Photo courtesy of The Closet.
This one has me 100% convinced that each writer makes no effort to read the previous books. Or the editors suck. Or else they don’t care. I hate Cara and Steve.
Star commenter Rio pointed this out for an earlier book, but this one is basically a to-do list of SVH cliches.
1. Jessica manipulates other people to serve her. Despite wanting them to get together originally, she finds Cara boring and always talking about Steve, and doesn’t like it. She convinces Cara that she needs to play hard to get and addm mystery to the relationship. Thus backfiring. And thus Jessica not having to take any responsibility for it.
Steven Wakefield today.
2. Steven has a phobia of college. Get this- he’s sick and arranges to come home for two weeks because HE HAS ALLERGIES. My theory is that the wet the bed the first night of college and the guys in the dorm constantly berade him. Cara is stoked to spend time with him but he acts all annoyed because he has work to do. Yea, I’[m sure a guy would come home for college for two weeks and NOT want to spend time with his underage girlfriend who is constantly rubbing up against him.
3. The Oracle is apparently the most important journalistic medium in the world. Oh noes! Readership is down. They decide that they need a humor section. Don't worry, they ask Winston to be the editor. He turns them down. They decide to have a contest for a new humor columnist. Cue convenient plot device to introduce Abbie Richardson.
Abbie' future cartoon career.
4. A poor pathetic schmuck is taken under Elizabeth’s wing. Abbie Richardson dated a guy from another school for two years, and thus never hung out with anyone at SVH. They broke up and now she is trying to reintegrate herself into SVH social scene. I have to say, that’s pretty weak of Abbie. “Oh, I didn’t need you when I had a boyfriend, and now that I’m alone, I’ll make the effort.” Of course, her dream is to hang out with the Scooby gang, who kind of finds her annoying. SWhe’s not invited to Cara’s super special birthday lunch at the yacht club (what is she, 67?) and is devastated. She does, however, enter the humor contest with a comic strip called Jenny, about a socially awkward sixteen year old girl. Get it? She can’t express her feeling through real life, so she does it through the comic strip. OMG SO DEEP. bbir comes and hangs out at the Wakefields every afternoon and Elizabeth helps her with her comic strip. How?
But Abbie didn’t want to burden Elizabeth with her problems. That wasn’t the way to make friends, she reminded herself. The way to make friends was to be nice to people, to listen to them, to offer the help them, not to dump your own troubles on their shoulders. Abbie thanked Elizabeth warmly for all her help and sighed as she watched her walk down the hallway. She wished she were Elizabeth Wakefield- she was so popular, so self-assured.
Since Steven is always around, he befriends Abbie too, because he loves hanging out with high school girls. Abbie is so sweet and kind, he tells her all about his problems with Cara. Abbie foams at the mouth because she hangs with the Wakefields. Jessica is suspicious, and suspects Abbie is trying to steal Steven from Cara. Yawn.
5. A ghost of Tricia Martin haunts Steven. So, in order to add mystery to the relationship, Cara starts writing anonymous love notes to Steven on floral stationary. But guess what? It’s the same magical wonderful stationary that perfect wonderful brave Tricia used to have. What are the odds? Steven thinks its someone playing a joke on him. Turns out it was Cara, and they laugh about the whole thing and promise to be more open and communicative with each other. Except until they get engaged when neither of them wants to get married. Not to speak ill of the dead, but what was so great about Tricia? Her pale, luminescent skin and her thin figure (caused by the Leukemia?)
Once everything is straightened out, the whole gang realizes they were not treating Abbie all that great. They all make a pilgrimage to her house and declare how awesome she is, and Elizabeth tells her that her cartoon Jenny won the humor competition. It’s the happiest day of Abbir’s life! Except that we never see her again after this book. Typical.
I think someone is California is paying Francine to make people who don’t live in Southern California think that they should. I don’t know what armies of eleven year olds begging their parents to move the family there will do.
Also, I’m pretty sure Francine wrote this one herself.
Jennifer Lucato, of New York, writes,
My name is Jennifer and my all-time favorite series is Sweet Valley!
I am eleven and have been reading Sweet Valley books since who knows when! If you ever asked me what high school I want to go to I would definitely say Sweet Valley High.
Sweet Valley books are action-packed, suspenseful starring who else but …Elizabeth and Jessica! Francine Pascal has done a wonderful job writing these books. You really feel if you are there, sharing in the twins’ triumphs and defeats.
Yea, I actually could imagine the taste of those frozen pancakes as if Carl was feeding them to me.
