Sweet Valley High Revisited - Promises

How the jiminy feck is it March already? My great intentions to post more are clearly going super well, so without delay, let's get stuck into book fifteen, shall we?

Sweet Valley High #15: Promises


Oh no! Tricia Martin is dying! The Wakefields are at her bedside and the very first thing we're told is that Elizabeth's huge blue-green eyes are filling with tears. Because even if you're literally on your deathbed, the Wakefields are more important than you. So Steven's poor frail girlfriend finally succumbs to leukemia in the first chapter and it's all very sad.

Or at least it would be if the ghost writer could stop telling us how DAMN SEXY the Wakefields are every four seconds, in between all of Tricia's super poignant last words.

"his handsome face" (Steven)
"the tears began to stream down her pretty face" (Elizabeth)
"hugged her to his own powerful chest" (Ned)

Goodness. Anyway, Jessica feels bad for always being such a dick about the Martins, and marvels at Tricia's bravery and serenity.

"Jessica's own day could easily be ruined by something as minor as a run in her stockings. But Tricia kept right on smiling in the face of death and showed the courage of a female Luke Skywalker."

A female Luke Skywalker. Gosh, if only there were such a thing as a heroic lady that she could have been compared to. What a pity that the film that Luke Skywalker was in had no female characters. Like, say, an equally brave sister, or something. Also, do you think the ghost writer had a bet with her friends that she could crowbar a Star Wars reference into a Sweet Valley High book? I'd like to think so.

Right before Tricia dies, when she's alone with Steven, she asks him to look after Betsy for her, as the two sisters only ever had each other and he agrees. As the Wakefields morosely make their way out of her hospital room, a drunk and distraught Betsy Martin rushes into the lobby, looking for her sister. But instead of anyone feeling particularly bad for her, what with the tragic timing of her arrival and all, Elizabeth notes that she's wearing heavy makeup (ugh! If you're not a natural beauty, then you're clearly a terrible person) and a skimpy shirt with buttons missing and Jessica mutters about how she can barely walk in a straight line.

While the twins are busy quietly pulling on their matching judgeypants, Steven explains to Betsy that she's too late to see Tricia. Daddy Wakefield then insists that she comes back to stay with them because no one can find her alcoholic dad and she shouldn't be left alone. Jessica is horrified at the notion because Betsy hangs out in shady bars like Kelly's (as did Jessica), used to run around with bad news bear Rick Andover (as did Jessica) and has hooked up with half the guys in town (HELLO JESSICA) but there's only room for one untrustworthy skank on Calico Drive, bitches.

The next day after school, Elizabeth decides to bestow the greatest gift of all upon poor misfortunate Betsy, the friendship of a Wakefield twin. She discovers that Betsy loves to draw and is actually really good at it, but tends to keep it to herself. She has also sworn to change her ways and stop drinking and doing drugs, determined to turn over a new leaf.

At Tricia's funeral, their dad is a no-show and afterwards Betsy is so upset that she tries to cave on her new promise and tells Steven to bring her to Kelly's. He refuses and tells her that she's going to stay with them for good, much to Elizabeth and Jessica's surprise/outrage.

Later that day, when the twins are back in school, Jessica tells Lila Fowler and Cara Walker that Betsy is moving into the Wakefield's split-level, ranch style house of Aryan wonder complete with swimming pool.

"How positively awful - having to share your house with such low class trash" commiserates Lila. She then goes on to utter what might be the most wonderful sentence that I've come across so far in this series.

"Why, our stable boy has more class than Betsy Martin."

BUUURN! Oh Lila, you magnificent bitch.

Jessica then goes on to be her usual selfish and sociopathic self, complaining that everyone feels so sorry for Betsy, "but what about poor me?" she whines, infuriatingly. This is literally the same day that Betsy has had to bury her sister and Jessica is actually feeling sorry for herself because of what people might say when they find out that Betsy is living in her house. Oy vey.

Lila suggests that Jessica should search Betsy's room for drugs and get her kicked out of the house, because it's not as if her sister just died and she has nowhere else to go or anything. Jessica ransacks her way through Betsy's stuff, but comes up empty. While looking through her sketchpad, Jessica finds a drawing of Steven and freaks out because that means that smelly ol' Betsy is in love with her perfect brother. AND THAT JUST WON'T DO.

Outraged, Jessica bursts into Elizabeth's room to tell her, while Elizabeth is getting ready to go for dinner with Todd, Nicholas Morrow and his sister Regina because kids in Sweet Valley act like 40 year olds for some reason.

At school, Cara Walker tells Jessica that it's all over town that something is going on between Steven and Betsy, as they're constantly together and Caroline Pearce has been spreading it around school.

"Cara, you know how Caroline can take a perfectly innocent thing and twist it around so it comes out racier than a Bo Derek movie."

Bo Derek! Hee! Amazing.

Meanwhile, in the half-baked subplot, Winston Egbert has been eating loads of pizza at school because he's in training for a world record attempt to eat seven extra large pizzas in one sitting.

Anyway, everyone goes to the Beach Disco because it's Sweet Valley and there has to be at least one dance or big party per book. The Droids are playing, of course, so Todd and Elizabeth head to the dancefloor.

"Todd spun Elizabeth around in the air, putting her down with a flourish. They made a perfect team as they danced under the flashing strobe lights, Elizabeth's smooth, graceful movements complementing Todd's more playful style."

Wow, it sounds just like me when I was sixteen and at school discos. :-|

Also, I'd like to point out here that earlier in the book, before Betsy moved in, Jessica was complaining to Elizabeth about what a hobag Betsy is and mentioned that she was seen at Miller's Point the previous week with TWO GUYS.

Then when we meet Jessica at the disco, she's coming up the steps from the beach with Aaron Dallas on one arm, Neil Freemount ("Sweet Valley High's newest heartthrob", apparently) on the other and her navy espadrilles in her hand. You see, it's not slutty when you live in a nice house and your dad is a sexy lawyer with a powerful chest.

However, her night is ruined when Steven appears with Betsy on his arm, bold as skanky brass. They run into Steven's friend from college, Jason, who tries to be nice to Betsy and takes a real interest in her and her drawing. He teaches an art class at weekends and suggests that she should come along but she's all weird and defensive and snappy because she seems to think he just wants to get into her pants. Steven calms things down and she eventually agrees to go along to the class the next day.

Unfortunately, Jason does actually fancy Betsy and asks her out after the class. She freaks out and storms off, telling Elizabeth back at the house that he's only after one thing and won't listen when Elizabeth tells her that Jason is a nice guy and probably just wants to take her for dinner and get to know her.

Elizabeth and Jessica then separately get on Steven's case a bit about how much time he's spending with Betsy. Jessica's point is basically that her reputation is being ruined and she can't stand the thought of Betsy fancying her brother, whereas Elizabeth is worried that he isn't giving himself a chance to deal with Tricia's death because he's so busy looking after her. He knows he's spending too much time with her but wants to keep his secret promise to Tricia. Poor Steven! His handsome face is all tired and miserable and everything. Womp womp.

Jessica looks perplexed by Betsy's hair and I don't blame her. I'm perplexed by Betsy's entire look here, to be honest. She looks about as wild and trashy as someone off to play polo at a country club.

Jason shows up at the house the next day because Betsy ran off without her sketchpad after the class. He then tells her and Steven about an art school in LA that's doing a talent search and the winner gets four years of free tuition and accommodation.

But when he offers to help Betsy with her application and organise her portfolio, she has another conniption and tells him to stick it up his hole. Well, not quite, but she goes on about how he was just after a night alone with her and runs off again. She's getting pretty annoying at this point. Elizabeth, Steven and Jason then plot to enter Betsy's work anyway, as they think she could win it, even if she doesn't, and Wakefields know what's best for you. Their family crest is a smug-looking knight with a superiority complex.

The night of Winston's world record attempt arrives, because that's still going on and everyone from school descends on Guido's pizza place for the big event. There are tv cameras and everything, but Winston hits a wall after six and a half pizzas and fails, so the whole B plot was basically pointless. When the Wakefields are watching the news report at home that evening, the doorbell rings, and Betsy gets up to answer. And there, standing in the door, with bloodshot eyes and unkempt clothes is her father, Jim Martin. DUN DUN DUUUUN.

But the big reveal is all for nothing, as the next chapter begins the following day, and nothing really happened with Betsy's dad, he just went away after a while. It's almost as if the ghostwriter forgot to come back to it after making it into a half-assed cliffhanger. Bad ghostwriter. Ned and Alice are concerned about Steven taking on Betsy as a responsibility and while they're all discussing it, Steven eventually tells them about his promise to Tricia.

Jessica overhears all this, as devious wenches are wont to do, and immediately hatches a plan to get rid of Betsy. This was spurred on by an earlier insult from Bruce Patman, who made fun of the fact that Betsy is living in Jessica's house. And of course, instead of just ignoring the words of a renowned fuckface like Bruce, the logical thing for Jessica to do is to go and ruin someone's life. It's like that's her default setting. Life-ruiner. So while Ned and Alice are over at a friend's house, Jessica creeps into Betsy's room and comes up behind her, silently watching her draw, like a fucking serial killer. She eventually strikes up a conversation with Betsy about how well she's doing and casually mentions that Steven is only being nice to her because of his promise to Tricia. Upset and angry, Betsy packs up her stuff and runs off. It's kind of her thing.

