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The prologue is yet another retelling of Alison’s last night and the dull happenings in the barn. The only addition is that we learn that both Hanna and Emily, whilst “hypnotised�� by Alison, had visions of her trapped at the bottom of a well. Which I suppose is just another sign of the innate psychic abilities that the girls possess, despite being the 4 least spiritual people I have ever had the misfortune to read about. This might seem odd, but see the reams of stupid dreams in previous volumes for evidence that Shepard wouldn’t hold back from supernatural phenomenon, however stupid.

Anyhow, back to the adventures of a bunch of girls who can’t eat a waffle for breakfast without telling you what brand it is. Our four leading ladies are now awaiting the trial of Billy Ford, the second person to be accused of Alison’s murder. Billy also apparently killed Jenna right at the end of the last book for reasons which were less than clear, and it now emerges that he is for good measure being accused of killing the missing Ian (previously blamed for Alison’s murder). Which would at least explain where Ian has been, even if it makes no sense whatsoever on any other level.

Spencer is absolutely convinced of Billy’s guilt for the same reason she was absolutely convinced of her mother’s guilt, or her sister’s, or Ian’s, or Jenna’s, or Jason’s, or Officer Wilden’s, or indeed her own �� that reason being her massive gullibility and limited mental capacity. This same problem has caused her to self-pityingly lament the break-up of her parents�� marriage, since it will inevitably lead to dysfunction and neglect., as of course do all divorces. Although since spoilt Spencer wouldn’t know neglect if it walked up and stole her designer handbag out of her manicured hand, I’m not sure what she’s basing her personal concerns on. Aria is mainly concerned with going to a valentine dance and her disgust at how tacky Jenna’s shrine is, although she does very briefly touch on the “niggling inconsistencies�� in the latest murder/blackmail story, such as it not making any sense whatsoever, before instantly moving on. Hanna is so made up to be going out with sexist pervert Mike (top qualities according to her: his meanness and the fact that he is not a prude) that she has no time to think about anything else. Then some spectacularly childish bullying occurs and she and Mike are suddenly not cool anymore, which is massively traumatic for them. Although not quite as interesting as the murders, which we could be hearing about. Emily is doing nothing, which is at least preferable to the stupid Amish thing from the last book. And the local press have obtained large amounts of what is clearly restricted evidence and are busily prejudicing any potential jury members by broadcasting it all ad nauseum.

Suddenly Alison’s mother calls a press conference, in which to dispense clues and incriminate people in order to provide a plot for this book. Here she reveals possibly the stupidest plot twist yet, rivalling even the untouched-child- mental-institute-inside-a-hotel storyline: Alison apparently had a secret twin sister!. An identical twin called Courtney, whom nobody has mentioned or seen until now, when she is being revealed simultaneously to the neighbourhood, her long-lost relatives and the world press. On reading this I managed to restrain myself from groaning and banging my head on the table, but only just. It’s very lucky I’m reading this as an e-book, because any physical copy would have been thrown across the room or torn asunder at this point.

How to continue after this cataclysmic horror of a storyline? What is left to be said? Surely once a text has lost any semblance of sense, reason or narrative integrity it has rendered itself outside of literary rules and above criticism? However none of the other characters seem to have taken this turn of events as badly as I have, and proceed to many chapters worth of vaguely wondering if Courtney is really Alison and slight attempts to fit together the many abstract plot fragments into a cohesive whole; attempts which are tragically doomed to failure. When this becomes too much of a strain they drink herbal tea and get their dogs groomed instead. Courtney starts at school and seamlessly replaces her long-dead twin sister, which nobody thinks is a bit weird. Hanna continues to kick the people closest to her when they’re down in her endless quest to bully her way to popularity. Emily suddenly remembers that whole lesbian thing, now that Alison #2 is around. We are reminded repeatedly to suspect Melissa. Aria becomes jealous of Courtney’s flirting with Noel, her latest boyfriend. Hanna invites her worst enemies to an exclusive fashion show to prove how cool she is, which is exactly the kind of stupid shit she’s always doing. Meanwhile Billy Ford suddenly has alibis for the time of both murders, slightly running what the Rosewood police previously thought of as an “airtight case��.

Impressively things take an even more ridiculous turn when Courtney tells Emily that she is Alison after all, but there was really a twin called Courtney, and their parents managed to mix the two of them up on the weekend of the murder and send Alison back to Courtney’s mental institute by mistake when Courtney was murdered in Alison’s place. How exactly the DiLaurentises were able to commit their pre-teen daughter to a long-term mental institution and then mix her up with the sister she barely knew and therefore couldn’t possibly have adequately impersonated is not explained. Also I am forced to presume that Courtney visited exactly the same cosmeticians and hair stylists as her sister even whilst incarcerated, in order that there’s any possibility of this making any type of sense for even a second. Despite the fact that Courtney actually tells Emily that Real Courtney (not her, the other one) was a monomaniac who used to impersonate Alison and steal facts from her diary in order to impersonate her Emily is immediately convinced by the whole story, no questions asked.

