Teenagers

I'd had a long week last week (my pager went off starting at 1:30 PM and didn't stop for 18 hours.) I was too tired to do pretty much anything. Including getting up from the couch to find my book. So I did what any reasonable person would do, found the first ebook available from my library and downloaded it to my laptop.

I have intermittently watched the TV show of the same name (after it was recommended to me by a patient) and found it extremely entertaining - dark, dramatic and yet with relevance to actual teenage issues, without being a Very Special Show. So I chose Heartless from the library (none of the other books in the series were available.)

On the one hand, it was a quick read - it took me less than two hours. The characters were flat. There was no thematic intentions. I can ignore all of that for a good mystery, but literally nothing happened in Heartless. There were a couple of interesting plot threads, but they were left completely without conclusions. Very Ho-Hum. ( )

Oh good grief. I cannot believe this wasn't the last book. I must have lost track. Surely there is no way that "Twisted" will wrap this all together with a pretty little bow and set everything straight.

You won't get too much validation from Heartless; however, this book stands out from the rest because the girls actually take ACTION, which is more than they do in the other books. They don't let people hold them back as much, and circumstances don't trap the girls in situations that render them completely useless in solving ANYthing, which seemed like a trick that the author used in the other novels to feed the plot.

Also, can she please do away with the, "Oh and 4 years later I remembered this VERY SPECIFIC THING that happened the day Ali died" thing? I'm sorry, but nobody remembers specific dialogue randomly after 4 years especially after years of being questioned by the cops. They weren't that traumatized, and no one--even young adults, or teens, or kids, buy it. This completely surpasses the suspension of disbelief. It's just logic. And she does this in almost every single book.

I'm very conflicted about my feelings toward the extension of this series from a, what, 3-4 book series? To a 6 book series to an EIGHT book series? It seems evident that even the author is no longer concerned with clarifying the ambiguity of A and what forms A has taken. What's evident is that the author is unsure of how to clear up what's happened in past books and unclear about how to untie the giant mess of a knot that's been created.

ALL that said: I can't get enough of these characters. Despite the massive inconsistencies (for example, the fact that over the course of a few weeks/months, these girls have gone from T-Mobile Sidekicks to Blackberry phones to iPhones ... I get that it's been years since the first few books came out, but do away with the technological trend references if they don't make any chronological sense!), I really love these girls. I really do. And I love that they are such realistic teens. Yet seemingly even less caddy than people I went to school with, than most people went to school with, which I love. They are great. I would 100% be friends with them. It's just too bad that getting down to the bottom of the A mystery has been clouded by so many out-of-left-field accused murderers that I honestly, at this point, have no idea nor can invest in any ideas I would have if anything led me to something concrete ANYway.

But. I will keep reading. Regardless of everything above, I'm interested, and I will spend a couple hours finishing the 8th book because ... well, just because. ( )

4/7/22

The way Shepard set up every single one of the PLLs to take the fall -- that took some major skill. Keeping track of all the details and setting up the falls -- mastery. ( )