Heartless by Sara Shepard

I'm in the final stretch now, the penultimate book to be finished with the Pretty Little Liars series. Heartless is kind of a doozy of a book.

Killer ended with the PLLs narrowly escaping from a fire in the woods. They had rescued a girl who looked just like Dead Alison. She vanishes into thin air. Paramedics think the girls were just suffering smoke inhalation-induced hallucinations. Emily is so affected by seeing Ali alive that she refuses to stop mentioning the incident. Reporters start referring to the girls as the Pretty Little Liars.

Aria spends the book trying to contact Ali's spirit. She attends a seance and is surprised to see Noel Kahn there. It turns out that he is more than meets the eye. They later contact an actual medium. Aria asks who killed Alison, and the medium writes a note: "Ali killed Ali."

Spencer lost her college tuition, but her parents finally decide to stop being jackholes towards her. I was really excited for good stuff to happen because I like Spencer. Alas, A gets her to investigate her parents some more. She discovers that her dad had an affair with Ali's mom. They were half-sisters, and Spencer's mom was so disturbed by this that she killed Alison. When Spencer confronts her parents with this information, it turns out that the affair part was right. Spencer's mother never knew, though, and she definitely didn't kill Ali.

Hanna's dad sends her to an asylum for her mental well-being or something. It ends up being a really nice asylum, the kind celebrities go to when they're exhausted. She becomes friends with her roommate, a girl named Iris. Alas, Iris leaks information about Hanna to the press and turns out to be legitimately crazy.

Finally, Emily goes to an Amish community, in hopes of learning about Ali. An Amish girl named Lucy tells Emily about her sister Leah. Leah left on rumspringa to be with her boyfriend and disappeared. That boyfriend was Darren Wilden, suspicious police officer.

In a crazy plot twist, all the PLLs are then arrested. They are released after police arrest a man for Alison's murder. His name is Billy Ford and he had been working on the DiLaurentis' gazebo before Ali disappeared. They got him after they found a new victim: Jenna Cavanaugh.