The Pretty Little Liars series is marketed as Young Adult mystery, but I think that it may have been wrongly classified. Five books in, I am convinced that the only explanation for the behavior of many of the characters in the books is possession by evil spirits.
Wicked is a continuation of the story begun in Pretty Little Liars. The first four books solve the mystery of the identity of ‘A’, a malevolent ghoul embodied by a superficial, text-obsessed teenage girl. Wicked is the fifth installment of this series, and focuses on two other mysteries. The first mystery has been pretty well covered in the first four books- who killed Ali, an eighth grade tyrant? The second mystery is entirely new to this book- who is the ‘New A’?
It strained credulity initially that Mona, a 17-year old prep-school student, could be in multiple locations at the exact right time to eavesdrop on four unrelated classmates without ever being seen. Now that there is a New A ( because Mona is dead) the only explanation is that A is actually a paranormal being, able to immediately transport from one suburban Philadelphia location to another instantly.
The classification change could also explain the behavior of seemingly every parent in this book series. These parents don’t act like rational adult humans. With perhaps one exception, the parents of the four main characters are vile and behave in bizarre ways. One character is blackmailed in to an affair with her mom’s boyfriend because of the very real possibility that her mother will blame her for the boyfriend’s lusting after teenagers. One character’s parents kick her out of the home when they think she is gay, invite her back after one day, and then the character is afraid to come out as possibly bisexual. One character has parents that encourage her to cheat in a contest and then ignore her and cut off her funds when she declines. The fourth character’s mother abandons her to move to Singapore (after she was nearly murdered by her best friend) and leaves her with the father that hasn’t bothered to call her for four years. I would call the parents robotically uncaring, but robots use logic and these people do not. They are monsters, all of them.
This book feels very much like a placeholder in the wider series. All the girls are getting mysterious text messages, same as the other books. All the girls have a new love interest, same as the other books. All the girls act irrationally to keep a not terribly important secret, same as the other books. Even the poorer of the girls can identify anyone else’s clothing by designer and season by a single look, same as the other books.
I guess the other explanation for this series is that the author was both traumatized by her upbringing and really likes to flaunt the wealth she came from.