I like to read.

2nd book of 2012: Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard I read this book in a 24 hour time span.  I absolutely love the show, so I thought I’d give the book a try.  It’s sometimes difficult to reconcile the character’s physical descriptions in the book with what I know about the actor’s that play them (for the most part, any brunettes in the show are blonde in the book and vice-versa) and some characters from the book are not familiar (such as, Emily has a sister that she shares a room with).  The writing of Shepard is not of the highest quality.  Much of the dialogue reads like any teen drama fiction you could pick up off the shelf.  The surprises come when you get to some of the subject matter.  The characters are much more realistic in that they are teens that drink, smoke, swear, and try to have sex with their boyfriends (not the girls of the Sweet Dreams books I read when I was a young, impressionable girl!).  I like that about these girls.  And it makes me a little sad that these realistic characteristics are almost completely scrubbed out of their television alter-egos.  My favorite line came from Hanna, when trying to figure out why her boyfriend would join a virginity club and not want to sleep with her, she wonders if he is “afraid of vaginas”.  I did actually laugh out loud.  Honestly. A lot of the pleasure I got from reading the book had more to do with the fact that the story was familiar.  It was like reading a director’s cut of the first few episodes of the television series.  So ultimately I have to say that if it weren’t for the tv show, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the book that much.  Saying that, the show does exist, so I probably will pick up the second book and read that one too.

2nd book of 2012: Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepard

I read this book in a 24 hour time span.  I absolutely love the show, so I thought I’d give the book a try.  It’s sometimes difficult to reconcile the character’s physical descriptions in the book with what I know about the actor’s that play them (for the most part, any brunettes in the show are blonde in the book and vice-versa) and some characters from the book are not familiar (such as, Emily has a sister that she shares a room with). 

The writing of Shepard is not of the highest quality.  Much of the dialogue reads like any teen drama fiction you could pick up off the shelf.  The surprises come when you get to some of the subject matter.  The characters are much more realistic in that they are teens that drink, smoke, swear, and try to have sex with their boyfriends (not the girls of the Sweet Dreams books I read when I was a young, impressionable girl!).  I like that about these girls.  And it makes me a little sad that these realistic characteristics are almost completely scrubbed out of their television alter-egos.  My favorite line came from Hanna, when trying to figure out why her boyfriend would join a virginity club and not want to sleep with her, she wonders if he is “afraid of vaginas”.  I did actually laugh out loud.  Honestly.

A lot of the pleasure I got from reading the book had more to do with the fact that the story was familiar.  It was like reading a director’s cut of the first few episodes of the television series.  So ultimately I have to say that if it weren’t for the tv show, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the book that much.  Saying that, the show does exist, so I probably will pick up the second book and read that one too.

1 month ago
  1. iliketoread posted this