Steven and Jason turn up at the house because Betsy has won the art school competition, only to hear the twins explain that Betsy left and Jessica heard her making plans to meet some shady guy called Charlie. Steven and Jason head straight to all the dive bars in town, i.e. Kelly's and the Shady Lady and find Betsy siting at the bar with two dudes, one of whom is Crunch McAllister, the guy who knocked Elizabeth and Todd off a motorbike in book six.

Betsy tells Steven and Jason to get lost and starts talking about some "dynamite pot" that they've gotten their hands on. Scandalicious! But when Steven and Jason won't leave without her, Charlie starts throwing punches. Suddenly Jason calmly takes off his glasses and proceeds to beat the shit out of Charlie and Crunch, going all JCVD on their sorry asses because he's a brown belt in karate. It's actually pretty cool. Betsy then realises that he's the one for her and is suddenly "overcome by tenderness for him". Bleh. Then there's a big barbeque to celebrate Betsy going off to LA to art school and not being a tramp anymore. Who needs rehab when you've got the Wakefields! Hooray!

Notable outfit:
Jessica's beach disco outfit was a bit of a letdown, as the navy espadrilles I mentioned earlier were worn with "a pair of indigo blue cropped pants and a matching blue-striped t-shirt", which is all very understated and un-plunging of her. So I'll give this one to Elizabeth and her outfit for her old lady dinner date with Todd, Nicholas and Regina.

"Elizabeth stepped into her lavender sweater dress and fastened the row of tiny buttons that ran up the back [...] slipped into a pair of low heeled blue pumps."

Blue and lavender together Liz? Really?

"Elizabeth pinned her shoulder-length blond hair back with a navy blue comb."

No. Stop that.

Things I counted:
Number of pages: 150
References to the twins' blue-green eyes: 5
References to the fact that the twins are blonde: 6
Amount of times Betsy storms out of the room: 4
Amount of times people blush: 15

Sweet Valley High Revisited - Deceptions

ALRIGHTY THEN. It's a new year and I'm going to endeavour to post more often, or at least try not to let weeks on end go by with nothing happening but tumbleweeds. So, here we go with Sweet Valley High, book 14!

Sweet Valley High #14: Deceptions


We begin at the Wakefield's house where there's a welcome back party going on for Elizabeth after the kidnapping ordeal that hasn't traumatised her even a tiny bit. She answers the door to find Nicholas Morrow there ("His face would have put a Greek god to shame") who for some reason is dumbstruck at the sight of Elizabeth, which doesn't make any sense seeing as he's already met Jessica several times and they look exactly the same. After looking at him for all of three seconds before inviting him in, Elizabeth immediately deduces that he's intelligent and compassionate, which is bollocks because she's not fucking Sherlock Holmes.

We're then given the usual rundown of how extraordinarily hot the twins are:

"Both girls were spectacular, with the all-American good looks that made them the envy of every other girl in Sweet Valley."

Those Wakefields. So relatable.

The Droids are playing in the living room and Nicholas asks Elizabeth to dance. She was on her way over to Todd but agrees, to be polite. It turns out that the song they're dancing to is about Elizabeth and the lead singer, Dana Larson, wrote it to welcome her back because no one in Sweet Valley has anything better to do than be obsessed with the goddamn Wakefields.

Nicholas follows Elizabeth around for the entire evening and at the end of the night, tells her that he's falling in love with her. No, really. He's completely serious, even though he's literally just met her. She explains that she has a boyfriend, but that doesn't dissuade him and he spends three pages pestering her and basically trying to guilt her into going out with him, telling her she's too young to be tied down with just one person, that she's just afraid, that she doesn't even know him, yet she's made a decision and OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS GUY'S PROBLEM? NO MEANS NO, ASSHOLE.

Elizabeth hesitated. Then she asked miserably, "What about Todd?"
"What about me?"

JESUS CHRIST, WHAT ABOUT YOU NICHOLAS, YOU PETULANT DICKHEAD? STEP AWAY FROM THE SIXTEEN YEAR OLD.

Her eyes filled with tears. It didn't seem fair that she should be held responsible for Nicholas's happiness.

Newsflash, Liz: YOU'RE NOT.

However, she gives in to his campaign of pressure and guilt tripping and agrees to go to dinner with him, because she "didn't want to make him feel uneasy by saying no".

AGHH. HIS BONER IS NOT YOUR PROBLEM, LIZ.

This guy is the worst. The actual worst. Fuck off, Nicholas Morrow. Really, though. Fuck right off. All the way off, in fact and when you think you've fucked off enough, well you haven't, so FUCK OFF SOME MORE.

After the party, Elizabeth feels super guilty, because she hasn't told Todd what's going on and she can't tell Jessica, because she declared her love for Nicholas while the twins were tidying up after everyone left and is convinced that he's into her too.

Oblivious to Nicholas's raging horn for Elizabeth, Jessica begins hatching a plan to get him properly interested in her. The Morrows are in "the computer business" you see, and Nicholas is taking a year off to learn about them so he can work with his father, so Jessica starts cosying up to poor ol' nerdy Randy Mason so he'll teach her about computers.

Also, Jessica is failing her maths classes and failing a class means getting booted off the cheerleading squad. So when she reads an article in the newspaper about kids known as "hackers", who can "plug in" to computers all over the state and change the data on them, another plan in which she can use Randy for her own ends begins to develop.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is quietly freaking out about her dinner date with Nicholas and the fact that she still hasn't told Todd. Nicholas rings her and says he's taking her to Côte d'Or, a fancy pants restaurant an hour away from Sweet Valley, which works for Liz as that way she won't be seen by anyone from school. She then calls Enid for advice, who agrees that she HAS to go out with Nicholas, even though she doesn't actually want to because she made a promise and for some reason the option of just telling Nicholas to go fuck himself doesn't even enter the equation.

Here's the jerk now, with the wrong coloured hair, as it's described as dark in the book. Also, Liz is looking pretty fucking pleased with herself here, for someone who's supposedly all conflicted and in turmoil for the entirety of the story.

Back over in the Jessica subplot, she eventually sweet-talks and manipulates Randy into changing her maths grade on the school computer (singular) via his mad hacker skillz, crying until he reluctantly agrees to help her out. And as soon as she gets her way, literally in the next breath, she drops him and goes home. It's so harsh.

Later that night, Randy calls Jessica, telling her that she's basically ruined his life and he might be kicked out of school and will never get to become a systems programmer. He's also worried that he might go to jail and he's going to the principal's office to confess everything. However, it was Liz that picked up the phone, so she forces Jessica to take her scheming ass into the principal's office too.

Liz takes Jessica to school in the car, "driving fast but skillfully" (earlier in the book when the twins went to the mall, Elizabeth parked the car "deftly", because she only ever does things perfectly). Then, for some reason she goes into the principal's office with Jessica, while Mr. Cooper is talking to Randy and stands there for the entirety of the conversation like a spare tit. I have no idea why Cooper doesn't tell her to wait outside, seeing as the issue at hand has absolutely nothing to do with her, but hey, Wakefield mind-control powers or something, probably.

Jessica bleats on about how it wasn't a crime to change her grade, and suddenly realises that it actually might be.

"Is it?" she whispered. "It could be!" Mr. Cooper's tone sent chills racing up and down her spine.

It could be? Jesus Cooper, at least pretend like you know what you're talking about. He threatens to suspend Jessica and Randy and then Elizabeth sticks her beak in, pleading with him to give them both another chance and for some unfathomable reason (or because of the aforementioned Wakefield mind-control powers) he actually BACKS DOWN. "But only because of you, Elizabeth." What the ever loving fuck? That is no way to run a school, Cooper.

Anyway, it's Saturday night and Elizabeth has a date with Todd, but still hasn't told him that she's going out with Nicholas the following evening. She doesn't get around to it that night either and instead just decides to make sure he never finds out. Solid plan, Liz. If their relationship is as brilliant as we're supposed to believe it is, then surely she should be able to just say "here, Todd, this insufferable rich dude won't get off my back unless I go out with him once, so I'm going to go, get a free dinner out of it and then I'll call over to yours and we can talk shit about him and watch movies for the evening." Anyway, Todd will be out with his family on Sunday night for his mother's birthday, so Liz breathes a sigh of relief and thinks to herself "What could possibly go wrong now?"

HEY, I WONDER WHERE THEY'RE GOING FOR THE BIRTHDAY DINNER? I BET IT'S SOMEWHERE FANCY.

Sunday evening rolls around and Elizabeth is home getting ready for her date, putting on minimal make-up "in soft, subtle tones", because of all the natural beauty and anyway, in Sweet Valley a full face of make-up is for whores. She throws on a honey coloured "natural-silk shantung dress" and I had to look up what shantung means. It turns out that it's a type of silk. So her dress has basically been described as a silk silk dress. Well done, ghostwriter.

She arrives at the restaurant to find Nicholas waiting for her, wearing slacks, a dinner jacket and...a maroon ascot. Is he going to a wedding? Anyway, they sit down and Elizabeth agrees to let Nicholas order for her, which is something I just don't understand AT ALL when you don't know the person. It makes no sense to me to hand over a decision as important as dinner, especially to some asshole who can't take no for an answer.

Anyway, they chit chat over dinner, Nicholas whines about how hard it is being rich, because snobby rich people give them a bad name. Yeah, not to mention the guys who harass a sixteen year old who has a boyfriend into going on a date with them. OH WAIT THAT'S YOU, FUCKFACE. While having dessert, Elizabeth tells him that he's a great guy (really? REALLY?) and all but she's not in love with him. Finally, Nicholas admits defeat and thanks her for giving him the chance he asked for (and not the restraining order he actually deserves).

