrible news…I found another Pretty Little Liars book. And since I can’t leave a series incomplete, here we go again…

Initial thought: this book is huge compared to an average PLL book. Plus it contains 4 separate stories. Four. Most of the titles in this series don’t even manage one. There’s no way this will work out well. Plus, it’s Christmas Themed! The horror, the horror!

An intro reminds us that these events are taking place between books 4 and 5, which at least reduces the amount of previous stupid events that I have to remember in case they’re relevant to upcoming events. However it also means that nothing in this book will matter at all, so…
We start with:

Hanna’s Story
Hanna’s undiagnosed eating disorder, presumably exacerbated by her recent stalking by murderous “friend” Mona and the discovery of an old friend’s body mere feet from her own home, is aggravated by her massively insensitive family. Also her current boyfriend Lucas, who I don’t even remember, is going away for a fortnight in the company of a girl who does everything but actually have full intercourse with him in front of her parents, in order to subtly indicate that she is a sexual threat. Plus she’s sexually harassed by a shopping-mall Santa, so overall she’s not having a great time. Poor Hanna. On the other hand, she’s mortally offended when a sales assistant suggests she might be a size 6 (UK size 10). Fuck you, Hanna. It turns out that she is, having gone up by 2 dress sizes in less than fortnight. What the hell is she eating?

Being Hanna, she immediately seeks sexual approval from a man in order to bolster her self-esteem. This leads her to join a cult-like keep-fit class, which is actually a front for an exploitative company hawking over-priced luxury water to idiots. Hanna doesn’t notice this, as she’s too busy competing with a girl whom she has instantly characterised as a desperate slag for the attentions of Vince the personal trainer. Even she acknowledges that this is merely a displacement of her jealousy regarding her boyfriend and the orange temptress he is holidaying with. However that doesn’t stop her from volunteering to wrap presents for the homeless in order to get close to her chosen target. She also discovers that her competition Dinah, although fat and an “alternative” dresser, has a designer handbag and went to a fancy Academy instead of one of those public schools for scum, which means she is more of a threat than Hanna had realised. Because Hanna is a snob and an idiot. She and Dinah then get into an actual physical altercation in the middle of a shopping centre about a dress they both want, which is beyond pathetic. Luckily at that exact moment they stumble upon Hanna’s stepsister Kate engaged in a sordid sexual tryst with Pervy Santa, and immediately bond over having a more pathetic and vulnerable girl to bully. It also turns out than Dinah knew Alison, because who didn’t?

Roughly 30 seconds later, in a shocking turn of events no one could have predicted (unless they were reading the book or had basic human intelligence) it turns out that Dinah is still Hanna’s enemy and has double-crossed her. She and Vince are already deeply in love. Meanwhile Kate turns out to have taken a bunch of photos of Hanna exercising, which for some reason I don’t understand are mortifying blackmail fodder. But she counters with the photographs of Kate kissing a paedophile in a Christmas outfit, which is apparently roughly equivalent in shame value. Checkmate! Then she signs Dinah up to the water-selling cult and lumps her with the cost of 100 crates, presumably using the bank account details she stole from Dinah in a deleted scene. Then Lucas suddenly turns up, having come home from holiday early because Brooke the man-stealer has managed to give herself 3rd-degree-burns from sunbathing and was thus unable to seduce him. Hilarious! Plus Hanna’s dad suddenly remembers to tell her he loves her, and Lucas tells her that she’s so thin that she deserves to eat a whole piece of delicious toast, so everyone lives happily ever after.

Conclusion: Hanna learned nothing. I learned nothing. Why did this happen?

Now a brief interlude from ‘A’, who gloats about all the juicy new blackmail material she has on Hanna. There are 2 problems with this:
1. She doesn’t. How is “Hanna ate a cookie quite fast once” blackmailable info, as is honestly suggested here.
2. Even if the information were good, how does A possess it? Is she reading the book along with me? If she’s the omnipotent narrator it seems a little unfair on the others.

