We are starting off 2023 with our Pretty Little Liars and this time they’re on a cruise! Yeah it’s super random but I guess it’s nice to have a setting other than Rosewood every once in a while. Plus they think by going on a cruise, they’ll be free from A which we all know is just wishful thinking.

In this one we find out that Hanna’s big summer secret is that she was driving someone home after having had a drink at the bar and she ended up being run off the road and crashing. Yikes. Hanna was panicked because of her past with drunk driving and crashing cars she didn’t own so she called the girls and asked them to help move the girl who is in the passenger seat into the driver’s seat. Not the smartest idea but these girls don’t always make the best decisions.

I’m not going to lie, I am going to cut out talking about the actual cruise because there is nothing of worth about it, they might as well still be in Rosewood.

Anyway, the deal with Hanna’s hit and run situation is that the girl she was driving home turns out to be Naomi’s cousin. Naomi is one of the girls Hanna is on again/off again friends with as she navigates Rosewood popularity, and Naomi was also friends with the real Alison before Courtney took over and became friends with the Liars. This connection makes her the girls’ new prime A suspect.

Compared to the last people they thought was A, I think Naomi would make sense considering she is the same age as them and can get away with being around them when A related things happen. So I accept this compared to when they thought A was a grown ass woman that barely had any connection to them before Emily got pregnant.

The girls also believe that whoever A is has to have a helper, they can’t be everywhere at once. Which we all knew I mean mainly just from watching the TV show we know an A team can very much be in play.

I’ll put a pin in Naomi for now if only to mention briefly how dumb I think Emily’s new love interest is. I thought it was bad on the TV show when Emily had a new girlfriend every 5 minutes but it’s the same in the books. She always has someone. This time, it’s a random girl who is a stowaway on the boat called Jordan.

Long story short, Jordan is a wanted thief and she wants Emily to run away with her and Emily almost considers doing it but A calls the cops before they get a chance to escape. I honestly just roll my eyes anytime Emily meets someone new because she almost always ends up getting with them and they always remind her of Alison in some way or another. It’s boring at this point I need her to be a strong independent woman without all these troublemakers getting in the way.

As for Spencer, she is crushing on this guy called Reefer, who is a stoner she met at the Princeton thing from the last book. Not who I thought would be Spencer’s type but we go along with it. The issue she has though is that Naomi is also into Reefer? Again surprised as I didn’t think he would be Naomi’s type either but naturally there’s drama between the two as Naomi tries to steal Reefer from Spencer.

We also learn that Naomi was doing shady things to Spencer which seemed like things A would do to her which further proved the girls’ theory of her being A. For example, Spencer slipping on oil in front of Reefer and putting gum in her hair etc. Though it was weird so much was targeted at Spencer in comparison to the other girls. But good to know the girls were right about something lol. Apart from Naomi being A, she just wanted to win Reefer over by getting Spencer out of the picture she’s not out to torture the girls for real.

Then there is Aria, who has gotten herself tangled up with Tabitha’s ex boyfriend? Because of course he would be on the same cruise as the girls. Aria feels bad for what they did to Tabitha and so she thinks doing something nice for her ex might somehow bring her good karma? But really Aria should just learn when to leave things alone lol.

Also Noel gives Aria a necklace which he found on the beach and it turns out to be Tabitha’s. This seems sketch but at the same time could have been planted by A. We also see there is a photo of Tabitha and Alison together in the necklace which is weird but proves they knew each other and were friendly.

Anyway yeah, things turn weird with Aria and Graham – Tabitha’s ex – as he wants to talk to Aria about something serious but she is worried that he is A after the girls figure he’s probably the person working with Naomi. I don’t remember exactly what their reasoning was for these two people to work together but I imagine it wasn’t a very strong link. But once they think he’s dangerous and he’s trying to talk to Aria, she freaks out and runs away from him. He seems to act weirdly when he sees Aria’s necklace, which he has every right to be if it belonged to his old girlfriend.

So Aria runs away from him but he chases after her, it seems what he has to say is very important but Aria doesn’t want to hear it and locks herself down in near the ship’s control rooms. While she is there, an explosion in the ship goes off and so everyone has to evacuate. Great. Fun.

The girls meet up and talk and they think that A planted the necklace for Noel to find and give to Aria and now it makes them look even more guilty of murder, so their solution is to take a lifeboat out to the middle of the ocean and for Spencer to scuba dive into the deep ocean and leave the necklace down there for no one to find. This is so farfetched and dumb I was literally rolling my eyes so hard. Like first of all, it’s not safe and second of all just toss the necklace into the ocean anyway? Did it really need to be buried? Dumb.

Naturally, the plan backfires when the girls are all in the water and their lifeboat mysteriously deflates and they are stranded in the ocean. Thankfully Naomi comes to the rescue when she sees the girls go off-course. Which proves she’s not A because why would she save their lives if she was trying to destroy them?

It’s after this rescue mission that Hanna confesses to Naomi that she was the one who crashed her cousin’s car that night of the accident. She thought Naomi might have figured it out long ago and that was her motive for being A but it turns out that Naomi had no idea that Hanna was involved in the accident. So I would say that friendship bridge has well and truly been burnt down.

Though Naomi did reveal to Hanna that when Alison came back as Courtney she called Naomi and asked for her help to take down the girls. Naomi turned it down because she thought it was farfetched and ridiculous. So that’s interesting, makes you wonder what would have happened if she had said yes.

The girls talk and Aria wonders if maybe Graham wasn’t trying to hurt her but actually tell her who was. Before the explosion, he was trying to tell her someone was watching her or something like that, so she tries to look for him but overhears people talking about how he is in a coma. Yikes. Guess she won’t find out what he knows anytime soon.

When everyone returns to Rosewood the girls think it’s finally time to confess what they did to Tabitha. They are done dealing with A and all the drama and so they call up the lead in Tabitha’s investigation to turn themselves in. However as they are about to do this, they see on TV that there’s been a breakthrough in Tabitha’s case. They find out that she was killed by blunt force trauma to the head, not the fall from the bird’s nest. So Aria didn’t kill her, A did.

So the book ends with the girls decided not to confess to the murder because they didn’t commit it and them reconsidering what Emily was saying all this time about A being Alison. Especially because Emily finally confesses to leaving the door open for her in the Poconos.

Honestly, I feel like this was a wild goose chase over nothing. I mean it was interesting to learn about Naomi knowing about Alison the whole time she came back but nothing else came of it. Also I wonder what Graham saw? Though the likelihood of us finding out is slim. I guess we will have to read more to find out!

With only a few books left though, I am not sure how this all comes to a head, though I’d say a lot can happen in a few books in comparison to the TV show in which they really put the biggest load of nothing in for the finale episodes. So we keep going. I would like to wrap up the series in the first half of 2023. So I’ll be back very soon with another PLL recap.