The twins lead very fascinating lives. They’ve even been to France, a place I would love to visit. Best of all, they live in California! Sun, sky and surfing! That’s what I think of California.
I think several million Northern Californians would disagree.
Every month I race to the bookstore hoping to see a new Sweet Valley book. If you ask this reader’s opinion, always have a copy of a Sweet Valley book with you. Don’t leave home without it!
Jennifer, have you ever tried stand-up comedy? You’re a regular Winston Eggbert!
March madness is over, and I am not even 100% sure I understand March madness, but for no sake at all I thought it would be interesting to see what people think the “best” SVH book is. Obviously, best can mean most fun, best written, most snark-worthy, etc. So we’ll do a bracket type thing and the wionners out of these pairs will be pitted against each other next time.
Please be sure to read and comment (on the film.com site) my recap of The Hills. I am really running out of ways to make fun of it. But I’ll try. Also, the season 5 promos freak me out:
I'm Justin! I'm INTENSE!
Steopphanie looks about 47. And tweaked out of her mind.
ALSO I’m twittering. I know, I’ve jumped on that bandwagon. Follow me if you like: ihatewheat. I will mostly post about stuff I’m watching, listening to, or reading. I promise I won’t post everytime I have a bm’s or every time I inhale oxygen, which some people tend to do.
This is just a typical story of what happens when you move to the big city to pursue your dreams. It’s a pretty typical story of the ups and downs of becoming an adult! The plan was for me and Jed to move to New York together after graduation. Not living together, silly! Of course our genitals will never be in plain view of each other! He was going to law school and was getting a measly editorial job at a magazine. I don’t want to buy my way through a career! I’m rich but I need to put in my dues as a regular folk! Except when it comes to renting an apartment. I have a two bedroom to myself. Well, that was the plan, until Jed’s father dropped dead at our college graduation. And I mean that literally. He died at the ceremony at Carleton Hill college. Woopsies! He left Jed his farm, which Jed considered taking over and moving back to Montana, but thankfully he decided to sell it and come to New York anyway. Thanks god that didn’t get into the way of my plans.
Anyway, I was living the life of any measly editorial assistant at a magazine. I had a cubicle and deadlines, and I was a regular career girl. And like other career girls, I happened to be helping on a photo shoot for the magazine and the model happened to not show up and my friend Peter the photographer happened to be shooting it so they just happened to ask me to be the cover model. What’s a girl to do? This is to be expected from being a career girl.
Woopsies! The cover became a sensation and I got a modeling contract with a perfume company. So now I had to balance this job with my editorial job. Wait, what? You think I’d give that up? I have to keep it real, y’all. I have to at least try to live the life of the common folk, right? So Jed, being Jed, starts to get angry and jealous that I’m spending time with Peter, my exclusive photographer for the campaign. I’ll bet you didn’t know that about modeling, right? When you are hired by a company you always have the same photographer. Since Jed is jealous, it must be a Tuesday, so I’m not going to pay much attention.
Jed, however, started law school, but I am worried he is not studying. He seems to be running with a party crowd. They go to night clubs- ON A SCHOOL NIGHT! Never mind I’m jetting off to Paris for photo shoots, how dare he have a good time as well! And he misses classes sometimes! I make sure to keep a schedule of his classes and call him after each one to make sure he is going to them. How can he get annoyed by that? It means I care!
Meanwhile, Jed now thinks there’s something between me and Peter, and that Peter is interested in me? Which is so absurd! I’m Caitlin Ryan! I’m think and Rich! I’m in a Francine Pascal book! No one would ever be in love with me! But…woopsies, Peter is. I tell him I’m not interested, yet I show up around town with him at parities and drape myself on him. How can Jed ever get the wrong idea? Well, I should be hurt too because I’ve also seen him hanging out with some socialite who…..has had sex with more than two men! What TRASH! How dare he?
Back in Virginia, Grandmother Ryan gets very ill and have a stroke. I rush to her bedside, and probably look beautiful as my raven hair falls over my cheek as a grieve. I wish Peter were there to photograph it! Jed hears about this and rushes to be by my side. Despite all we have done and said to hurt each other, we don’t even need to adddress it because he gives me a passionate, loving kiss. I can’t believe we almost broke up! We promise each other wwe will never fight or mistrust each other again…at least until the next book in this trilogy.
