Things get Shakespearean in this novel and is all toil toil, boil and trouble for Rosewoods prettiest liars whose guilt is eating them alive. And believe me, they have plenty to feel guilty for.

Let’s start with Spencer who is playing Lady McBeth literally and metaphorically. Her position at Princeton is threatened and she is sure to beat out the other competitor by wowing the board with her lead performance in McBeth. But with the hot Yale-bound drama king urging Spencer to go method, she brings up her demons from the summer and the guilt that she can’t run away from-taking study pills to get through her Penn college program and setting up her friend, Kelsey to take the fall. Thus securing her GPA and Kelsey in juvie. I really admire Shepard’s use of literary allusions while depicting Spencer’s break with reality.

Meanwhile Hanna is playing Romeo and Juliet with Liam, the son of her father’s campaign rival. A shame considering she did the most sensible thing in the beginning of the story by coming to clean to her father about the pictures and the sleazy blackmail but Hanna’s secrets keep piling up and A is takng full advantage. Plus there is an additional mystery that Shepard hints out involving another car crash. Oh when will Hanna learn?

Emily has a different sort of Romeo and Juliet story as she falls for Kelsey. Oh yeah, it’s that Kelsey that Spencer sent to juvie and whom the Liars are convinced is the new A. Now Emily is really regretting not telling the others that she may have allowed Ali the chance to escape. She’s convinced that Kelsey is innocent especially considering Spencer’s awful betrayal but this is Rosewood and every girl Emily likes is secretly psycho, it’s not even a spoiler anymore.

Aria, well I ran out of Shakespeare analogies here. Aria is back with Ezra but I can’t complain about the creepy romance because it’s finally over! While she still sees the age gap as completely fine and not creepy at all; Ezra’s return doesn’t fit the fantasy she had in all her pining over him. In fact, he’s kinda insecure and needy, those artistic types always are.

Now it does sound like they’re all getting their issues resolved, but the mystery only deepens and the danger is only heightened when the Liars believe they have figured out A to find out their theories are thrown off a cliff. While there are no answers, I thoroughly enjoyed all the Shakespeare, it certainly fits their lives of deceptions, twins, deaths and betrayals.