A few months ago, I was looking at the mystery section on Goodreads when I saw the books and remembered I had them on my reading list. “The perfectionists” and it’s sequel “The Good Girls” written by well known author of Pretty Little Liars and New York Times best seller Sara Shepard, and also the inspiration for the new spin-off Freeform is developing.
First things first, I have to say that in just two books, The Perfectionists dethroned everything else I’ve read and took its place as my favorite book series. There are lots of surprise elements, and, of course, secrets and trust issues. I’m also really happy to say that for the first time in a while (I usually find out who is the killer before the reveal and completely ruin the book or tv show) I didn’t know who was the murderer, the reveal came in an unexpected manner and, without giving any spoilers, I loved the storyline, it was very well-written, the creepy mystery combined with the day-to-day life of teenagers these days.
Beacon Heights is a perfect town, with perfect students, but as it is mentioned “with perfection comes pressure” and when five girls get to know each other, they realize they have something in common, they all hate the same guy, Nolan Hotchkiss, who had done horrible things to all of them. The girls make a plan to kill Nolan, just for fun. But when he turns out dead the exact way they planned, they are the main suspects in a murder investigation. They know they didn’t do it, so who else was there that could hear them and go to all of the troubles to pin this on them?
Yesterday it was officially announced that Freeform picked up the PLL spins-off: The Perfectionists for an entire series commitment and here’s a recap of everything we know so far.
The first announcement about the spinn-off came at the end of September 2017, saying that we’re going to see Janel Parrish and Sasha Pieterse in the roles of Mona Vanderwall and Alison DiLaurentis and that the series will be created by Marlene King, just as the previous tv show, but this time the action will be in Beacon Heights, another town full of secrets. At that point we didn’t know any dates or details, but we later found out that Sofia Carson, well known for her role in Disney’s Descendants will play Ava Jalali. At the end of February the cat had the table read for the pint, and at the beginning of March we got new cast updates: joining Sasha, Janel and Sofia are Sydney Park as Caitlin, Eli Brown as Dylan, Graeme Thomas King as Jeremy , Gossip Girl’s Kelly Rutherford as Claire Hotchkiss and Hayley Erin rounds out the cast in a “mysterious, unnamed role.” as they announced on the official Instagram and Twitter pages. The Pilot was filmed during the month of March in Portland, Oregon, and the only thing we were waiting for was a confirmation that freeform is taking the series.
And as many fans pointed out after yesterday’s announcement on social media, Sasha and Janel were wearing the same outfits they had while filming, so, most probably, we’ve been kept waiting for almost 2 months but it was definitely worth it.
We also have the trailer for the Pilot episode, also the series will be darker and creepier than the previous and that there will be a 2-year gap. “The Perfectionists” will drop in 2019 and more cast members are waiting to be announced, and as a difference from the books, not all the perfectionists will be girls. As for our original liars, Troian Bellisario said in an interview that she has been given the opportunity to direct an episode and that she “would be thrilled”, while Lucy Hale first said that she probably won’t be a part of the spin-off, she later pointed that everything is possible, and now that the sad news came out: season 2 for Life Sentence got canceled, maybe we can at least hope she’ll make an appearance. As for Shay Mitchell, we still don’t know anything but after filming “you” all we know is that Shay also booked another tv show, The Heiresses, created also by Marlene, again based on the books by Sara Shepard. Sasha also hinted that it’s very possible we’ll see Shay, since where there’s Alison, there’s also Emily.
What do you think about the books? Have you read them? Are you going to watch the tv show? Comment your thoughts in the comment section, or let me know via Instagram.
Until next time…
?kisses,
-L