But UH OH, WHAT'S THIS. Todd and his family are there too and on their way out and about to pass by their table. Wow, much shock, so surprise. In an impressively diabolical move, Elizabeth pretends to be Jessica when Todd recognises her and he actually falls for it. When he gets home, he feels guilty for having doubted Elizabeth and decides to call over to apologise for mixing them up. When Jessica answers the door in a towel, he immediately lobs the gob before he realises that he's got the wrong twin. Todd and Jessica are both furious when they figure out that their precious Elizabeth was on a secret date with Nicholas and Todd storms off in a rage, saying it's over between them.

Jessica confronts Elizabeth when she gets back and tells her that Todd knows what actually happened. During Jessica's tirade, Elizabeth tries to explain and says that Nicholas begged her to go out with him.

"He wanted me to get to know him. I felt I owed him that."

What outrageous bullshit! YOU DIDN'T OWE HIM SHIT, ELIZABETH. I'm actually with Jessica on this one, which is saying something. Jessica then suddenly decides that she doesn't fancy Nicholas anymore anyway so she forgives Elizabeth. Sure that's grand so.

Todd, however, is another story and the next day at school, he gives Elizabeth the brush-off. There's a big basketball game that night and Elizabeth has to cover it for the school paper. Todd ignores her before the game and proceeds to make an absolute balls of everything on the court, missing shots and generally being terrible, because he's a sad panda. Then Nicholas shows up and decides that he's going to fix everything.

At half time, he heads to the locker room to explain to Todd that he pressured Elizabeth into going out with him but nothing happened and she's still in love with Todd. This is apparently enough for Todd to do a complete 180 and decide that everything is alright again. So he wouldn't give his girlfriend a chance to give her side of the story, but this rando dude who hassled her into going on a date shows up to explain and that's all fine? Ugh. I hate everyone in this book.

Todd goes back out onto the court a changed man and wins the game against Big Mesa at the last minute, he and Elizabeth make up and everything is grand. Woo.

Also, over the course of the fourteen books so far, it's becoming clear that Jessica has an obsession with the number 137. For real. It pops up in Jessica-dialogue at least once in almost every book so far. In this one alone, she gets it in three times:

"There must be a hundred and thirty-seven people waiting to meet you.” 
“If I don’t pass, my parents will ground me for a hundred and thirty-seven years.”
“Enid Rollins is about one hundred and thirty-seven different kinds of nerd.”

It's such a weirdly random little quirk and so much a part of how Jessica speaks, that even Elizabeth drops a 137 into her impression of Jessica at Côte d'Or:

“Wait until I tell Elizabeth. Then you’ll be in trouble. About a hundred and thirty-seven different kinds.”

SO WEIRD.

Notable outfit:
There wasn't much going on in terms of hilarious outfits in this one, aside from Nicholas and his ascot. At Liz's welcome home party though, Jessica has cracked out "her sexiest outfit":

"A slinky black pantsuit with a plunging neckline."

Which actually sounds nice, if a little more like something someone ten years older than her would wear.

Things I counted:
Number of pages: 137
References to the twins' blue-green eyes: 2
References to the fact that the twins are blonde: 4
Amount of times people blush: 8
Amount of times Jessica says "Oh Randy!": 9

Sweet Valley High Revisited - Kidnapped!

GUYS. I'm so sorry to have left you hanging for so long there - although seeing as there are like a hundred SVH books in the series, not to mention the University ones and the ten years later book, we can probably all agree that Elizabeth was going to be grand. However, I only realised after finishing #12 that I didn't actually have a copy of the next in the series, so eBay and the Bear came to my rescue and now we're all set for another while. Hooray!

Sweet Valley High #13: Kidnapped! 
 

Our story begins with a typically creepy exchange between a Wakefield twin and someone they're related to, in this case it's Jessica asking Steven to zip up her dress. Ok, well that's not too weird, you might be thinking. He was however, just out of the shower and wearing nothing but "a green towel wrapped snugly around his waist". Ohkaaaaaay.

"He bent his six foot one body over her zipper"

"Steven inspected his sister carefully"

"She really thought her brother was the most handsome guy in Sweet Valley"

WHOA THERE HORSEY. I'm telling you, Wakefields = Lannisters of Westeros Valley.

Anyway, the reason Jessica is getting all dressed up is because there's a big party being thrown by the Morrows, a fancy new super-rich family in town with a sexy eighteen year old son and a daughter the same age as the twins. Steven mentions that he's off to see Tricia that evening and Jessica manages to "hold back the distaste she'd always felt for her brother's girlfriend". What a martyr. Although we are told that "she felt she owed her brother the courtesy of silence on the issue". Christ on a bike Jess, YA THINK? I love how she makes it sound like she's doing him a massive favour by not slagging off his DYING GIRLFRIEND, rather than it being, you know, common human decency or anything.

Elizabeth is supposed to arrive home any minute so she and Jess can go to the party together, but of course she's busy being chloroformed in the back of a van. Jessica is eventually left alone in the house and gets fed up of waiting so she calls Cara Walker who picks her up on her way to the Morrows' super-mansion. While they're on the way, we learn that Jessica and Cara have an unwritten rule, Thou Shalt Not Chase After The Same Boy As Your Best Friend, which pretty much leaves Winston Egbert for Cara, so yeah, good luck with that, Walker. Although Jessica does suggest that when Tricia dies, Cara and Steven could have another go at dating. Which is pretty cold, even for noted sociopath Jessica Wakefield.

They arrive at the mansion and a tiny old butler brings them past "the dining room, the library, the billiards room" (CLUEDO, ANYONE?) to the room where the party is on. They meet Regina Morrow there, who's beautiful and statuesque and has dancing blue eyes. She speaks to Cara first, directing all her attention to her and doesn't answer Jessica when she butts in to introduce herself, or asks about her brother, Nicholas. Regina then trips on a rug, so Jessica's train of thought goes thusly:

"The stumble, the lack of response to Jessica - it was only natural to conclude that the Morrow girl was drunk."

WHICH IS HILARIOUS. Of course that's what Jessica would think, seeing as people normally grovel before her luminous blondeness and kiss her hand like she's a fucking bishop, so the only reason someone wouldn't automatically give her their FULL AND UNDIVIDED ATTENTION is if they're shitfaced. I just love her reasoning.

It turns out that Regina is actually deaf, so Jessica can rest easy, she’s still as fascinating and amazing as ever. Although she does then enquire whether Regina’s brother is also deaf, which is a pretty weird thing to ask. To her relief, he isn’t, oh and he’s model-handsome to boot, because residents of Sweet Valley must, above all else, be insanely fuckable. I bet there's a hotness checkpoint just outside the town.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is still in the back of the van and trying to remember what happened to her. She realises that her hands are tied behind her back and that she’s gagged and blindfolded, so she panics and passes out. 

This cover is stagey and terrible, and therefore awesome. The disembodied hand! The weird position of Liz's arm and fingers! The fact that the colours she's wearing are completely wrong because the book clearly states that her work uniform has pink and white stripes on it!

After her shift at the hospital, Elizabeth was supposed to call over to Max Dellon’s house to help him out for his upcoming English test. When she doesn’t show up after a few hours he starts to worry because Elizabeth is super reliable and pretty much The Best Human Ever, so it’s not at all like her to just blow off an appointment. It eventually gets so late that he decides that something must be wrong, so he takes off on his bike towards the hospital to look for her.

Back at the party, Jessica is busy hogging Nicholas’s attention all evening and is none too impressed when Todd interrupts her charm offensive to ask whether she’s seen Elizabeth anywhere. She decides to fob him off with a lie about Elizabeth babysitting for Mr. Collins, because if she tells him that she doesn’t actually know where her sister is, she’ll have to release Nicholas from her sex-grip. Todd walks off feeling uneasy and thinking that Jessica’s story doesn’t add up.

Elizabeth wakes up again, still gagged and blindfolded only this time she’s tied to a chair. A vehicle pulls up outside and her kidnapper comes into the room, creepily undoes the plait in her hair and takes off the blindfold, at which point she realises that it’s Carl, the weird orderly from the hospital. He says he’s not going to hurt her and when he removes the gag, Elizabeth screams for help.

Since talking to Jessica, Todd has been miserably skulking around the party and eventually decides to call Mr. Collins’s house. When Roger (who looks like Robert Redford, you know) answers the phone and says that Elizabeth isn’t there, Todd tells him that there must have been a misunderstanding and hangs up. We’re told that Mr. Collins is still holding the phone after Todd hung up and hoping that Elizabeth is ok, because this book can’t stick to one point of view and has to tell us how immediately worried everyone is about Elizabeth, in case we'd forgotten how wonderful and amazing she is.

Todd is furious when he realises that Jessica was lying, so when he finds her sitting by the pool in a tiny bikini and flirting with Nicholas, he shoves her into the water, which is just brilliant. People should be shoving Jessica into pools all the time. Nicholas is about to throw him out, but when Todd makes Jessica realise that it’s half nine and Elizabeth should have arrived ages ago, she cops on and jumps out of the pool in a panic, to ring home.

