Spencer Hastings (Book Character)

"I wish we could just take down Ali and her helper once and for all."

- Spencer

Spencer Jill Hastings is one of the four main characters of the Pretty Little Liars book series created by author Sara Shepard. She is portrayed by Alexandra Bowen on the book covers.

Appearance
Spencer is described as having long, dirty blond hair, in which she gets lighter blonde highlights in, as well as a small, upturned nose, pointed chin and bow-shaped lips similar to her half-sisters, Alison and Courtney. She is depicted as having emerald green eyes. She also has a petite figure from years of field hockey.

Personality
In the books, Spencer is determined, smart and overachieving. She has a nice side and a sneaky side. She can be pretty ruthless in getting what she wants and is not afraid to take her enemies down.
 * Distinctive feature: Emerald green eyes
 * Known for: Intelligence, acting, field hockey, overachieving, competitiveness, determination
 * Favorite things: Academics, being the best, field hockey, striving to be valedictorian, acting
 * Biggest regret: Stealing her sister's old AP Econ paper.
 * Worst offense: Framing her roommate, Kelsey, for drug possession to save herself.

Biography
It's not easy being perfect, just ask Spencer Hastings. From striving to be valedictorian to scoring the most goals in field hockey, Spencer is on a mission to out-do her older sister, Melissa. But no matter how high her GPA is or how many extracurricular clubs she smashes into her schedule, the only time Spence scores more than Melissa is when it comes to Melissa's boyfriends.

Spencer is an incredibly smart, but an extremely competitive student, who is both "Alison" DiLaurentis' rival and friend. She comes from an 'old money' family with a long history in Rosewood. As her parents have exceedingly high expectations of her, she works hard to be at the top of her class and is involved in a variety of clubs and other extracurricular activities. Spencer shows signs of OCD in the books, such as "Perfect." Spencer has an older sister, Melissa, who returns home from college with her fiancé, Wren Kim, to whom Spencer is immediately attracted. Spencer and Wren almost have sex in the Hastings' barn, which is temporarily Spencer's room; this leads to Melissa and Wren breaking off the engagement. She does have a brief but intense relationship with Wren anyway, going as far as to lose her virginity to him. For a homework assignment for AP Economics, Spencer steals Melissa's old homework paper, which her teacher ends up placing it into a nation-wide competition, and is eventually nominated for a Golden Orchid; she eventually wins the Golden Orchid, for which she feels guilty. Spencer keeps having a flashback of her pushing Ali to the ground the night of her disappearance and comes to believe that she killed Alison herself. Her sister reassures Spencer that she isn't the kind of person to kill someone, which then leads Spencer to falsely believe that Melissa killed Alison.

Later on she discovers that her father had an affair with Courtney's, Alison's, and Jason's mother, Jessica DiLaurentis, and Alison and Courtney are her half-sisters. Note that Jason is not related to her or Melissa, since he is the only legitimate child of the DiLaurentises. She begins to fall for her rival Andrew Campbell, and they start dating. Their relationship ends eventually.

It becomes clear in Twisted that Spencer had done something illicit in scoring a Princeton University acceptance letter, but it is unclear what that is. After the fallout from the summer in Jamaica, Spencer's mother gets engaged to a man named Nicholas Pennythistle. Spencer goes for a formal meet-the-family at a fancy restaurant, where she informally meets his son Zach, her future step-brother. She immediately takes a liking to him, but not to his younger sister Amelia, who seems to judge Spencer unfavorably, yet take to Melissa quite easily. Meanwhile, Spencer notices that Zach seems flirtatious, and both she and Zach seem to have a lot in common, both being the black sheep in their families. They both have a preppy dress style and come from very well-to-do families, both being accustomed to vacationing in Europe and living in luxury's lap. They also both have sarcastic senses of humor.

Spencer is attracted to Zach, who takes her to a club one night shortly after they meet. They dance and kiss, but then Zach pulls away, claiming he is gay. Spencer is confused, however, when he seems to be flirting with her in a sexual way after this. She also notices that his younger sister Amelia accuses him of not liking shopping, something she finds dubious for a gay guy. They take Amelia shopping for a makeover, trying to soften Zach's sister, who is so unlike Zach in personality. They have fun together and get drunk right under their parents' noses at dinner, without them catching on.

