The Pretty Little Liars book series timeline is very simple until you start looking at the Chapter Dates page. There you’ll notice two columns for each book. One called “fictional dates” and one called “real dates” (“real” meaning dates from a real world calendar). 

But which ones are correct and which ones do you follow? That is up to personal preference. For this website, everything you’ll see is made with the “real dates”. Let me explain the difference, starting at the beginning.

The Pretty Little Liars book series has many discrepancies in the timeline. For example, one book will say an event happened January 7th whilst another says it happened on the 15th. There are also bigger things such as a book saying something happened a year ago but if you really look at it it happened 2 years ago. This is not uncommon in books, as authors often don't write their book strictly following a calendar. However, when you go to make a timeline like the one you’ll find on this website, it causes major problems.

So what does "fictional" and “real” dates even mean? The fictional dates are the ones written in the books. If Hanna says it's August 15th in chapter 2, that’s what you’ll find in the “fictional” column. However, Hanna saying it doesn't always make it right. Sometimes, a book will mention its taking place in September and then the next one will say its August, going backwards a month. Sometimes things will be almost right but off by a weekday. The book says Saturday 1st when in real life the 1st was a Friday. Now, that might not sound like a big problem but even such a small detail can mess up an entire timeline.

To fix this I have created a corrected timeline where I correct weekdays, dates, months, and any time related details using the start of book one as the base for everything. Book one, Pretty Little Liars, started on September 1st 2006. We know this because in chapter one Emily says it's been “three years, two months, and twelve days” since Alison’s disappearance. Knowing she disappeared on June 20th, that puts the start of Pretty Little Liars on September 1st. I then used the release year for book one as the year since no year is ever mentioned. Its contemporary fiction, meaning it is set in current (or then current) times. That puts the start of Pretty Little Liars, on September 1st, 2006, and Alison’s disappearance on June 20th, 2003. These dates are then used as the foundation for the entire timeline. If a book says it's been two months since the previous book, I calculate that date and put it in the “real” column. 

When everything is done the story starts in 2000 and ends in 2009. Go check out the Timelines and Chapter Dates pages to see the timeline of events and exactly when the books take place.

This timeline isn’t based on interpretation — it is reconstructed entirely from the information in the books and corrected using real calendar logic. If you're curious about the exact quotes or references behind specific dates, feel free to reach out through the General Information page. I’ve documented every timeline point with book citations to ensure everything is grounded in the text.

Note: There are discrepancies such as an iPhone being used before it was released in 2007, but there’s nothing I can do about those.