Next Courtney convinces Spencer that she is Alison. Spencer briefly questions the idea that the body in the garden was actually Courtney since it was wearing Alison’s ring (a matter not brought up in the last book when we were supposed to believe that the body was Leah the random Amish girl who everybody has forgotten about ) but 3 paragraphs later is welcoming Alison home. Then Hanna is told and instantly accepts the whole thing, although admittedly she is distracted due to having once again made a tit of herself at some tedious upper-crust social function. Finally Aria meets Courtney leaning on the creepy well from the prologue and grinning like a Halloween pumpkin in the light of the moon, and is fed the whole “I’m Alison�� bit. Either because of the horror-film setting or the fact that she randomly finds some photos of the girls on the night of the murder buried next to the well, she is ever-so-slightly less than 100% convinced.

After the four separate scenes of each individual girl being told the same story we move on to a period of even less action, if that is possible. As usual the text is at least 50% reused material from previous books. Little new actually occurs. Melissa is insistently placed in supposedly incriminating situations, being sighted at least once per chapter publicly arguing with one of the other suspects, loitering at a dark corner or deviously running in the night-time, clearly the crazed murderer’s hobby of choice. In light of this incessant pointing toward her supposed guilt I can only assume that she is completely innocent. Spencer becomes convinced that the mysterious face at the window in the latest murder photo-clue to suddenly turn up is definitely her sister (the old one, not either of the new living-dead twin sisters). However since Spencer suffers from a rare form of prosopagnosia where all faces in life and in her memory appear to her to be the face of whoever creates the best plot twist I’m not over-convinced by her panic. Meanwhile Hanna repeatedly fails to notice that Courtney doesn’t know a lot of things which she should know if she’s really Alison and Project Runway gets 2 mentions for no particular reason, unless Shepard is getting paid to advertise it. Also, there is a spate of a new mannerism whereby people slap their sides whilst talking. I’m not sure what emotion it’s supposed to convey but it’s obviously an important one, since it’s so suddenly widespread.

Soon Spencer’s stupid ideas about Melissa have spread to all the other girls except Aria, and even though all of their other unfounded allegations throughout the series turned out to ridiculous and were immediately disproved they jump straight onto the “Melissa killed Alison/Courtney/whoever�� bandwagon, mainly on the basis of surmises and incidents that prove nothing, are barely connected to the murder and make little sense. Directly after this they find another incriminating photo open and ready for them on Melissa’s computer. Technically it’s actually an old incriminating photo from a previous volume, back in the days of A#1, but a new and convoluted story about its origins and meaning is swiftly tacked on top of the old details, with which it fails to line up in any way. They also find an appointment card from Courtney’s mental institute and decide that Melissa has most likely checked herself in to get treatment for her Stupid Fictional Insanity and will hopefully be gone for 20 years, that being how mental institutions work. Then everyone loses interest in the murder/commitment/disappearance stuff and starts getting ready for a party instead.

Once they are at the party scene that occurs 2/3 of the way through every book everyone continues with their usual behaviour. Hanna bullies people and dances like a cheap stripper. Emily moons after Courtney. Spencer glories is having a dull boyfriend and being popular and reflects how perfect her life is, without mention of her sister who may be a murderer in the midst of a mental breakdown (Melissa not CourtAli, although actually the description would fit any of the 2 to 3 girls. It’s that type of family. Then suddenly Courtney steals Aria’s perfect boyfriend (not the same as Spencer’s perfect boyfriend. This one has dark hair. That’s the only difference, so far as I am aware) and Aria responds by immediately dumping him and becoming Alison’s best friend again. Five minutes later (literally) the 5 girls are off on a trip to Courtney’s isolated holiday home in the mountains, which can only end well.

They arrive at the remote house to find it still has 5 rocking-chairs sat out on the porch from when they last visited, time having been frozen in Rosewood and its environs for the last 4 years. Once there all the girls but Courtney don bikinis and strut around without embarrassment just like no teenage girl has ever done. Courtney outlines her plan to erase the memory of their last sleepover (when she/Alison disappeared) by completely recreating it, which doesn’t seem like the most logical plan. It’s also not a particularly appealing plot-line, since I’ve already had to plough through innumerable retellings of the original, extremely dull sleepover. However since none of the girls have minds of their own they readily agree, rushing upstairs to be hypnotised and on the way noting without concern the big, open ditch in the garden.