After Spencer falls asleep drunk in Zach's hotel room, Zach's father Nicholas barges into the room the next day to rouse his sleeping son for his scheduled interview. When he sees Spencer, he becomes livid at both of them, and starts physically abusing his son. Spencer reveals that Zach is gay, trying to convince his father that they didn't have sex, but Nicholas' response is to become more enraged and break chunks of the hotel wall. Zach then expresses his utter contempt for Spencer, destroying their budding friendship. Spencer is then informed that Zach is to be sent off to boarding school. She tries to apologize to Zach, but he is equally livid and curses her out in no uncertain terms.

In "Ruthless," it's revealed that Spencer framed her roommate for drug possession in order to get her out of trouble. She gets Hanna to plant drugs for her in Kelsey Pierce's room. Months later Spencer runs into Kelsey again when she's at her house as a guest to her stepsister. The exchange is awkward as Spencer is guilty over the whole incident. Though unknown to her Kelsey has no clue about what Spencer did and treats her kindly. However Spencer is convinced that not only does she know but she's out for revenge as new "A." Then Spencer receives a text from A and sees Kelsey with her phone out staring at her.

Meanwhile Spencer informs the girls that Kelsey might be A and that then is surprised to learned that Emily has already met her as Kay. When Emily tries to convince Spencer that Kelsey can't be A, Spencer warns her to stay clear of Kelsey as she's dangerous. At the school play Spencer spots Emily and Kelsey together in the audience and becomes paranoid. She believes Kelsey is there only to ruin her performance. Later on she confronts Emily about bringing Kelsey, but Emily reassures her that Kelsey is not A. This leads to Spencer figuring out Emily loves Kelsey and taunts her saying Kelsey is only using her like Alison did. Emily runs off and Spencer feels defeated. Soon after Kelsey confronts Spencer after learning from Emily what she's done to her. Spencer now convinced more than ever that Kelsey is A becomes frightened and tries to fight Kelsey off leading her to physically attack Kelsey. Later on Spencer and the girls find Emily at Floating Man's Quarry with an over-dosing Kelsey. Emily saves Kelsey from killing herself.

The girls are super confused as why Kelsey would try to commit suicide instead of killing them if she's A. They later learn that she has been admitted into The Preserve at Addison-Stevens a place that has no contact with the outside world. The girls decide to visit her to question her motives as A. They confront her and ask why she was after them but Kelsey denies being A and says she's on tons of meds and doesn't have her phone. The girls try apologizing to her but Kelsey seems apathetic and gives Spencer and Emily letters explaining that she's over it. By now the girls have come to the conclusion that Kelsey is in fact not A.

In Stunning Spencer wants to join an eating party at Princeton, but doesn't get in as result of unknowly bring drugged out brownies. It ends up doing her a favor and she starts seeing this guy named Raif Fredricks.

In Burned, Reefer's school is going on the same student cruise as Rosewood Day. Spencer now has admitted to herself  that she has developed romantic feelings for him. Since she had returned from Princeton, they had been calling and texting a lot and eventually bonded until she developed a massive crush on him. While packing she fantasizes about their first kiss occurring during their upcoming scuba classes together.

On the first day of scuba lessons on the cruise, Reefer offers to walk Spencer there, and the two flirt the whole walk down. Just as Spencer offers to skip class with him, Naomi Zeigler, who seems to have known Reefer, screams his name and gives him a huge hug which he returns. Giving Spencer a threatening look, she announces that she is also taking scuba lessons.

The next day, Reefer admits to Spencer that he had hooked up with Naomi in the past, but he has feelings for someone else now, while looking meaningfully into Spencer's eyes. Reefer ditches Naomi when she possessively grabs his arm when they have to partner up. He instead partners up with Spencer, leaving a shocked Naomi behind.

Later that evening, Reefer takes Spencer out to dinner, where they dance and have their first kiss. However, they are interrupted when Naomi asks to cut in. Before Spencer can answer, Naomi bumps Spencer out of the way and Spencer falls into the nearby swimming pool. Naomi pretends to be concerned, making it look like she had nothing to do with it and tries to continue dancing with Reefer, who instead gets a towel for Spencer and helps her dry off.

After meeting up with her friends and deciding that they think Naomi is "A," Spencer realizes she has to break up with Reefer so Naomi doesn't have more of a motivation to kill her, and to try to put Reefer out of danger. When meeting with him at the sauna, she tells him that she doesn't think they should start a relationship until after they get off the boat. However, Spencer kisses him again and they decide to keep their relationship a secret from Naomi instead.

