Apparently the ‘A’ blackmail notes have become a nationwide phenomenon, which seems rather wishful thinking on Shepard’s part. The rehashing of old events from the previous books drags on tediously for some time, leavened with the occasional new development. Still, I suppose they may as well waste money on unnecessary pseudo-therapy as on anything else. Particularly since none of them seem especially grief-stricken. So I’m not really sure what their families are paying the “very best grief counselor in the Philadelphia area” for. The counsellor’s advice is to put all the items which remind them of Alison into a bin-bag and bury them, which is not only quite stupid but also pretty much what they decided to do off their own bat at the end of the last book. The four girls are now having group sessions with a grief counsellor, which means we have to hear every plot-point from the previous four books reiterated. It’s all just fuss and glamour around an empty centre, designed so that someone can be the best at something and everyone else can be losers.Īt any rate, once we have heard once again about how embarrassed both Hanna and Emily are of their hair-colour ( “poop-brown” and “chlorine-greenish” respectively, as we are told repeatedly in each book) the story proper begins. I suppose the whole matter can serve as a microcosmic representation of Rosewood’s attitudes in general though: the focus is entirely on the privilege of winning the competition and the glamour of being recognised, but no one stops to think what the actual purpose of burying time capsules full of decorated flags is, since there is no purpose. All I learn from this is that the whole of the school grounds must be full of buried flags, which no one either currently or in the future could be interested in. In the flashback prologue we are re-introduced to every single Rosewood Day student whose name has ever been mentioned in the books, all of whom are entranced by some nonsensical annual treasure hunt/time capsule thing the magnitude of which, Shepard assures me, does not need explaining.
It’s almost as though the previous four books were a total waste of time.
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