sara shepard the perfectionists book series

It follows the same formula as her Pretty Little Liars series: a bunch of teenage girls are brought together by some unknown driving force who tries to frame them for something and is essentially a shit-stirrer, and they try to solve it all on their own by breaking into places because the cops don't believe them and they can't tell their parents. Most of my issues with this book, stemmed from the usual hallmarks of Shepard's novels. I don't enjoy being told a character is smart and not being shown it, if they truly are then their actions should prove it. Throughout the entire book she tries to prove her intelligence but is shot down by her own stupid decisions. Ava is a gorgeous girl who we are told is also very smart.

One thing I disliked about this book was the character of Ava - not her, but the air about her. Shepard didn't leave us with much information on her, but she built suspense so well that I am sure she has something big coming in the next book. I was most fascinated and eager to learn more about her, her past and what exactly the headaches mean. Parker used to be the 'popular' girl, pretty and perfect until some horrific incident left her with horrid facial scars, forcing her to wear a hoodie all the time and fall victim to terrible headaches. The stand-out character for me was definitely Parker.

For the first three quarters of the book I had no idea who was who and I struggled to put faces to names. My issue with having such a large number of sixteen year old female characters is that it was at times very difficult to distinguish between them. One thing I did notice though, is that alike Pretty Little Liars we are given five girls that fall into the stereotypical scenarios such as: a sporty one, one that may or may not have a thing for a teacher, the one with issues at home, the one who has a thing for her bestfriend's boyfriend. They were all rather likeable and while I did sympathise with the majority of them, I feel like the characters lacked a certain depth that would have allowed me to properly connect with them. I'm all for books with lots of female characters (GIRL POWER!) and each of these girls had a fairly distinct personality and storyline. The book features Parker, Julie, Caitlin, Ava and Mac who have all fallen victim to Nolan Hotchkiss' shenanigans and all secretly (some not-so-secretly) have a vendetta against him. With that being said, I was quite pleasantly surprised with the story and thoroughly enjoyed it, despite my numerous issues with it. I was excited to see how it would play out, but also quite nervous since I really didn't enjoy how cliché the Pretty Little Liars books were and had heard how similar this book was. I went into this book with rather mixed emotions. Five girls plan the hypothetical murder of a guy they all hate, and he turns up dead in exactly the way they'd planned, only they didn't do it. The premise of The Perfectionists had me instantly intrigued.

Sara shepard the perfectionists book series