The next morning, Reefer visits Spencer in her room. She has been upset because, after walking out of the sauna the previous day, she slipped on a puddle of baby oil and fell on her ankle. Then, she had gotten food poisoning and thrown up the whole night. To top it off, she woke up with a huge blob of gum stuck in her hair. When Reefer kisses her on the bed, the bed falls to the floor, as if someone had sawed the legs through. Then, a picture above the bed falls off of its hook, which seemed to have been tampered with. Spencer decides that Naomi is doing this and finally breaks up with Reefer, who thinks she is overreacting. The next afternoon at the diving class, after Spencer starts sinking because of her oxygen tank being empty, Reefer pulls her out and gives her mouth to mouth.

After the explosion on the boat and the following evacuation, everyone is staying in the lobby of a hotel. Reefer finds Spencer and tells her that Naomi told him about rescuing the four liars from the cove after they went to go bury a necklace that was Tabitha's, given to Aria by Noel. Their life raft had been punctured, and they had been stuck in the water until a team led by Jeremy, Naomi, Mike, Noel, and Kirsten Cullen came to their rescue. Reefer also told Spencer that Naomi had admitted to doing all of those horrible things to Spencer because she was jealous of her and Reefer's relationship. By this point, the girls had realized that Naomi was not "A," and Spencer and Reefer happily forgave each other and continued their relationship.

In Crushed, Reefer breaks up with Spencer before she can ask him to go to prom with her because he got an internship in South America and then drives Spencer to find out about who the third A is. So she goes to a guy who has a blog about his theories of Alison still being alive and goes to meet up with him under the alias 'Brittany'. She meets the blogger Chase and feels a connection with him. She sheds the Brittany disguse and reveals herself as Spencer Hastings. She almost goes to Prom with him, but freaks out over the possibly that he knows all private stuff through being A. She meets the real Chase at the end since he was too embrassed to meet her because he thought she was attractive from the news stories and was unsure about how she would really think about him since his attacker left more than emotinal scars on him. It's implied she kept in touch with him.

In Deadly, Spencer and Chase are not dating, but are going out on "dates." The Liars are framed for Tabitha's murder based on an anonymous video of four girls (that look just like the liars) beating a girl to death. Throughout their one month to live free in America before being shipped off to Jamacia for a trial, the girls try to unmask A and prove their innocence. The night before they are to be shipped off to Jamacia, the girls find out who A is and Alison is revealed to have survived the fire. After being almost the murdered by Alison and Nick (A) the liars wake up in the hospital only to hear that there was no trace of Alison and that she didn't survive the fire. At least that's what the police think. The girls decide that Ali will come for them someday, probably sooner than later.

Relationships
Spencer has a relationship with the following:
 * Ian Thomas: They kissed while Melissa and Ian were dating and have flirted in the past
 * Wren Kim: They made out inside Spencer's barn, and they had sex, they were secretly together for a while.
 * Andrew Campbell: They were in a relationship through "Wicked" and "Wanted"; broke up at the beginning of "Twisted".
 * Zach Pennythistle: She had a crush on him in "Twisted", but she accidentally got him sent to military academy.
 * Colin DeSoto: They meet when Spencer is visiting her Nana's house in "Pretty Little Secrets", and Spencer competes with Melissa for his affections. However, they discover that Colin is 33 and married with a child, and team up to get back at him by spiking his Aminospa water with Viagra before a tennis match.
 * Raif "Reefer" Fredricks: They make their relationship official at the end of "Burned"; however, they break up at the beginning of "Crushed" when Reefer gets a two-year-long internship in Colombia and doesn't want to do a long distance relationship with Spencer.
 * Chase: They meet in "Crushed" when she enlists his help in finding "A", and share a mutual romantic attraction. However, she later discovers that the guy she thought was Chase was actually his brother, Curtis. She meets the real Chase at the end of the novel; though they do not begin an official relationship, it is implied that they will stay in touch. In Deadly the two have become quite close on their mission to take down Alison Dilaurentis and her accomplice.

Covers
Spencer is on the cover of five of the books, Pretty Little Liars, Wicked, Twisted, Crushed, and Pretty Little Secrets but all four of the girls are on Pretty Little Secrets.