Back at the house, Ned and Alice have just arrived in the door after a dinner with Alice’s new business associate, who “didn’t stop telling jokes all evening”. Which sounds tedious as fuck but they seem to have enjoyed themselves. Ned answers when Jessica calls, and when everyone realises that Elizabeth is missing, Jessica, still just in her bikini, rushes out with Todd to drive home and check the roads on the way in case Elizabeth’s car broke down. BUT WE KNOW IT DIDN’T.

Elizabeth is still tied to a chair somewhere and screaming didn’t do any good, as they’re in Carl’s manky little house in the middle of nowhere. It turns out that weird ol’ Carl is in love with her and kidnapped her so they could be together. And he loves her because she was nice to him at the hospital and helped him pick up some stuff he dropped one time. She talks him into untying her and makes a break for the door, but unfortunately for her there’s another door after that one, which is all boarded up. So Carl catches her and flings her onto the couch “eyes now bright with anger” and we’re left assuming that Elizabeth is now in big trouble.

Ned Wakefield has been ringing around, trying the hospital and Max Dellon’s house to see if anyone has seen Elizabeth. When there’s still no sign, he decides to call the police.

Max Dellon arrives at the hospital and finds Elizabeth’s car with the driver’s side door open, all her stuff inside and her scarf on the ground. When he realises that something must have happened, he gets into the car to rummage around for clues as to where she might be. But next thing you know, the cops arrive and arrest him for trying to steal the car or something.

But back to Elizabeth! Carl doesn’t hit her or anything like we were led to believe might happen, he just starts crying and reties her to the chair for the night. Also, there’s no threat of sexual violence or anything of the sort, because it seems that the girls only get almost-raped by hot guys they already know.

The next morning he makes pancakes for her, because he overheard her one day in work saying how much she likes her mother’s pancakes. But he bought frozen ones that taste terrible and he forgot to buy syrup, so they’re nothing like Mammy Wakefield’s light, fluffy pancakes, sprinkled with Aryan goodness, but Elizabeth eats them anyway because she’s starving. Afterwards, Carl heads off to work, which deflates Elizabeth’s hope that he’d stay home for the day, which she figured would arouse suspicion and lead to her eventual rescue.

The police let Max Dellon go free, but people are all suspicious of him anyway because he scowls a lot and wears spiked wristbands. Gasp! Well that kid MUST be bad news, then. The police suggest to the Wakefields that Elizabeth probably ran away, despite the fact that her bag, her car and ALL HER STUFF was left in the hospital car park. Worst. Cops. Ever.

Carl comes home from work that evening and tells Elizabeth all about his plans to leave his job and bring her away to some place in the mountains, where they’ll live together and she’ll bathe in a stream and he’s planning to leave the following night. Ruh roh!

In school on Monday, Todd confronts Max, convinced that there’s something he’s not telling them, and ends up punching him. Jessica breaks the fight up and tells Todd to cop the fuck on, in so many words, and the three of them decide to launch their own investigation and head to the hospital to see if there’s anything they can find out.

The new gang split up and each cover a different section of the hospital, to talk to anyone who was working when Elizabeth was there last. After asking at a nurse’s desk about Elizabeth, Max makes his way further down the corridor to talk to a dark, stocky orderly (spoiler alert: it’s Carl) at the same time that Jessica emerges onto the corridor.

Carl freaks out, thinking she’s Elizabeth, and runs over to her in a panic, asking what she’s doing here. You see, he never realised that Elizabeth had an identical twin, which is just really shoddy stalking, if you ask me. Go big or go home, Carl.

Anyway, Max trips up Carl before he can get to Jessica and pins him to the ground. Jessica, in fairness to her, does some quick thinking and pretends to be Elizabeth so he’ll stay calm and reveal his dastardly plan until the cops arrive. Once he gets handcuffed and taken away, he confesses everything to the police, so they all head out to rescue Elizabeth and everything is fine and she’s not even the tiniest bit traumatised, because there’s no such thing as PTSD in Sweet Valley. Grand so.

Notable outfit:

This book was severely lacking in hilarious outfits, the only amusing clothing we hear about isn't even worn. 

While Jessica is laying out clothes for Elizabeth before the big party at Regina Morrow’s house, she chooses “a long, red velour skirt”, “an off-white, high-necked blouse” and “her sister’s turquoise tank suit”. 

Whatever the hell a tank suit is.

Things I counted:

Number of pages: 149
References to the twins' blue-green eyes: 5
References to the fact that the twins are blonde: 1

Magic twin-sense shivery feelings that something is wrong with the other sister: 2

Sweet Valley High Revisited - When Love Dies

Lads. This blog post was nearly the end of me. I had the whole thing written and ready to go over the weekend. I saved it and closed it, in order to squirrel it away for a day or two and then post it today, only to find that Blogger somehow managed to eat the entire fucking thing apart from the first paragraph. What followed was a period of some pretty creative swearing if I do say so myself, and the Bear looking on, slightly worried and not quite knowing what to do. Anyway, there didn't appear to be any way to recover it, so I had to start all over again and begrudgingly try to recall every instance where I called Jessica a psycho bitch.

I was briefly tempted to just go FUCK THIS and leave book 12 as a blank space in my Revisited list, but I powered through and rewrote the whole thing. Pain. In. The gee. Anyway. Here we go.

Sweet Valley High #12: When Love Dies


Poor Steven Wakefield is miserable. So miserable in fact, that it takes him a second or two to realise which of his sisters he's talking to. It turns out it's "tempestuous" (psychotic) Jessica, rather than "levelheaded" (boring) Elizabeth. And the reason Steven is so sad is because his girlfrenn Tricia Martin has broken two dates recently and has been giving him the cold shoulder. So naturally, instead of showing the tiniest bit of sensitivity towards her brother, Jessica gets annoyed that he's hung up on someone from such a white trash family, suggests that Tricia probably doesn't care that he's upset and then angrily eats a banana.

Later that evening, Todd decides to go to Tricia's house to confront her and find out what's going on, but not before Jessica goads him some more and implies that Tricia might be cheating on him. Jesus, Jessica. And this is what she's like with someone she claims to love. Imagine what she'd do to an enemy? Oh yeah, she tries to ruin their lives, humiliates them until they change everything about their appearance and bullies them until they try to kill themselves. Charming girl, really.

Steven drives from the “beautiful green area of Sweet Valley” where the Wakefields live, to Tricia’s neighbourhood, which has discarded cans and broken glass and weeds everywhere, not to mention the “uneven road”. And the Martins don’t even live in a split level house. Bloody peasants.

Him and Tricia have a big fight because she won’t tell him what’s wrong and when he asks if she’s met someone else, she says nothing. They break up and he storms out, at which point Tricia falls onto her bed “like a dress slipping from a hangar” (because she’s so delicate), under the bare bulb on her bedroom ceiling (because she’s so poor).

It turns out that Tricia has recently been diagnosed with leukemia, which is what her mother died of years before and what drove ther father to becoming a messy drunk. She's only been given a few months to live, so she decided that she didn’t want the same thing to happen to Steve, so she’d rather have him think that she’s cheating on him and leave her, instead of telling him the truth.

At school, Cara Walker gets the news of the breakup from Jessica and is delighted, because she thinks Steve is “a genuine, certified hunk”. Jessica decides that she’s going to set Cara up with Steve and also learns that local TV celebrity Jeremy Frank is in Fowler Memorial with a broken leg after a skiing accident. She then hatches a plan to convince Elizabeth to sign up with her as a hospital volunteer, so she can, I dunno, flirt the hot guy or whatever.

The next day, the twins pull up outside the hospital and Jessica is silent, thinking back to two books ago and the time that Annie Whitman attempted suicide.

“Jessica never passed by this hospital without feeling a twinge of guilt. She remembered how agonising it had been to admit that she was just a teensy bit responsible for driving Annie to it.”

A teensy bit. A MOTHERFUCKING TEENSY BIT. It was ENTIRELY your fault Jessica, you deranged bitch. JESUS.

So they go sign up to be candy stripers, because that’s what hospital volunteers are called in America, due to the uniforms they wear. I Googled candy stripers to see what the clothes were like and in amongst the highy flammable sexy Halloween costume versions, there was this great photo of some candy stripin’ ladies in 1976, which probably wouldn’t have been too far off from what they would have worn in 1984 when this was written:


Ah god. Even the Wakefields with their perfect size six figures and aquamarine eyes and swishy blonde hair couldn’t make those uniforms look good. Nice hats.

Jessica’s plans to ogle Jeremy Frank are put on hold straight away though, as she’s assigned to the maternity ward and ends up spending all her time there finding vases for flowers and having newborn babies and photos of babies thrust in her face. I have to say, I actually feel for Jess here as there’s few things more boring than being cornered by someone intent on showing you photos of some baby you don’t know. Needless to say, she’s none too impressed when Elizabeth gets to meet Jeremy and sign his cast, so she sneaks her way to his room, convinced for some reason that once he meets her he’ll put her on his TV show.

Jessica enters the room, asking if there’s anything she can get for him, makes some small talk about the fact that she’s not actually Elizabeth but her twin and is about to sign his cast too, when she loses her balance and goes crashing into his banjaxed leg, stabbing the other one with the pen. Morto for her. Also, while at the hospital, Elizabeth spots Tricia looking frail and unhappy, but she runs off when Elizabeth calls out to her. HMM.

Steven is moping around the house over his now former lady love, so Jessica lets on that Cara Walker has a load of gossip about Tricia and that she’s having a party that night and he should come. While convincing him to go, she slags off Tricia’s trampy sister Betsy for hanging out with “that dropout Rick Andover”, because clearly it’s fine for Jessica to do it, but not for someone who isn’t from the lovely green area of Sweet Valley.

