History Literature / PrettyLittleLiars

* SeeminglyWholesomeFiftiesGirl: Emily's Amish cousins.

* FiveManBand: --
** TheHero: Alison
** TheBigGuy: Emily
** TheChick: Hanna
** Spencer and Aria both qualify for both TheLancer and TheSmartGuy in different ways.

** ''Wanted'', the eighth book in the series, was originally planned to be this, as shown in the first prints and the acknowledgments. The end of the book is clearly setting each of the girls up for a more hopeful future, though there are a few mild open ends and possible plot holes still remaining, as well as a major SequelHook suggesting that [[spoiler:Alison is still alive and has started a new life in a new town under a new name]]. By the time the series ended for real, this book ends up only concluding the first half of it.

* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: The plot of the '''entire series''' could have been avoided [[spoiler: had Noel just someone about the TwinSwitch.]]

** Emily a[[spoiler:verts this, and is the only one of the main four girls to be single at the end of the series]].

** Emily's relationship with her family (especially her sister, Carolyn, with whom she always got along pretty well) deteriorates more and more throughout the second half of the series, culminating in her having permanently distanced herself her from them by the GrandFinale.

* AlphaBitch: Alison before she died. After, Hanna and Mona have sort of replaced her by the start of the series, though Hanna eventually loses this.

** In ''Vicious'', she takes it UpToEleven: [[spoiler:After the girls are arrested for Alison's murder and have no way to prove that she's really still alive, Emily makes a plan that involves taking a leaf out of Ali's book: to fake her death and disappear in order to fly under the radar to find Ali. ''It works''; she successfully fakes her suicide/accidental death, finds Alison (hiding out with her mother), fends off another murder attempt from Ali, gets both Ali and Mrs. D arrested, gets her friends out of jail and all of their charges dropped, and makes sure Alison is sent to an insane asylum, ridding them of her for good]].

* TwoAliasesOneCharacter: "Helper A" in the third and fourth arcs takes this UpToEleven, as the person who caused or at least was part of ''all'' of the girls' summer secrets under the aliases of:

** This is how Hanna feels about her friendship with Mona Vanderwaal upon discovering that Mona was A all along. While she's not around to confirm it anymore, all signs and Mona's words to Spencer indicate that, yes, it was a lie. Mona witnessed the Jenna Thing, and because she was friends with Jenna, vowed to get revenge on the girls, even though Jenna herself did not want this because it was a prank that she planned together with Ali that went wrong. Mona stopped being friends with Jenna when the latter wouldn't tell the truth about the incident, but was still determined to seek vengeance.

* RomanticTwoGirlFriendship: Emily has this with both [[spoiler:Courtney and Alison]] at different points in the books. She also has this with Kelsey in ''Ruthless''.

** [[spoiler:Alison is still A for the final 8 books, but she also has an accomplice, "Helper A". He turns out to be Nick Maxwell, a.k.a. Tripp, whom Iris and Courtney both believe at different times to be their boyfriend, but is actually Ali's boyfriend. Furthermore, books 9-12 detail how each of the girls met a seemingly-innocuous guy during their separate summers; Book 14, "Deadly", reveals that all four of these boys were actually Nick in disguise.]]

* SchoolgirlLesbians: Emily fits this trope with [[EvenTheGirlsWantHer more than a few girls]]: Maya, Trista, Alison, [[spoiler:Courtney]], Kelsey, and Jordan.

** [[spoiler:''Ali's Pretty Little Lies'' reveals that Ian wasn't really Courtney's secret paramour; she was just pretending to like him, and actually had a relationship with a guy named Nick Maxwell, an old friend of Ali's. But the end of the book strongly hints, and ''Deadly'' confirms, that Nick is actually Alison's boyfriend and accomplice, "Helper A", who only only pretended to date Courtney as part of his and Ali's plan for the latter to murder her so Ali could get her life back.]]
** [[spoiler:Though Noel Kahn does love Aria and wasn't helping A stalk and hurt her or the others, ''Crushed'' and ''Deadly'' reveal that he ''did'' know way more about her than he initially let on, including that they were twins, the "Ali" he went to school with was actually Courtney, and the real Ali was in the Preserve under her name. He visited her frequently and was in love with her, not believing she was crazy (she very much was), and hung out with her several times outside the Preserve before the Liars even found out Ali had a twin. He eventually did abandon Ali for good to date Aria, and cut off all contact with her after she tried to murder the Liars in ''Wanted'', but he knew and kept to himself a lot of important info that, had he shared, could have saved the girls from several dangerous situations and avoided many of their "A" problems. It takes several books for Aria to forgive him for this and get back together with him.]]