Illogicality swept aside, we move on to:

Emily’s Story
At the Fields house Emily’s cringe-inducingly ill-informed family are trying to “accept” her new sexuality by buying her box-sets of “The L-Word” and offering to set her up with a girl at church who must be her type since “She has really short hair”. She of course is still obsessing over Alison, because that’s all that Emily does. Things are so boring that Emily’s mum attempts to provide a storyline: someone has stolen a Baby Jesus from her nativity display. Yes, seriously. Even worse, top suspects are a bunch of college girls who call themselves the “Merry Elves” because they all work as Santa’s Helpers. Simultaneously, Paedophile Santa has been fired for being a Paedophile, which seems fair. (No mention of the police being informed of him preying on young girls, however). The only solution is for Emily to go undercover as Santa and find out the truth! This is all true, I’m not making it up. Although it does make sense of that casual reference to Emily being a Mall Santa that confused me so much in “Stunning”. It still doesn’t really explain how nobody objected to her appointment though, since even Emily admits she “didn’t really fit the part.” I guess I’m just supposed to accept that Emily’s church is all-powerful when it comes to local mall appointments.

So it’s off to the mall, where Emily spots Dinah and Vince and the reader is reassured that they are miserable and trapped in an eternal hell of cycling water sales. Serves them right for...not liking Hanna, even though she’s a complete bitch? Highlights of Santa’s day include disapproving of a cop who promises his spoilt child gifts which are surely not affordable on a cop’s salary, and having teen boys take the chance to sit on Santa’s lap because they realise she’s a girl, and being Santa in Rosewood is all about sexual harassment. The 4 elves show up late and drunk, and are immediately defined by the external symbols of their lack of conformity: Blue Hair Elf, Dreads and Piercings Elf, Asian Hippy Elf and Joker Tattoo Elf. They are obviously trouble. Asian Hippy already has a smoker’s voice at 16, and Tattoo swears. They’re basically juvenile delinquents, as written by someone who has never met any children. Blue Hair also turns out of course to have known Ali, because see above.

As we can all predict, Emily gradually infiltrates the elves but finds herself bonding with them. Nothing happens for the majority of the story except everyone talks about Ali. Eventually Emily’s mum admits that she doesn’t actually care about Baby J (here representing the Spirit of Christmas), she just wanted him back in order to sell him and buy the family more presents. There is much talk about over-commercialisation and the true meaning of the season, which seems massively hypocritical of Shepard and has no place in the PLL series. Eventually the Elves are caught at one of their pranks, but Emily saves the day by blackmailing the officer in charge of the case, the aforementioned suspiciously wealthy cop. It turns out that he has been moonlighting as a stripper, which everyone takes for granted is both a source of much shame to him and a secret from his wife. Then everyone lives happily ever after and their friendship is never mentioned again.

Interlude #2 ‘A’ waffles on about nothing, in order to try and pretend that this book has anything to do with the ongoing PLL story. Her omniscience remains unexplained.

Aria’s Story
The Montgomery family are going to a Solstice retreat for the holiday season, because they are co bohemian and all. Except for Aria’s mum, who is off to Sweden for some “Volvo-ogling”, which is hopefully a euphemism. However Aria throws a fit about having to share a room in the luxury resort with her family and her father’s girlfriend, and immediately ruins her family’s Christmas by storming off home to sulk in her mother’s empty mansion house instead. Poor baby. Don’t feel too sorry for her though, as she’s been home for barely a few minutes before a sexy Icelandic DJ and architecture student who she dated for 4 months 2 years ago suddenly turns up unannounced because his flight to New York has been cancelled, or something. Sound fair enough.

Aria and Hallbjorn bond over their shared love of the environment and sustainable lifestyles (honestly). He also keeps dodging into alleyways whenever a police car drives past, but Aria is too busy fancying him to worry about that. Eventually he gets bored of waiting for her to ask, and explains that he is wanted by the Icelandic police for having led a protest against the destruction of a puffin sanctuary. Even Aria thinks this sounds a bit weird, but Hallbjorn points out that Iceland is crazy and foreign and not even America, and thus a place where anything could happen. Luckily Aria has the perfect solution: if she marries Hallbjorn he can stay in America forever! After all, she’s spent the whole day kissing him and talking about the environment, what more do you need to base a marriage on?