Cara’s party is actually a ruse in Jessica’s mision to get her brother and Cara to hook up, so the only other people there are Jessica, her date Aaron Dallas, Lila Fowler and some rando dude called Jim that Lila brought who no one knows. Cara tells Steve that she heard Tricia has a new boyfriend and was seen draped all over some guy at a pharmacy recently. Steve gets all angry, or as the book puts it “Steve felt himself stiffen.” Ay ohh! Down boy. So in an attempt to drive thoughts of Tricia away, he gets all up on Cara, who is delighted and they proceed to score the faces off each other.

I think the real problem here is that Tricia is actually a Victorian ghost.

Back at school, Liz sees Tricia looking all miserable so she goes over to her and asks what’s going on and why she ran off at the hospital. Tricia tries to fob her off with a story about how she was there to visit a sick friend and Liz is all like who is she and what room is she in and what’s wrong with her and it’s like, shut up Liz, she obviously doesn’t want to talk about it so leave her the fuck alone and stop prying, you nosy wench.

The twins are back on candy striper duty and Jessica is determined to win Jeremy Frank over, so she sails into his room with a jug full of water, on a mission to make a better impression. But uh oh! Jeremy is getting a sponge bath and is TOTALLY NAKED. ACTUAL COCK IN SWEET VALLEY, YOU GUYS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. On seeing a dong for the first time, Jessica screams and spills the cold water all over him before fleeing from the room. She’s essentially having a Carry On Doctor subplot with him.

Meanwhile, a weird lonely orderly called Carl keeps staring at Elizabeth and her perfect face. She tries being friendly to him and says hello, even though he creeps her out. She tells herself to stop being so silly. “What could he possibly do to her?” she wonders. Well hello there, foreshadowing. I bet if Elizabeth was in a slasher film she’d be the one idiot running upstairs.

Elizabeth has also been cooking up a scheme with Jeremy in order to prevent Jessica from causing him any further bodily harm. Apparently as soon as a guy she’s into actually starts paying attention to her, she loses interest, so he’s going to pretend like he fancies her so she’ll calm the fuck down.

There’s a new patient on Elizabeth’s floor, so she calls in to see if she needs anything and it turns out to be Tricia. She tearfully confesses her illness to Elizabeth, as well as her plan to keep it from Steve and makes her promise to keep her secret.

For the next week, Elizabeth is miserable as she feels like Steve should know what’s going on with Tricia, but can’t talk to anyone about it. She can’t tell Jesscia, she can’t tell Todd, or Enid, or her parents, so whoever can she talk to? Why sexy Mr. Collins, of course!

She goes to his office and and tells him and his sky-blue eyes the whole story, asking what she should do. Mr. Collins puts “a comforting hand on her shoulder”, tells her to follow her instincts and probably took a few moments for himself afterwards with the office door locked.

Over in the hospital, the whole Jessica-Jeremy scheme has been bubbling away and comes to a head when he gets her to come to his room and asks her to marry him. Jessica panics and runs away, so I guess the plan was a success. Jesus, if a guy Jessica is chasing after isn’t too busy trying to rape her, then he’s fake-proposing to her.

That evening back at home, Elizabeth fills Mammy Wakefield in on the Jeremy scam she’s pulling on Jessica and Alice is all “The things you girls come up with! One thing about having twins – it never gets boring!” She’s not like a regular mom. She’s a cool mom.

Elizabeth doesn’t get a chance to talk to Steve that night before he leaves for a party with Cara, so he’s all distant for the night and keeps thinking about Tricia. Especially when he smells Cara’s perfume, because Tricia didn’t need to wear any, as “the scent of her skin and hair was naturally delicate and sweet”. Yeah Steve. I suppose she pooed bottles of Chanel No. 5 as well. Anyway, Cara gets fed up with him constantly thinking about Tricia and angrily calls a halt to whatever thing they had going.

Meanwhile, Jessica has been considering Jeremy’s pretend proposal and has come around to the idea of being engaged to a celebrity. She goes to see him at the hospital and tells him she will marry him after all, so he bursts out laughing and explains that the whole thing was a ploy to get her to back off, while gallantly leaving out the fact that it was Elizabeth's idea. She’s all annoyed but he makes it up to her by having her on his TV show. So everything is grand there, I suppose.

Elizabeth eventually gets to talk to Steven and tells him everything that’s been going on with Tricia. He immediately drives over to Trica’s house and tells her he knows what’s happening and that he loves her and is going to be there for her so they have a big teary reconciliation and it’s all very sad. :(

A few days later, Elizabeth is leaving the hospital and sitting in her car, about to leave when Carl the creepy orderly shows up. He tells her that she’s needed back inside but when she gets out of the car, he chloroforms her ass and drags her into his van.

UH OH! CLIFF TO THE HANGER GUYS. THE END.

Notable outfit:
There was a very disappointing lack of hilarious clothes in this one, in fact the only proper outfit we get (apart from a mention of Elizabeth’s LOVELY tailored cordoury skirt) is Cara’s dress at the fake party.

“She was wearing a splashy Hawaiian print halter dress. It was cut so low in the back that Steven could see the white lines from her bikini crisscrossing her dark tan. She had pulled her long brown hair into a ponytail over one ear so that it snaked seductively down her bare shoulder.”

It actually sounds pretty nice, apart from the tan lines. Boo.

Things I counted:
Number of pages: 136
References to the twins' blue-green eyes: 5
References to the fact that the twins are blonde: 2
Amount of times Tricia is referred to as pale/delicate/fragile: 12 Because she's a porcelain doll-ghost, you see.

Sweet Valley High Revisited - Too Good To Be True

Ok, I know I've been ridiculously remiss in posting for the last while, but between holidays and a wedding and the superfun weekend that was Electric Picnic, I just haven't been able or inclined to get around to it. But here I am! And I'm making it up to you all with a Sweet Valley High post. Because yay! Also, at a slightly drunken work night out from a while ago, I promised some people that I would say hello to Karen, who is in either North Korea or Wellington, NZ (sure why not) and the ladies who play ultimate frisbee in Dublin. These are the details I found in the notes bit on my phone the next day anyway, so hopefully that still makes sense. Anyway, hi! And onwards we go!

Sweet Valley High #11: Too Good To Be True


House Wakefield is in disarray! Ned's old college roomate, Tom Devlin has suggested an exchange for spring break. His daughter Suzanne is going to fly out to Sweet Valley, while either Jessica or Elizabeth will go to New York in her place to visit the Devlins and stay in their swanky apartment. Needless to say, Jessica is declaring that she'll positively DIE if she can't go and is already imagining herself out at "some impossibly chic Manhattan disco" where she'll hook up with Mick Jagger (really) or be discovered by a modelling agency and become the next Cheryl Tiegs, because the references in this book are fucking gas. They end up flipping a coin for it and Elizabeth wins, so Jessica graciously congratulates her sister and tells her how happy she is for her, despite her disappointment. No wait, she bursts into tears and wails like a spoiled brat when Elizabeth tries to comfort her. Of course.

Later, Elizabeth even tells a still mournful Jessica that she can wear her new culottes while she's away (awesome!), but instead, Jessica manipulates Elizabeth's doubts about being away from Todd for two whole weeks (GOD she's so lame) and convinces her that Lila Fowler is going to get all up in his bizzniz while she's not there to stand guard over his crotch. Predictably, Elizabeth caves and then convinces herself that she never really wanted to go in the first place, and anyway "her sense of adventure and fun was far different from Jessica's". As in, Jessica, actually HAS fun every once in a while.

The Wakefields drop Jessica off at the airport and collect Suzanne when she arrives and half a page is spent detailing how hot she is.

"The most beautiful girl she'd ever seen"
"The girl had to be a professional model"
"Her features couldn't have been more perfect if they'd been sculpted by Michaelangelo"

Hyperbole, much? Also, she's got glossy black hair and enormous violet-blue eyes, so she's basically a sixteen year old Elizabeth Taylor. Suzanne and Elizabeth go for a swim when they get back to the house and Suzanne is so sexy looking in her bikini that "suddenly Elizabeth felt self-conscious about her own lovely size six figure". Oh boo fucking hoo Liz, are your diamond shoes too tight?

The next day, everyone goes along to a class picnic at the lake, chaperoned - of course - by Mr. Collins, who never seems to have anything better to do than hang around with a bunch of horny sixteen year olds. Get a hobby, dude. Naturally, everyone is in awe of Suzanne and Elizabeth notices that her buddy, plain ol' Enid is even attracting some stares of her own in her candy striped bikini.

"Though she wasn't stunning like Suzanne, with her shiny, shoulder length brown hair and enormous green eyes, she had a prettiness that was all her own."

Ouch! A prettiness that was all her own? Why don't you just slap her in the face and be done with it, Liz? Anyway, while Elizabeth is busy comparing Mr. Collins to Robert Redford, Suzanne gets into trouble while swimming. Mr. Collins springs into action, rescuing her and carrying her out of the water in his arms, dripping wet and ripped, like a goddamn hero. Elizabeth briefly wonders what the fuck is going on, as Suzanne was a super amazing swimmer in the pool back at the house, before engaging in some vom-inducingly cheesy canoodling with Todd. i.e. "I may need more mouth-to-mouth resuscitation." Bleh. Those guys suck.

Liz's stink-face here is a thing of beauty. That's some quality smell-the-fart acting.

