Aria Montgomery ducked behind an oak tree, picking at the embroidery on the tunic her dad had brought back from yet another last-minute art history conference in Germany. She’d never trespassed on anyone’s property, let alone the backyard of the prettiest, most popular girl in school. Not a flower or a leaf was out of place…except for the four sixth-grade girls who all happened to be stealthily creeping into the DiLaurentises’ backyard at the same time.Įmily Fields hid among the tall tomato plants, tugging nervously on the strings of her Rosewood Long Course Swimming sweatshirt. The tawny golden retriever that belonged to the Vanderwaals a few doors down loped around the fenced-in backyard, barking at squirrels. Cavanaugh, who lived across the street from Alison’s family, strolled out to his yard to get the newspaper. It was a peaceful early September Saturday morning in Rosewood, Pennsylvania, an idyllic Main Line town about twenty miles from Philadelphia. A girl who every guy wanted to date and every girl wanted to be. A girl who set trends, inspired passionate crushes, and made or broke reputations. Only a select few had ever been inside, but everyone knew who lived there. The big Victorian house at the corner of the cul-de-sac, the one with the rose trellises along the fence and the tiered teak deck in the back. And sometimes we’re doomed to repeat the things we’ve forgotten.

Then again, maybe their pasts would make even less sense than before. If four pretty girls in Rosewood were suddenly given perfect memories, they might know better who to trust and who to stay away from. A friend you remember as always having your back? Oops! On closer inspection, not so much. Someone who seems like an ally now? Look again-could be they weren’t as nice as you thought. With 20/20 memory, the past could suddenly get a whole lot uglier. You’d relive each time your soccer-loving crush sat next to someone else at lunch. With your spanking-new flawless memory, you’d also have to remember every fight with your BFF.

Or that the very first time you saw your eighth-grade crush, he was walking through the school courtyard, palming a soccer ball in one hand and an iPod Touch in the other.īut with every blessing comes a curse. Like that you and your best friend first bonded over hating the smell of rubber cement in third-grade art class. What if, all of a sudden, you could remember every single second of your entire life? And not just the major events everyone remembers-little things, too.

Killer by sara shepard