Pretty Little Liars book series cover.

Pretty Little Liars has become a major television series, from a two hundred and seventy four page book, written by Sara Shepard from HarperCollins publishers, to a world wide sensational television series.

I have been in love with Pretty Little Liars ever since it was a book series, after watching it on one of South Africa's best television channels - VUZU, I was intrigued and fascinated by the way they had put it together. The book is very similar to the original series. The book was taken as it is and put into television, this must not have been a difficult job for Sara Shepard because the book itself was very descriptive, and every single thing was in detail, from the elements, structures and gestures to emotions and expressions. This means that she managed to create something similar to a television series in a book. This was absolutely phenomenal when it comes to staying captivated as a reader while books normally have very limited resources in terms of expression.

 Norman Buckley, who recently directed the series Gossip Girl, directed most of the scenes of this series took the book plot as an independent variable by keeping it similar to the book, and he supposedly added life to the rest of the acts by making the characters, such as Aria Montgomery look very ‘pretty’ and innocent whilst deceitful as she carries a burden of lies and secretes that involves a dead body, more intriguing in connection to their scripts, and how they appeared on set. The setting was very excellent, as the book created an animated, magical suburb that was almost unreal, the director was able to create and work with it.

I would categorise this series as being a thriller, mixed with suspense and a very slight dose of comedy and throughout a great deal of music was used and it defiantly brightened most of the scenes.

Reading the book and watching the series gave me the similar messages at the end as the two did not differ that much. As visual fascinated as I am, I prefer the film, only because it takes less time and there is much less of confusion as this story is all a mystery throughout.

After this story was written, it was published in 2007 by Harper Tempest, an imprint of HarperCollins. This fictitious series was produced by an American motion picture company in New York-Alloy Entertainment together with Sarah Shepard.

S. Villa