Over in New York, Jessica has been left alone in the Devlins' swanky apartment, only for Suzanne's twenty year old fancy man Pete to pay a visit. He's super handsome and wearing a tight blue Lacoste shirt and says wanky things like "Chopin should come from the heart, don't you think?" So obviously Jessica is smitten and manages to wangle her way into a piano concert date with him that night.

However, her excitement wanes somewhat when Pete is half an hour late and doesn't even have the decency to fall to the ground and involuntarily come in his pants when he sees her in one of Suzanne's sexy black dresses and fancy make-up. In fact, the only comment he makes about how she looks is to point out that she's wearing Suzanne's dress. Jessica is most unimpressed, but still convinced that this rude douchebag is "the most exciting guy she'd ever met". They go for dinner and the concert bores the tits off Jessica, who is getting ever more frustrated that Pete won't make a move on her. He doesn't kiss her when he drops her off at the apartment, which leaves Jess utterly furious, as "she'd never been more humiliated in all her life" and could probably do with getting a bit of fucking perspective, to be honest.

Back in Sweet Valley, Elizabeth can't find her gold lavaliere and Suzanne tells her she'll help her find it. They're going to the beach for the day and Liz tries to get Steven to come with them, as he's been moping around the house over the problems he and his girlfriend Tricia are having. He declines and they tease each other for a bit, she calls him puny and he says "Who's calling who 'puny'? If you turned sideways and stuck your tongue out, you could probably pass for a zipper." Which is...what? She'd be all silver and shiny? Even more confusingly, she answers with "Don't I wish!" So...she WANTS to look like a zip? What is with all this zip nonsense, guys?

Anyway, as they're leaving to head to the beach, we get a little Suzanne POV, where she "reached into her shorts pocket with her other hand, fingering the gold necklace that lay coiled inside. A pretty little trinket, she thought with satisfaction."

OH. NO. YOU. DI'INT.

You do NOT fuck with the Wakefield lavalieres. This bitch is going down.

Elizabeth wants to stop off at Mr. Collins' house on the way to drop off some stuff for the school paper, but Suzanne insists on delivering the envelope so she can thank him for saving her drowning ass at the lake. Mr. Collins is out the back of the house watering the plants with his great big garden hose "wearing only a pair of white jogging shorts and a red bandana to keep his longish strawberry-blond hair out of his eyes." Not to mention "his bare, muscular chest, which was deeply tanned and slick with perspiration." Goodness. Suzanne turns on the charm, but is getting nothing but gruff politeness from him, so she goes on about how hot it is and asks to drink from the hose, as if she's some kind of labrador. What follows is so hilariously over the top, it sounds like something from a Whitesnake video.

"Suzanne laughed merrily as the cool water bubbled over her lips and nose. She let it dribble down her chin until the front of her thin t-shirt was soaked, making it cling to her very brief bikini top."

If only there was a car bonnet nearby for her to writhe around on! Mr. Collins blushes at the sight of the underage girl in the wet t-shirt, so Suzanne chalks it up as a small victory in her quest to, I dunno, bone the teacher, I guess.

Meanwhile, Jessica is starting to feel homesick and isn't having as much fun as she'd hoped for. She feels uncomfortable around Mrs. Devlin, who has an icy bitch demeanour, thinks the maid will steal from the drinks cabinet unless she locks it and calls taxi drivers "dreadful little men", so it sounds like she's also kinda racist. Mr. Devlin is hardly ever home, what with all the embassy functions he has to attend, so really I don't understand why they offered to look after one of Ned's daughters in the first place when all they do is leave her alone in the apartment.

Jessica goes to a dinner party thrown by Suzanne's BFF Evelyn, but the place is full of arsey, unpleasant heirs and heiresses taking about diamonds and Maseratis. Jessica ends up drinking too much wine during dinner, trips on her way to the bathroom and passes out to the sound of the rich kids being assholes. I actually feel kinda bad for her here. The people at this party are dicks and drinking so much that you're knocking shit over and passing out isn't exactly a superfun place to be.

Over on the West Coast, Elizabeth is supposed to be babysitting Mr. Collins' son Teddy, but Todd got last minute tickets to a Lakers game and she really wants to go. Suzanne steps in and offers to babysit Teddy, says that she'll call Mr. Collins to let him know that she's filling in for Liz, but DOESN'T because she's ulterior motive-ing all up in here. Mr. Collins is a bit put out when she turns up, seeing as he's leaving his child with a relative stranger that he's already suspicious of, but she purrs at him and charms Teddy so he goes off to a social occasion that for once doesn't involve his students. As soon as he leaves though, Suzanne ignores Teddy and proceeds to root around Mr. Collins' underpants drawer for the hell of it and is disappointed not to find even so much as a Playboy in his bedroom. Which I don't buy for a single second. That dude has a porn stash somewhere, she obviously didn't look hard enough.

When he gets home, he finds Suzanne pretending to be asleep on the sofa, with her blouse strategically unbuttoned. She asks for wine and starts to press herself against him in an attempt to lob the gob, but Roger is having none of it. She storms out, furious, and stomps back to the Wakefields' house, formulating a plan. Which is to rip her blouse and tell everyone that Mr. Collins attacked her. Jesus fucking Christ. These kids.

Back in New York, Jessica is out on another date with Pete, flirting outrageously with him, but it doesn't appear to have any effect. But then he comes back to the apartment with her, pours them both some brandy, turns off the lights and suddenly, to Jessica's surprise, starts wearing the face off her.

She's delighted for all of ten seconds before she realises that "Pete had much more in mind than kissing" and is getting a bit too insistent. She tries to stop him but he pins her against the couch, gets all simultaeneously rapey and victim-blamey and tells her she's asking for it, as dudes in these books are wont to do. Jessica is freaking out and decides that it's all Elizabeth's fault for letting her take her place in New York and essentially giving her what she wanted. Because she's crazy. Again, same as All Night Long. She's nothing if not consistent. Anyway, some brandy glasses get smashed and it's all a bit horrible, but suddenly the lights are switched back on and ta-dah! The Devlins are actually home for once.

Meanwhile, Suzanne runs crying to Elizabeth, with her torn clothes and damn filthy lies and after two days, it's the biggest scandal to hit Sweet Valley since, I dunno, the last scandal that hit Sweet Valley. It's a ridiculous town, who can keep count? Elizabeth and Todd secretly doubt Suzanne's story, because Mr. Collins is so super and brilliant and looks like Robert Redford, in case you didn't know.

Anyway, it's Suzanne's last night in Sweet Valley and everyone is going to a big party at Lila's mansion for her birthday. While she's getting ready to go, Elizabeth puts a present into Suzanne's packed suitcase as a surprise for her, but DUN DUN DUUUN...she finds the holy grail lavaliere in amongst Suzanne's clothes.

While in the car with Todd on the way to the party, Elizabeth tells him where she found her necklace and they begin to wonder if maybe Suzanne made up the whole assault story. Elizabeth wonders why anyone would do such a "hideous thing" and when Todd reminds her of some of the shitty things Jessica has done in the past for sheer divilment, Elizabeth, in a spectacular feat of doublethink, replies:

"But that was just Jessica. She's never done anything really bad."

(I don't normally use gifs in these posts, but I feel like this warrants one.)


She has previously done EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE SO HORRIFIED ABOUT RIGHT NOW. TO YOUR BOYFRIEND.

Anyway, she and Todd decide to make a detour to Mr. Collins' house, and find him "a pale shadow of the Roger Collins she knew." He looks like he hasn't slept in days and he's got STUBBLE on his jaw. And as we all know, in the world of Sweet Valley, beards = despair. She realises that Mr. Collins is innocent and decides that Suzanne isn't going to get away with what she's done. When they arrive at Lila's place, she gets Suzanne alone in the coatroom (what, your house doesn't have a coatroom? Fowler style, bitches!) and confronts her. Suzanne confesses to everything, but before Elizabeth can reveal the truth to anyone, Suzanne spreads a rumour via gossip queen Cara Walker that Elizabeth has been acting all strange, like the time she came out of her coma after the big motorbike accident. It's actually pretty impressively devious, how quickly and efficently she discredits Liz. That's some top-notch villainy, Suzanne.

Before long, everyone thinks that Elizabeth is going nuts, so when it gets back to her, she confronts Suzanne again, in public this time. While she's calling her a liar, Winston Egbert (who overheard the coatroom conversation) comes along to hand Suzanne a drink and accidentally on purpose trips over, spilling punch all over her white satin, off-the-shoulder dress. Ruh roh! Suzanne freaks the fuck out, showing everyone The Real Her, i.e. a rampaging bitch and everyone dramatically walks away from her, leaving her alone, crying. Wah.

Jessica returns home after the Devlins told Pete that they never wanted to see him again, Mr. Collins gets his job back and everything is fine and dandy. Hooray.

Notable outfit:
"She [Elizabeth] was wearing her favourite velvet skirt and a high-necked, lace Victorian blouse. Suzanne had helped her fix her hair into a fancy French braid, into which she'd tucked a fragrant sprig of honeysuckle."

Boom. Ingalls Wilder swag.

Things I counted:
Number of pages: 150
References to the twins' blue-green eyes: 3
References to the fact that the twins are blonde: 1 (Poor show.)
Appearances of the word "muscular": 5

Sweet Valley High Revisited - Wrong Kind of Girl

Well hello there. I know it's been terribly quiet around here of late, but work and real life and trying to read as much of A Storm of Swords as I possibly can has all been getting in the way, you see. As well as being traumatised by the Red Wedding episode of Game of Thrones. Actually, wouldn't Jessica Wakefield make an amazing Lannister?

