I am obnoxiously happy with my extra credit english assignment.
Since I am soo happy with it, I decided I might as well share it with you.
Enjoy(:

What would you do if you found out that you had a long lost twin? Not only that, but when you finally had the chance to meet them, they disappear and now you are stuck playing them in their life with the only thing that you know to be the same is your looks. How far would you go to find out what happened?
#1 New York Times Bestselling author of Pretty Little Liars, Sara Shepard, starts off her new series, The Lying Game, with a BANG! The Lying Game is about long lost twin sisters, Emma and Sutton. Emma has been thrown around from foster home to foster home since her mother, Becky, left her during her early childhood. While the other other sister, Sutton, got the short end of the stick; she lives the high-life in Arizona. Sutton is popular, funny, diabolical and spoiled. But would someone really kill to have Suttons life?
In the beginning of the novel, you read a short, sweet prologue with our narrator, Sutton, telling us that she has died, yet doesn’t know how. “I could barely remember my name was Sutton Mercer, or that I lived in the foothills of Tuscon, Arizona.” She meets a girl that eerily resembles her, only to find out that it is, in fact, her long lost twin sister, Emma. Sutton can’t walk away from her, she is simply a ghost who lingers alongside Emma. Emma lives in a Las Vegas foster home, which isn’t exactly “Strip” material. During the evening her step mother tells her that she is going to kick her out once she turns eighteen, due to something she was framed for. Meanwhile, her creepy foster brother, Travis, shows her a video, titled SuttoninAZ, of (a girl that looks like her in Arizona being strangled to death. Emma believes that could be her long lost sister so she “facebooks” her to meet her, and immediately gets a reply from Sutton; “Of course, there was one problem with that note: I didn’t write it”.
As the book moves on, Emma goes to Arizona to meet her sister and brings a duffel filled with overnight things. When she goes to the designated meeting spot, she gets a surprise attack, one very much like the SuttoninAZ video. Someone covers her eyes and mouth and drags her away from the spot. That someone was a good friend of Suttons, Madeline; who, of course, thought Emma was Sutton. Emma becomes familiar with Suttons close crowd of friends: Charlotte, Madeline, Gabriella and Lilianna. They “kidnap” her to a last day of summer party, leaving all of Emma’s personal belongings on the bench. When Emma tries to retrieve her things, they are gone.
Emma becomes aquinted with Garrett, Sutton’s boyfriend, Ethan, the moody “rebel-without-a-cause”, Nisha, Sutton’s worst enemy and her tennis co-captain, and Suttons Family, including her younger sister who always wants to tag along, Laurel. For awhile, Emma tries to tell the truth, that she isn’t Sutton and something is wrong if she didnt meet her the other day, but no one believes her, including the police. When she tried to prove herself with the video, it was miracurusly gone. Emma starts to uncover things about her sister that she didnt want to know. Sutton was “Queen Bee”, disliked by most teachers, praised among her peers, and was the nuturious mastermind behind “killer” pranks, which is called The Lying Game, which she is the “CEO” of the group. Emma becomes intertwined with her sisters life whether she wants to be or not, she starts recieving threatening letters from an anonymous person, who could be anyone(since Sutton has done something to every person in town, including her posse) saying that Sutton was dead and if she skipped out and didn’t play her sisters role that she was going to be next in line. When Emma tried to skip out of town, the next night at a sleepover, she recieved a frightening warning, which was being strangled by Sutton’s murderer(whom she can’t see because she gets blindfolded). When she awoke there was an important piece of jewelry hanging around her neck.
Throughout the course of the book we don’t forget Sutton is there lingering over her sister, with no memory of how she got killed. She has a few chapters of flashbacks of the night where she got strangled, in this book you might assume thats the way she died. At the end of every chapter there is also a confusing switch between third and first person, or that is just strung through the chapter. When Emma’s story is being told, its a third-person narrative, yet when Sutton is talking it’s a first. That is something that I constantly got confused on. It would switch from “ Emma could hardly breathe” to “I wanted to yell”.
The book itself was very good, but there are some concepts in it that I wasn’t overall impressed with, having read this author’s works before. First one: the concept of long lost twins that nobody knew about, that are complete oppisites, was already used in her last series Pretty Little Liars book #8 Wanted. Second: Murder mysteries always thrill me, but here we are again, another Pretty Little Liars concept, the evil girl dies. They always refer to her as the “bitch”, and she is the one that dies, always. Third: what addictive teenage novel wouldn’t be complete without romance? I mean, there is Sutton’s boyfriend and then there is Emma’s interest, Ethan. Which provides a conflict, obviously, but can’t there be one book where the protagonist focus’s on the murder and not their love life? Fourth: the idea of someone watching Emma’s every move and doing little acts, like notes and the big strangling scene, was also strung without the authors last series Pretty Little Liars. Fifth: there are some subplots that are completely predictable. You can figure out the secret between some friends and what Sutton did within a few sentences, yet it took the author until the end of the book to confirm it with you, with was very unsatisfying to wait that long to figure out that my first prediction was correct. Sixth: yet again another Pretty Little Liars thing, one twin takes over the other’s life, which you also find out in Pretty Little Liars book # 8.
Last, but not least, Seventh: like the last authors bestselling series, this book is going to be made into an ABC Family original series, be looking for it on television everywhere August 15, expect different elements of the plot. Whereas, I told you (and the book clearly says) Emma never meets Sutton, the synopsis for the show says “After their initial meeting, Sutton convinces Emma to step into her shoes for a few days while she has a lead on their birth mother. But Emma suspects something is wrong after Sutton doesn’t return to their designated meeting spot.” Emma knows who their birth mother is in the books, but she just left, Emma never meets Sutton and has no choice but to step into her sisters shoes, whether she wants to or not. I highly suggest read the book before you watch the series, same with the authors other book-turned-into-show series.
There are things that I was impressed with, don’t get me wrong, but I think that the book has a nice plot, but lacked originality in some points. There was one thing that was new though, only two people know that Sutton is dead, Emma and her killer. I hope that Sara Shepard comes up with some new ideas for her second Lying Game novel, Never Have I Ever (that being the same title of a game the girls played during the book). Until the next chapter! “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”-Kurt Vonnegut.


prepare to have my english grade JUMP! :D
(teacher said 2 pages, I made it three...imma rebel.. ((: teeheeh!)