The lawns are perfectly manicured, each house stands at attention with freshly painted coatings. Beacon Hills is just as idyllic and affluent as Rosewood. However, Beacon Hills is much more intense, its a town of winners and golden kids who all vye to come out on top. You’re more likely to be asked your GPA score than your name. Achievement matters.

Frat boy, Nolan may not have a steller record in grades, but he was Homecoming king, class president, football jock, beloved and feared. And hated. . .

Five girls have good reasons to want to get revenge on this callous boy, a little prank so he’ll understand how it feels to be humiliated and blackmailed. Though murder does cross their minds, they’d never actually do it.

Then Nolan Hotchkiss ends up dead in the exact way they had planned. But if they didn’t kill him, who did? And how long do they have before they’re framed?

Parker: Te former It girl became a phariah after an attack by her abusive father left her literally scarred. She was the most interesting as Shepard does an excellent job probing her psyche and how broken, invisible, damaged she feels and some of the self-blame she holds. Her memory gaps create a compelling mystery as well as sympathetic character. While Nolan’s drugging of her did lead to the horrific events, she is also one of the most reticent to persue revenge.

Julia: A benevolent queen B, her niceness and sweet clothes hide a devasting secret but her intense loyalty to Parker is why she joins this revenge. While she has adjacent reasons to hate Nolan, she gets the most invested as her web of secrets begin to crumble. She would compeate with Parker as most interesting.

Ava: She’s the beauty of the group, possibly the entire school as she does some modelling jobs. In fact, she mainly coasted by her looks until her mother’s death inspires her to start using her brain more. Now she’s a high achiever whose success is marred by Nolan’s retaliation to their break-up, spreading rumors that she slept her way to good grades. It’s awful and her life gets worse after Nolan’s revenge. Not only are the police closing in but her film teacher believes those slut rumors and wants to collect.

So yes, she has the most engaging storyline in the duology. Although I do wish there was more about her family as her step-mom is implied to slowly removing traces of her father’s Iranian heritage in the house which I thought would be cool to explore, and for some reason that step-mom is unnecessarily nasty to her too. It feels there’s another storyline there. There is one highlight in that she has an actually supportive relationship with her boyfriend, Alex which is nice to see among all the crime drama.

Caitlin: Her motivation to get back at Nolan is just as personal as Ava’s as his bullying of her little brother led to his suicide. She has the most emotional thread as her guilt at not noticing the signs and her grief leads her to think about her life outside of the soccer star/marry her childhood best friend path that seems prescribed to her. As the story goes on her priorities shift so her soccer injury and the opioids she used to get over it are surprisingly set aside. I was sure it was going to lead to a drug problem but it was a cool subversion that it was a non-issue.

Mackenzie: Kenzie is the cello girl who ends up falling for Nolan’s charm and sending him a naked selfie much to her humilation as it was all part of an elaborete bet and blackmail. Unfortunately, while Mackenzie’s reasons for hating Nolan are valid, it is not touched up on. It doesn’t have much impact on her psyche or life as it does for the other girls. She has the most cliche personality as a type A who is in alove triangle with her best friend’s boyfriend that all feels superfluous compared to the others. While the other girls have fleshed out personal lives, readers don’t even get a mention of her parents/sister until the last 50 pages to the point I was surprised she had them.

The story is well-done in slowly revealing the smarmy character of the real murderer option as well as other red herrings like the therapist Dr. Elliot, various classmates and the growing unease of someone watching unless its just their paranoia?

The mystery is fast-paced, so while it bears some similarities to PLL, the urgency of the situation and the close communication of the girls that allow them to work well together and avoid foolish mistakes makes it satisfying in that they’re taking reasonable steps to find the murderer before they get framed.

Also Shepard wrote that this was inspired by Hitchhock and other noir films like And Then There Were None and their influence is present throughout from forshadowing in film class to the classic Hitchcock “bomb under the table” technique.

It’s an excellent return to Shepard’s mystery style and I can’t wait to see how it ends.