Anyway, onwards to the next book!

Sweet Valley High #10: Wrong Kind of Girl
 

Ok, the first thing you need to know is that this book gets off to an amazing start. It's a first line that deserves to be up there with "Call me Ishmael", or "It is a truth universally acknowledged.." STRAP YO'SELVES IN, FOLKS.

As she looked over the list of girls who had signed up to try out for the cheerleading squad, Jessica Wakefield purred like a satisfied cat.

Miaow! We're immediately off to a great start. Excellent work, ghost writer. Anyway, Jessica is all aroused because seventy three girls have signed up, so we can only assume that there must be like a bajillion students in that school. There are two spots open, because Cara Walker and awesome bitch Lila Fowler were booted off the team for turning on the sprinklers during a rival squad's performance. Because soaking wet cheerleaders means a ruined routine. Yeah. Sounds legit.

So Jessica has essentially promised Cara that her old place on the squad is guaranteed, but suddenly the sight of Annie Whitman's name on the list serves as a massive bonerkiller for Jess. And why is that?

You know what they call her. Easy Annie! She's been with every guy at school.

Well now. There's the pot calling the kettle a whore. Jessica is furious that Annie has the nerve to sign up and reckons that her trampy reputation will give the whole squad a bad name. Which is hilarious, because LOOK IN THE MIRROR YOU CRAZY BITCH.

Apparently, being a cheerleader means keeping your grades up and Elizabeth has been tutoring Annie after school. While consoling her after a test that didn't go well, Annie confesses to Elizabeth that she sometimes feels worthless.

"What?" Elizabeth said, truly surprised. "You? Why, Annie, you're just about the most beautiful girl in Sweet Valley High."

You're RIGHT, Elizabeth! Beauty DOES equal worth! EXCELLENT MESSAGE.

Elizabeth calls over to Annie's house after school to help her with maths and learns about what a hard life Annie has had. Her mother had her when she was sixteen, her father left when she was two and threw her down a flight of stairs when she was ten. While Elizabeth is being told all of this, she thinks about how amazing and perfect and good-looking (really) her own parents are and it's impossible not to imagine her with a smug grin on her face while she does so.

Meanwhile, Jessica is coaching Cara through all the new moves and cheers that she'll need to know for the try-outs and there's a really odd bit where Steven Wakefield appears in front of them, doesn't really hear them when they both say hello and then hurries back into the house. So he just wandered out into the garden, stood in front of his sister and her friend and then fucked off back inside. It turns out that he's just heard the news that his girlfriend's dad is in jail for drink driving, but it's still quite a weird little scene.

The day of the try-outs arrives and Annie is brilliant, but Jessica tries to stop her from making it to the last twenty five because she's a cheertator (if you know what I'm talking about, then we should totally be friends) and freaks out at Elizabeth for saying in her gossip column that Annie is one of the favourites for the squad.

There's a Beach Disco a few nights later and pretty much everyone from school is there. A band called The Surfers' Waves are playing (not the Droids? The fuck, guys?) and Annie enrages Jessica by turning up with Bruce Patman. Suddenly there's a dance contest, because the denizens of Sweet Valley appear to living in the musical Grease. It ends up being a draw between Jessica and her date and Annie and Bruce, which Jessica takes a personal affront and is furious that Annie seems to think that she's "as good" as her. Silly Annie! Doesn't she know that The Glorious Wakefields are the pinnacle of hot sixteen year old girls the world over and should NEVER be challenged? Clearly not.

Jessica and Elizabeth have a row over Jessica being a cunt to Annie for no good reason, and things get worse when Jessica discovers that Elizabeth is the one helping Annie to pass all her maths tests and keep her grades up. It's the day of the cheerleading semi-finals, and Annie is amazing again, with the whole gym applauding her. Jessica has been telling the rest of the squad how unsuitable Annie would be every day since the first round of try-outs and is aghast to find that they've dared to defy her and all voted for her to be in the final eight.

It's no surprise that everyone did vote for her though, the way her routine is described. "Out she dashed, creating an immediate electric excitement in everybody watching." "Zest and perfection", "she was quite simply a sensation." Oh and she "blushed prettily" at the end when the crowd burst into applause. That's the other thing about Annie, literally every time she appears in the book, we're informed of how gorgeous she is. We've already had "Annie tossed her lovely head", "the gloom returned to her pretty face", and "a becoming blush rose in Annie Whitman's cheeks" and we're only halfway through the book. We get more hotness reminders for her than we do for the Wakefield twins combined. Actually, no wonder Jessica hates her. She's stealing all her sexy thunder!

Annie's progress through the cheerleading rounds is boosting her self confidence, and she tells Elizabeth that the reson she hooks up with so many dudes is because she needed the attention and felt empty inside. Poor Annie has no idea that half the school calls her Easy Annie and thinks she's a tramp. Seriously, is that school working under some kind of mass delusion about Jessica, as if she HASN'T dry humped half the dudes in Sweet Valley? Or is a girl only a tramp if she lives with her single mother in an apartment, rather than a split level ranch house with hot parents? HMMM.

Jessica and her lavaliere being all smug and blonde while plotting Annie's downfall. Rumour has it that Courteney Cox was the model used for Annie Whitman. She's the absolute head off tampon ad-era Courteney. See?

Anyway, Jessica goes full on Regina George and rigs the voting process by mind fucking one of the other cheerleaders, Helen Bradley, into keeping Annie off the squad. Meanwhile, Annie has noticed that the cheer squad's manager Ricky Capaldo fancies her, and she's starting to feel the same way. I should say that Ricky is a student too, which seems a bit odd, but I guess it's better that way as otherwise it'd be an adult wanting to bone a fifteen year old girl, which would be hella creepy.

Then, ooh THEN, we get an amazing scene so melodramatic it'd make Linda Gray's eyes water. Elizabeth is over at Todd's house, watching an old movie with him. Her mind keeps wandering to the Jessica-Annie dilemma so she unwittingly lets out a sigh, which causes Todd to jump up and demand to know if she's in love with someone else. Because she sighed. He's TOTALLY serious, it's hilarious.

He asks her this while looking away from her, so there's even an impassioned "Todd, please look at me!" thrown in, before he calms the fuck down and puts his big boy pants on. He asks her what's been on her mind and guesses that it's something to with Jessica being a duplicitous, cruel wench (in so many words) which causes Elizabeth to get all angry and defensive. Todd's ma then comes into the room, and Todd says "Mom, we're having a discussion", without looking at her. The fucking brat! Imagine your mammy letting you talk to her like that! Not a hope, lads. She actually leaves the room without so much as a HINT of a wooden spoon in Todd's direction and he and Liz make up, of course. YAWWWN. Someone should have ended up in a swimming pool. Go big or go home, Francine.

The day of the cheerleading finals arrives and Annie is spectacular as usual, which results in a stand off between Jessica and the rest of the squad, who want to vote Annie in. Jessica demands that they vote in Sandra, a girl who fell during her routine. When the rest of the cheerleaders won't back down, Jessica gives them an ultimatum and says she'll leave if they allow Annie in, the power mad harpy. Apparently she's the "heart and soul of the team", so as usual she gets her way. Ugh. STOP HUMOURING HER.

When Annie finds out that she didn't make the cut, she's distraught and cries on Ricky until he tells her that it was Jessica who screwed her over and did so because she thought Annie's reputation would
taint the whole squad. When Annie doesn't show up for the next three days of school, Ricky goes to Elizabeth, begging her to talk Jessica into letting Annie on the squad. Jessica doesn't budge and the next Monday, Elizabeth gets a call from Ricky, telling her that Annie tried to kill herself. Elizabeth rushes to the hospital, dragging Jessica with her, who at least had the decency to protest and say that Annie wouldn't want her there.

They find Ricky in the waiting room, and Jessica, suddenly realising that being a horrendous bitch can actually have consequences, bursts into tears, sobbing about how it's all her fault, and making it all about her. The doctor eventually comes to Annie's mother and tells her that her daughter appears to have "no will to live". Dun dun DUUUUN. Jessica blurts the whole story out to the doctor to let them know why Annie overdosed on pills and the doctor, FOR SERIOUS, prescribes....letting Annie be a cheerleader. Amazing. Jessica stays up all night at Annie's bedside, telling her that there was a mix-up and she's on the squad after all. Annie eventually comes to and her first words are "Where are you? Please...Jess." Oh get ta fuck.

Annie wakes up and later that day, the twins and Ricky bring in her cheerleading uniform and tell her to go to the window. The cheer squad are outside and shout "Get well Annie!" and then everyone is happy and a fifteen year old girl's depression and suicide attempt are all forgotten about. Because cheerleading. Yay.

Notable outfit:
Amid not-too-remarkable dresses with thigh-high slits (Annie), black and red striped tops (Jessica) and a total lack of Dana Larson, I'm giving this one to Elizabeth's bit of man candy.

Todd looked especially handsome that night in his gray cords and burgundy shirt.

Good for you Toddington.

Things I counted:
Number of pages: 137
References to the twins' blue-green eyes: 3
References to the fact that the twins are blonde: 3
Amount of times Annie is called pretty/beautiful/lovely: 12

Sweet Valley High Revisited - Racing Hearts

Blammo! It's book nine o'clock!