So it’s off to Atlantic City, to a hugely expensive giant luxury hotel where they kindly tip the porter a whole $10. Such generosity! Then it’s off to a magic show featuring a knock-off Siegfried and Roy who improbably ride silver panthers. To no-one’s surprise other than Aria’s, Hallbjorn the Eco-Warrior isn’t that keen on the act. He has no problem however with an underage girl forging a marriage license, and so the wedding goes ahead in traditional tacky casino style. In grand romantic tradition, Hallbjorn suggests they spend their wedding night trespassing and breaking and entering in other to free 2 wild panthers into Atlantic City, but luckily Aria is able to momentarily halt the plan by pointing out how incredibly stupid and insanely irresponsible it is. She heads back to the hotel to have one of the irrelevant Ali dreams usually experienced by Hanna, in order to try and pretend this book has any actual link with the main PLL series. This gives Hallbjorn all the time he needs to free the panthers after all, thus creating dangerous mayhem. He also takes the opportunity to abandon his new wife without a word, which seems a bad plan since he needs the marriage for legal reasons. Aria immediately confesses to having forged her mother’s signature on the license, leading to it being stamped as void with no further questions and no legal ramifications. Which is convenient.

12-hour-marriage over, Aria heads home to live happily ever after. Hallbjorn turns out to have been a crazy bomber and is arrested and dragged off to be treated as an international terrorist by the US justice system, so I doubt we’ll see him again. Meanwhile Aria goes home and has a nice Christmas holiday with her family, who she isn’t angry with any more because they hadn’t actually done anything wrong. After all the pointless, illegal shenanigans life goes on as normal and everyone lives happily ever after. Except for Hallbjorn. And the panthers. And anyone the panthers attacked. I can’t even hope that they eat Spencer in her story, since I know she’s alive for many books to come. How depressing.

Interlude #3 A reminds us that she hates Aria. And also, Spencer. Which subtly leads us to:

Spencer’s Story
The Hastings family are in Florida for New Year, and Melissa & Spencer agree to put aside the minor quibble they are having about whether or not Melissa’s boyfriend is an insane stalker and murderer (trial pending, Spencer a star witness) in order to have some family time. Spencer immediately finds a tennis played called Colin to obsess over, snootily judging the “groupies” who watch him playing whilst doing the exact same thing herself. However their romantic tennis and picnic date is somewhat spoilt when his “angular” (a good thing?) girlfriend Ramona turns up. Instead of immediately assessing Colin as a cheat and an arse, Spencer decides she has somehow mishandled the situation and goes home to wallow in self-doubt. However a pep talk from newly friendly Melissa, who even Spencer thinks is behaving suspiciously, encourages her to try and seduce him away from his girlfriend via a lot of flouncing about and parading the fact that she has tits, all as advised in Cosmo. Why she should be so desperate to lure Colin, an arrogant womaniser, away from his girlfriend, or why I should care if she does, are not explained. Particularly since the only reason we are given to think that Ramona is a bad girlfriend and deserves this treatment is her disinclination to go along with Colin’s plans for the next day’s activities, which he has made entirely without consulting her. Unless we’re all subscribing to the “a girl should do whatever her man wants without question to keep him happy” school of thought*, surely that’s fair enough.

We do in passing hear a little about the Panther Situation. Apparently one of them has nearly ripped a woman’s arm off. Nobody seems that bothered though. To be fair, it wasn’t one of the PLLs. It was probably a fat woman in high-street clothes, so… We also hear about Mrs. Hastings’ plan to press charges against Ian for “psychological damage”. After all, she did meet him and now he’s been accused of a crime. Although if we’re going to sue over silly things, surely either your daughter who was dating him or your daughter who was being stalked by him have better claims? It would make more sense to sue him for actual damage, seeing as how that barn got all burned down and we’re blaming him for everything this week. Or just wait until he’s been proven guilty of anything, and then take it from there…Meanwhile, back at the plot, Mrs DiLaurentis turns up for no particular reason other than to upset Mrs Hastings about the whole secret affair thing.

