This one was a long game and you know what? I admire it. Alison really doing the most.

So in this one, the girls try to go back to their normal lives and it kind of works? Well except for Emily, but I wanna save her for last.

First up, we have Hanna who was approached because they are making another movie about the liars lol. They made one back when Mona was A and it was a bad made for TV movie. This time, it’s a big production and they want Hanna to play the role of Naomi.

Hanna agrees because it’s Hanna and she’s always wanted to be a big star. She becomes fast friends with Hailey is playing her in the movie.

Long story short, Hailey is awful at playing Hanna and is a terrible actress in general and so she quits the movie. This allows Hanna to swoop in and take the part because ya know, who better to play Hanna Marin than Hanna Marin.

Hailey finds out and gets angry at Hanna so leaks this photo of her kissing a costar to the tabloids causing Mike to break up with her. Fun.

It all works out in the end though because Hailey realises that she was being a terrible actress and doesn’t blame Hanna for going after the part. They make up and Hailey even gets Hanna back together with Mike. Yay!

Next we gave Aria who is a best selling artist? Some big art hot shot decides to buy one of her paintings for $100,000 which sounds very suspicious considering she’s never had anyone see her paintings before.

People hear about this and it makes Aria an overnight sensation in the art world with people reaching out for art shows and paintings. Aria even starts a little romance with an art blogger.

This all fizzles out for 5 minutes when someone from the New York Times calls Aria and asked why she posed as this big art guy to buy her own painting and Aria freaks out. She figures out that Alison must be behind this, especially when the painting that sold was of Alison and the name on the bank transfer was Maxine Peptwill which was her alias when she was hanging out with Noel.

I say it only lasts 5 minutes because the next day, everyone is still dying to get their hands on a painting for Aria. It seems the bad press wasn’t all bad.

Oh and she gets back together with Noel lol. Shocker.

As for Spencer, she has started a blog for people to share their bullying experiences. She really connects with some guy called Greg, who she becomes friends with. While at the same time she’s getting horrible emails from a guy called Dominic who is basically calling her a fraud.

Spencer’s blog gets some media attention and she is invited to tape an anti bullying discussion where she talks about her experiences. In this taping she comes into contact with Greg and Dominic. Dominic calls her out in front of everyone and gets escorted off the premises.

Greg ends up hanging around at the end and speaks to Spencer in person. They instantly connect and Spencer ends up telling Greg that the girls are still being tormented by Alison.

Cut to later on and Spencer finds out Greg has actually been an Ali Cat all along. Ali Cats are a group of Alison groupies who believe she is still alive and they all admire her and want to serve her. Which is creepy and I’m wondering how Alison managed to drum up a fansite in her spare time lol.

Anyway, Greg admits to Spencer that he was only getting close to her to find out things about Alison. And of course he vanishes before Spencer can ask any real questions.

But all is kind of okay because she gets a book deal based on her blog lol.

Finally we have Emily and she is having the most tragic time and I feel awful for her like just when things seem to be getting better for her they end in disaster.

Basically, Emily hears from Jordon in prison and goes out to visit her. It seems like Jordon is just as in love with Emily as she is with her so it’s all wonderful. Jordon even says there’s a chance that she could get out of jail early and they could be together.

The hope lasts for about 5 minutes because Jordon ends up dead. Yeah, Alison used her connection of Ali Cats to murder Jordon in prison. What the fuck??

To make things worse for Emily, she was also attacked by Alison at the school swimming pool. She had to attend summer school classes and while she was leaving one day she saw the pool was empty so decided to swim some laps, because she’s alone Alison found her and tried to drown her, demanding Emily to say she still loved her. Emily tries to fight back and say she would never say that again. When Alison seems to let up, Emily gets out of the pool and chase after her but she gets away.

Emily did manage to get a hoodie off of her, though when the girls hand the hoodie into the police, Fuji says they are unable to find any DNA on it. Though the girls did find a receipt in it for a minimart so they go snooping to see if Alison might be hiding out around there.

They come up at a dead end at the minimart, though the cashier did mention something about a blonde buying water. Naturally, she’s revealed too much so Alison says she’s gotta go. She ends up dying lol. Alison really be out here taking everyone down to get revenge on these four girls and it’s wild.

This does not deter Emily though as she decides to look up properties that Nick’s family owns to see if Alison is hiding out in any of them, one of the properties is near the minimart. Coincidence? Emily doesn’t think so, she convinces the girls that they need to stake the place out, so they buy cameras and set them up around the pool house at the back of the property as it seems the most likely place Alison would hide out.

For a while, nothing comes from the cameras, until the night that Spencer finds out that Greg was an Ali Cat. She confesses to him about the cameras and he says she just told him everything he needed to know. At the same time, Emily discovers that one of the cameras has been playing on a loop for ages so naturally the girls head to the pool house.

Now this is where I think they were being dumb. I mean they’ve done dumb things before but this one I just can’t believe even happened – I don’t even think they were this dumb on the TV show lol. But they get to the pool house, they see the that the inside looks different and there’s blood everywhere. They then go upstairs and see a dress which is covered in blood, which then Aria LIFTS and takes with them. But like not even carefully just grabs it and takes it because she thinks Alison’s DNA is on it but also in turn leaving her DNA on it…not smart.

But while the girls are upstairs they hear someone come into the house, sounds like they are cleaning up and they are too scared to go downstairs in case Alison is there. They didn’t really think it through when they were going to ambush her, I mean they came in their fancy dresses from the gala they were meant to be at and didn’t exactly want to call the police after all the drama they caused them before…

So they high tail it out of the place and decide to call the police anonymously. Yeah that’ll be fine, they’ll find the blood and figure Alison had killed someone right? Spencer even gets an alert about a body being found behind the minimart the girls had been at. She figured it was Greg after he revealed to her he knew Alison was alive from before.

Next thing you know, Fuji is showing up at Emily’s to arrest all of the girls. Shocker. They find out that all the blood in the pool house actually belonged to Alison, including a missing tooth. Damn. Plus, the girls’ fingerprints were all over the pool house and they even found their security cameras, Fuji even spies the dress that Aria had kept which she took from the pool house. Yeah. Dumb moves girlies.

Plus on the security cameras they found footage of Emily going off the rails and wrecking the pool house and threatening to kill someone. She was having a bad day and tried to clean it up but it clearly doesn’t look well for anyone. Well except Alison, the police now believe she was alive but the girls killed her. If she wasn’t able to kill them I guess going to jail for her murder is a close second in terms of revenge.

And that is where we leave the Pretty Little Liars in the second to last book, and honestly? I’m living for it. I guess I can see why the girls didn’t think they were making stupid moves when they hoped to come face to face with Alison, at the same time they knew she was dangerous so they should have had a better plan than to just show up and see what the craic was.

I am interested to see how this all ends and I really hope we get more information on Alison and how she survived and orchestrated this whole thing because I love a good villain story. So bring it on! One more book to go!