Sweet Valley High #9: Racing Hearts
 

The book begins with Elizabeth Wakefield discovering her sister Jessica trying on their mother's "chocolate-brown suit" which sounds just LOVELY. Elizabeth has no idea what the hell is going on with her sister, as she seems to have abandoned her plans to become a famous actress, isn't going to the beach with Cara Walker like she was supposed to, and is all talk about responsibility and the future. It's all very boring and un-Jess. It turns out that she wants to work in their father's legal office after school, as she has decided she wants to be a hotshot lawyer. Grand so.

The next day at school, it's been raining in Sweet Valley but worry not! Both Jessica and Lila Fowler still have perfect hair, as we’re informed that Jessica’s hair is “frizz-proof” and the rain has given Lila “a fullness to her wavy hair that Jessica could seldom achieve with her curling iron”. PHEW. I’m so glad that the beautiful popular girls remain flawless regardless of weather conditions. Jessica fills Lila in on her grand plan to work in Ned's office, and Lila's all "ewww, work" because Daddy’s Girl don’t need no stinkin’ job.

They run into Roger Barrett who's in love with Lila, but the hallway is slippery and he falls and lands on his arse in front of his dream girl. Poor Roger! And actually poor Roger, because he secretly works as a janitor in the evenings and weekends in Ned Wakefield’s office building, to pay the rent at home. Apparently there’s no such thing as part time jobs in petrol stations, delis or shops of any kind in Sweet Valley. Anyway, Roger runs off all embarrassed and Lila calls him Bugs Bunny while being a cunt about him with Jessica. She then explains that she calls him Bugs because he bugs her. Wildean wit, that one.

Meanwhile, in the boy’s locker room Bruce Patman, Todd Wilkins and John Pfeifer have an awesomely homoerotic conversation about the upcoming trials for the Barton Ames race, more commonly known as the Bart. There's also a dance afterwards (OF COURSE) called the Bart dance. Seriously. Every time it's mentioned, this pops into my head. Anyway, Bruce is bragging about how he’s going to win the race hands down, even though the prize is a scholarship to SVU, which he doesn’t exactly need seeing as he’s super rich. But never mind all that, we get these wonderful sentences which are MUCH more interesting:

“Droplets of water dripped from his dark hair onto his red and white Sweet Valley running shorts”

“Todd eyed Bruce coldly as he took off his soaked t-shirt”

“I imagine I have as good a chance as anyone. These legs of mine do ok on the basketball court”

They’re just a damp towel-snap away from a sweaty orgy on the wooden bench. There’s also some talk about Coach Schultz leaving over an argument with the school board about money, but who cares, BRUCE’S SHORTS ARE ALL WET.

After school, Jessica arrives at her father’s office to start her shiny new part time job. She’s expecting work to be like an episode of Ally McBeal, so she’s none too pleased when she’s put to work photocopying legal documents. However, things look up for Jess when she meets a handsome dude in the lift. His name is Dennis, he goes to a rival high school and he works part time in his father’s ad agency across the hall from Ned’s office. They flirt about handbags and he asks Jessica if she’s training to be a secretary. Really, Dennis? Anyway, Jessica thinks he’s cute and of course he fancies her, seeing as he's got a pulse and the Wakefield twins induce boners wherever they roam.

The next day at school, everyone is out for the Bart race trials and Elizabeth is being an insufferable wench, pestering Roger to try out for the race, as he could really use the scholarship prize. He’s visibly annoyed with her, but Elizabeth won’t let up because she’s a self-righteous pain in the hole, and even though we’re told how she’s saying everything “gently” like she’s the good guy, she’s acting like a dick and you just desperately want someone to turn around and tell her to shut the fuck up. Anyway, Lila overhears the conversation and starts to egg him on too for her own amusement and because she thinks he’ll make a fool of himself. So because Roger loves Lila, he decides to run as it might give him a chance to win her over. He joins the other runners on the track at the last minute and kicks everyone’s ass, beating Bruce to the finish line and surprising everyone. He also does it all in “faded army fatigue pants and red t-shirt”, rather than fancy running gear like the other athletes, and although according to Jessica, “his taste in clothing leaves something to be desired”, what he’s wearing actually sounds pretty fucking hot if you ask me.

Everyone is all over Roger after he wins the race, telling him how brilliant he is. Everyone except his friend Olivia Davidson, the alafalfa sprout munching hippy. She’s sullenly writing about her feelings while sitting on the bleachers (the big emo head on her), and barely congratulates Roger on his win because she fancies him and now she's jealous that Lila is suddenly showing an interest in him. She goes off in a huff, presumably followed by a cloud of patchouli. 

GO HOME ROGER. Nice jumper, Lila.

The school principal gives Roger a fancy SVH tracksuit, which makes Lila suddenly think he’s SEXAY, so she butters his bread for him in the cafeteria. I really wish that was a euphemism, but the line genuinely reads:

“Oooh, let me do that,” Lila said, taking the pat of butter and his knife away from him.

I mean, I know Lila’s hot and rich and all, but that’s some fucking weird flirting, whatever way you look at it.

The coach and the school principal both tell Roger that he has to run in the Bart race, but he doesn’t have time to train because he’s the only one bringing money into the house with his part time job and doesn’t think his boss would give him the time off anyway, so he keeps failing to show up for practice. He also can’t meet Lila after school because of it, so she thinks he’s playing hard to get. While discussing this with Jessica at lunch, there's a great bit that just reminds us how genetically blessed and amazing the Wakefields are, in case the focus had been pulled away from them a bit too much.

Jessica took a big bite of her cheeseburger. Lila eyed her friend enviously. How could Jessica eat so much and never gain an ounce? Lila had to work like crazy to keep her slender figure. 

Boom. All the money in the world can't buy you the sexy Wakefield metabolism, Lila. Anyway, in a bizarre attempt to win Roger over, Lila writes this godawful poem for him:

Roger Barrett, a boy so fine

His speedy running is divine

In school too, he is very smart

He’ll walk away with the trophy at the Bart

In everything he operates at the highest stratum

We at Sweet Valley are so proud to have him.

I...just...what? Stratum? WHAT IS HAPPENING?

Meanwhile, Jessica has been hooking up with hot Dennis after hours in her Dad’s office, when everyone else is gone home. Elizabeth has gotten suspicious about what her sister is up to, so she sneaks into the building to spy on Jessica, presumably because she has nothing better to do and is an unbearable busybody. Ugh. She sees Jessica and Dennis shifting each other, the big stalker, and then sees them run into Roger while he’s doing his janitor thing. Elizabeth then blackmails her sister into keeping Roger’s secret, otherwise she’ll tell their father that Jessica has been dry humping some dude in the office every evening.

When he gets home, Roger rings Olivia in a panic and tells her all about his cleaning job and how he can’t run the Bart race at the weekend because he won’t be able to get time off and how worried he is that Jessica will blab to everyone in the school. While all this is going on, Lila calls Jessica looking for help to bag Roger, so Jessica comes up with a plan and tells Lila to throw a leaving party for Coach Schultz before the Bart dance, so Roger will have to attend. However, she also evilly plots to reveal Roger’s secret job while at the party, which will both humiliate Lila and somehow make Jessica the “star of the party”. Is that even a thing? Do parties have stars? I must be going to the wrong ones.

Anyway, the next day at school, the pressure is getting to Roger so he admits to Lila that he works as a janitor, and begins to feel proud of himself, even though Lila now looks at him with barely concealed disgust.  

“Roger’s integrity was admirable, but Lila wanted nothing to do with it.” 

Amazing. Who needs a guy with integrity or honesty or any of that stupid stuff? Not Lila Fowler, that's for damn sure. Roger then goes to tell the coach that he won’t be able to race on Saturday but it just so happens that Liz had her father call Roger’s boss and make him give Roger some time off, and then rang the coach to say that was all fine and dandy. It also turns out that the coach isn’t leaving at all, but we don't really care about that. Roger thanks Liz, and then runs off to Olivia, suddenly realising that he loves her. How handy.

Back at Ned’s office, Jessica has been getting frustrated that Dennis hasn’t picked up on her hints to get him to ask her to the Bart dance. Finally, she does the asking herself but he says he can't go, which makes her angry because NO ONE REJECTS JESSICA WAKEFIELD. Anyway, it turns out he’s fifteen, so Jessica dumps him because he can’t drive, even though she actually really likes him.

The day of the big race arrives, and Roger wins, breaking the Bart record while he’s at it. Lila suddenly reappears and lobs the gob on him, going on about how she never lost faith in him and she’s throwing a party in his honour. He turns her down so she gets all indignant and demands to know what could be more important. He tells her to mind her own damn business and goes off with Olivia. Hooray. 

I have to say, it wasn't exatly the best Sweet Valley High book, but the next one is all about slutty Annie Whitman, so things are looking up, kids.

Notable outfit:
There weren't nearly enough hilarious clothes in this book, but I'll give this one to peasant skirt enthusiast Olivia Davidson.

Olivia proudly showed off the floral print skirt. It was so long it nearly covered her Chinese sandals. “The latest in chic from Martha’s Thrift Shop. Goes well with the scarf, don’t you think?” She fingered the long strip of faded silk tied loosely around her neck.

Good for you Olivia.

Things I counted:
Number of pages: 158
References to the twins' blue-green eyes: 3
References to the fact that the twins are blonde: 2 (Must try harder.)
References to eyes/eyelashes/eyeballs: 52