I LOVED the Sweet Valley High books when I was a kid, mostly because they were about perfect California teenagers doing perfect California things. When I was 12, nothing seemed more exciting than that. So I was pretty darn thrilled when I heard Francine Pascal, the series' creator, was releasing a follow-up last March (um, yes, we are discussing a book I read four months ago). Doesn't everyone want to know how 25-year old Elizabeth, Jessica, and the gang turned out?!?
It turns out that life is not so perfect anymore (until they all kiss and make up at the end, anyway). Elizabeth turns out to be a reporter, no surprise after her high-school days as the superstar columnist at The Oracle, but she's devastated when she finds out that her sister and her formerly puppy-dog loyal boyfriend, Todd Wilkins, have been having an affair. They're, like, so in love. And Jessica, like, feels so bad about it...and yet also feels like her twin should understand. The rest of the book is basically backstory and apologizing while Elizabeth licks her wounds.
The sad truth is, no one should have let Francine Pascal near a Word document. After reading the drivel that is Sweet Valley Confidential, I now understand, very clearly, why ghostwriters wrote the entire SVH series. Because this book is outrageously terrible. I would have excused it and said that, like the series, it was written for pre-teens who don't know any better (like, ahem, Twilight) but I realized that's not even true - this book IS written for adults, the adults who nostalgically remember the 80s and the books they loved.
Numerous reviewers on Amazon have pointed out the factual inconsistencies between Sweet Valley Confidential and the series though I admittedly don't remember the books that well. For me, the worst part of this book was the very thin plot filled with inane dialogue and the most extreme of events that somehow took 300 pages to tell. Nothing normal happens in this book - everything is to extremes and, like, the worst thing EVER. Several characters have complete personality changes: The resident asshole's parents die and he turns into an angel; the sweet, bumbling nerd turns into an asshole and dies falling off a balcony; the protective older brother appears to be an serial adulterer until it turns out, omg, he's gay! It's laughably the worst.
Actually, I take that back. You want to know the worst part? This book was enough of a bestseller that St. Martin's has given the green light to a new series based on their adult lives, to reportedly be released starting next spring. According to the New York Times, it will be published online in installments and have the cliffhanger feel of the original series. To quote the NYT quoting St. Martin's publisher Dan Weiss, "It's really e-mass market." Let's just hope they decide to hire a new writer.
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