The hypnotic efforts of a non-professional deluded airhead naturally immediately lead Spencer to have a vivid hallucinated flashback experience of the original murder night sleepover, meaning we have to hear about it yet again. This time Spencer spontaneously recalls that the person at the window was one of the twins, and that “Alison�� had in fact been wearing her special ID ring that night, but it said ‘C�� and not ‘A��, which means…all sorts of stupid and silly stuff. In fairness nothing Spencer has ‘remembered�� previously has turned out to be true, so it’s hard to give this whole thing too much weight. To wrap things up past-vision dream CourtAli suddenly turns into Alighost and shouts yelling ominous and unclear rubbish, none of which matters at all, in a desperate attempt to distract from how stupid and convoluted the plot has become. It doesn’t work.

Spencer wakes to find that, in astoundingly predictable style, Courtney has disappeared. This is actually about the 4th time this book she has vanished, but this time she stays missing more than the 5 minutes necessary for a chapter cliff-hanger. In her place the girls find a note explaining that Courtney is actually Alison, but the Alison they used to know was actually Courtney, who was killed by real Alison in the guide of Courtney before she was shipped off to a mental institute in Courtney’s place. Or something. Not sure who’s been haunting everyone, since that doesn’t make sense whichever way you go with it. However before anyone has any time to object CourtAli sets the building on fire in a desperate attempt to draw matters to a close. At exactly the same time the girls discover Melissa hidden in a cupboard underneath Ian’s rotting body, in a shockingly poor attempt to simultaneously explain both all of Melissa’s red-herring behaviour and where exactly Ian has been all this time. It does neither. Finally matters reach a frenzied pitch of farcical ludicrousness when everybody escapes via a tiny secret passage CourtAli happens to have in her bedroom, which must have slipped her mind. Despite this planning she also somehow manages to die in the fire, even though she set it herself and had access to all the exits in the house. I’m not sure how, so don’t ask.

Everyone sits outside while the fire burns out, still in their bikinis for all I know, not calling the fire brigade, escaping or talking to each other. Eventually, some hours later, they suddenly begin to attempt to explain away all the plot-holes to each other in the most pathetically artificial conversation I have ever read. They fail. They also realise that they have somehow managed to lose the note explaining everything. Which was pretty stupid.

We move on to 5 months later. Despite the time gap no one has figured out, among other things, why Alison took the incriminating photos placing her at the murder scene, why she didn’t dispose of them, how she managed to get access to Billy Ford’s laptop to plant fake evidence, or what the hell the purpose of any of her actions was. The girls have all been much too busy swanning about enjoying being celebrities to worry about any of that. Also a lot of issues I don’t care about are wrapped up: Hanna’s mother suddenly decides she loves her again and returns from Hong Kong to throw out Hanna’s evil father, stepmother-to-be and step-sister-to-be, leaving Hanna as Queen Bee just as she wants. Hanna has an epiphany, realising that it doesn’t matter all that much if she is the most popular girl at school or just in the top ten, since either way she is still gorgeous, rich and a horrid, spoilt little attention-whore, or a she puts it “f�����ܱ��dzܲ���.Which is a nice little moral message for all the readers. She also makes up with her pervert boyfriend Mike on the proviso that she give him several stripteases, which is just lovely. Aria’s problems with her mother and her mother’s stalker boyfriend, which have vaguely dragged on for 4 books, are resolved in a sentence and dismissed. She also forgives her perfect boyfriend for the whole cheating thing and gets a new baby sister, which she is pleased about even though the newborn is criticised for her poor dress-sense, as some of her knitwear isn’t entirely on-trend. Spencer and her sister are now friends, and they and their mother unhesitatingly forgive their father for that little incident with the 15-year affair leading to an entire secret family who lived next door, some members of which blackmailed, harassed, kidnapped, drugged and tried to murder both his official children, as well as killing the boy both of them were sexually involved with. After all, these things happen. Finally Emily isn’t doing anything at all since she has no personality or life. The only remaining issue (apart from the thousands of unanswered questions which are being ignored) is what happened to Alison, since they never found her body in the fire. Is she still alive? Or is Courtney still alive? Or are both of them still alive? Or is their extra-evil triplet still alive, and set to return to Rosewood and wreak vengeance for some imaginary slight? Frankly I couldn’t care less. This series should have been one book at best, and yet there are still 4 more to come even though Shepard herself promised that this was the last. God only knows what extra layers of nonsense she’ll have to add to stretch this junk that far.

Most Offensively Named Fashion Item
A “Foley + Corinna hobo��
10-second research on Google tells me that “Foley + Corinna�� is some type of bland high-fashion clothing brand. Apparently it’s not the only brand to see nothing inappropriate in naming a $500 bag after homeless people. This is why I hate fashion.

Most Worrying Physical Description

[Emily]�� forced her flat, flipper-like swimmer’s feet into a pair of red Mary Janes.

“the best way to get over a terrible memory is to reenact it.��

“They’d missed so many clues. Ali had set a brilliant trap…and they’d walked right into it.��

“Aria’s iPod, probably full of weird Scandinavian yodeling bands��

“I was there moments after the house exploded,�� he said. “It’s very possible Alison’s body incinerated instantly.��