It turns out that Melissa is actually tricking Spencer (No way! Really!) and has seduced Colin herself using the magical power of ignoring him. So two awful people go on a date, and I am somehow supposed to feel sorry for Spencer? Mrs Hastings’ advice, due entirely to her being unable to focus on anything other than her own marriage problems, is some guff about fighting for what you want, if he’s the man for you. The man you have known about 2 days, but still… The obvious next move is to pimp yourself out to a 13-yr-old in return for a pretend jellyfish to throw on your sister. Strangely this doesn’t really help matters. Nor does dying Melissa’s hair blue. But agreeing to do a bungee jump when Melissa refuses despite Colin staring her down like a psychopath for having the temerity to disobey him does the trick. However after less than an hour of telling Colin how gorgeous he is Spencer finds that her charming misogynist is 33 and has a wife and child.

Having both been made to look equally stupid, the 2 sisters bond over a revenge plot to spike Colin’s water with Viagra during a crucial tennis tournament. It succeeds without poisoning him, which is nice. Then they agree that maybe they could try and kill each other less often. The end.

* To clarify, I’m not. I hope you’re not either. If you are, we may need to part company at this point. I’m probably not the reviewer for you. I think we should see other people.

Interlude #4 A continues to waffle on about things she has no business knowing about, and assures us repeatedly how super-evil she is. Yawn.

Biggest Overreaction to a Canine Christmas Novelty

“Wait. Were those reindeer antlers? Hanna scooped him up and stared at the two plush stalks on his head. Each was tipped with a tiny jingle bell. “Who did this to you?” Hanna whispered.

Most Fundamental Misunderstanding of the Term “Voluntary”
Hanna:

“Volunteering is mandatory at my school”

Worst Education Effort
Larchmont Academy, where they teach: :

“classes like the History of Couture”

It might actually be a worse school than Rosewood! Although it does probably have less crazy murderers in attendance, so…

Least Awareness of the Divisive Nature of Religion

“Hanna nodded… She could be the good Catholic girl Vince was looking for—well, the good Jewish girl, but what was the difference?”

Creepiest Attempt to Impress a (Catholic) Boy

“Last night, she’d dug out Isabel’s most religious Christmas CDs and learned the
words, including…the Latin version and “O Christmas Tree…in German. She’d also memorized the Hail Mary and the act of contrition Catholic prayers for good measure, but had stopped herself before ordering a rosary from Amazon”

Best Summation of Hanna
Dinah:

“I can tell you’re a fickle bitch.”

“Mr. The Only Interesting Thing About Me Is That I’m Irish… had doughy features, red hair, was wearing a T-shirt that said DUBLIN on it, and was drinking—of course—a Guinness.”

Most Sheltered Person
Emily’s brother, who had:

“never knowingly talked to anyone gay in his life”

Where the hell’s he living?

Weirdest Expression

“I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

I have never heard anyone say this, but the internet assures me that they do.

Most Boring Relationship
Aria and Hallbjorn:

“spent the whole morning playing the green version of “I spy,” pointing out the vegetarian restaurants…many recycling bins, and…that some of the buses ran on natural gas. Hallbjorn had told her that he’d recently dedicated himself to saving the environment. He looked so sexy and earnest while talking about carbon emissions, and Aria found herself wanting to prove just how green she was, too.”

Nowt wrong with being socially conscious, but seriously…

Most Inane Sentence

“All girls like bling”

Or

“You have the most amazing skin”

Most Unreasoned Assessment of a Panther Escape

“I can’t believe someone could do such a thing … Do you think it’s al-Qaeda?”

I’d say…probably not.

Least Tasteful House Design

“a mix between the White House and Cinderella’s castle at Disney World”

Most Arrogant Opening Remark
Colin to Spencer:

“Are you a new member of my cheering section?”

Luckily for him Spencer “Likes his confidence”. ¬If I had an eye-roll gif, I’d insert it now.

Worst Pun

“She had a tennis date with a hot guy, and she already knew what the score would be: love–love.”

Shut up Sara

Most Terrifying Quote
Sara Shepard:

“I basically see the pretty little liars as extensions of myself.”

I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she’s taking the piss. No one is that awful.

So basically the usual brands, boy-smells and bitching. Each character mistakenly thinks someone is watching them at least once per story in order to remind you: isn’t this series about a crazy stalker or summat? Everybods acts stupidly and nobody learns