To whomever suggested I read the Sunfire novels, I’d like to thank you and take you out for a quadruple-scoop hot fudge banana slip fudge ripple waffle cone sundae at The ‘Burger. It combines my love of crappy YA lit with historical fiction. And my FAVORITE time at that- the late 1800s pioneers. You all know my obsession with LHOTP, obvi. And you know what? I can’t even snark that much- this is good shit!
Amanda is a piled rich girl in Boston who has a shady father. Dad owes a lot to a bookie and so he decides, hey, let’s just join the Oregon trail. Amanda is all put off because she’s rather sit around in white gloves and accept gentlemen visitors. And omg, this ugly, poor girl Helen tries to be her friend! And there’s that cute Ben Compton! How will he ever notice her if she is getting dirt all over her silk dress? Also, he looks about 45 on the cover. Slowly, she turns into Elizabeth Wakefield and the whole lot of people they are traveling with talk about her and tell her how awesome she is and beg her to ride with their families.
Somewhere around Ohio Amanda suddenly becomes a saint and learns how to do all the chores and manages her own team of oxen and fix wagons and make cornbread out of sand or whatnot. Luckily, lots of the book was about the actual stragglers of the pioneers and was fairly historically detailed. man, it was shitty. They went for days only eating a biscuit everyday, no showers for weeks, people dying of consumption and – gasp- Indian raids! Although, true to a YA novel, Amanda does stop to notice that the Indian that raids her tent is quite the piece of ass.
Of course, the hero Ben Compton suddenly notices the “fierce fire” in Amanda or some metaphor like that and loves her only after she starts taking care of herself. And he leaves his pushover fiance for her, but the fiance forgives her. And every day, the most hardest thing comes before them, like crossing a river or a drought or a mountain or the word mountain ever or then an even worse mountain or worse shortage of food. Or Amanda smudges her silk dress. You know, tragedies like that.
Amanda’s Dad dies after breaking his neck on a hunt, which wasn’t too much of a tragedy because he was kind of a pain in the ass, was always grumpy, and ordered Amanda around a lot. Helen is probably going to die, but that that’s ok, she arrives in Oregon with Ben Compton and they are going to start a new life together, just living off the land (how Battlestar Galactica of them).
This makes me think of a miniseries on cable a while back, Into the West, and I swear I am one of three people that watched it. It was about several generations of pioneer families and Native Americans through the development of the west. I have to say it was very well done. You had all the drahma but I guess it was more historically accurate than most. I think. Especially those grossing the country. One gal had her legt run over by a wagon so they had to cut it off with a butter knife (and she died during it). Another weird thing is that Keri Russell was kidnapped by some Indians and forced to marry one, but six months later, she’s all having six of his babies and speaking their language but is all happy. Ok. Then there’s the goldrush and there’s some drama. Oh, and of course the Native American woman who marries a white man (a pre-Gossip Girl Matthew Settle) and how their kids deny their heritage. Also, there is a bevvy of hotties in this. Especially my faves Matthew Modine, Skeet Ulrich, and Balthazar Getty (schwing!). Of course I would reduce it to that, right? I’m just like Amanda.
"Dear Sally: Today I will be kidnapped by Indians. Do you think people are meant to be kidnapped for a reason? I'm so confused. Love, Felicity."
Hottie Exhibit A
Hottie Exhibit B and C
Hottie Exhibit D
"Omg. M is married to a white woman. What are people saying? xoxoxox GG"
In other words, rent this mofo
Elizabeth "Wow, France is full of poor schmucks I can help"; Jessica: "Hey France, check out my boobs!"
I really hate when an SVH book exceeds my expectations, but that happens…rarely. Here is the last of the “old school” Super Editions I have yet to caption, and I was avoiding it because I thought I knew the plot. The twins head to France, so I thought that meant Elizabeth getting a job as a famous artiste and meeting men at the Louvre, and Jessica falling in love with a guy in a beret and making out on top of the Eiffel Tower. But shame on me, the girls are actually off to Cannes, not Paris. Way to throw me a curve ball, Francine!
Yea, but the book turned out to be full of rehashed plots from other books. I ask for the thousandth time- do the ghostwriters even READ the other books? Quality control was not big in the 80s I guess.
So we are on another mysterious Spring Break, this is when Liz is between Todd and Jeffrey (not that way, you pervs!) The twins are on a French exchange program, sponsored by Ms. Dalton, who, is nowhere to be seen chaperoning this thing; the twins are by themselves on the plane. I don’t even know where the other students are. Furthermore, the twins are just pawned off onto a single mother who does enough and now has to feed and house these spoiled brats.
Liz is excited to improve on her French and thinks that by the end of the week she will be fluent. Ferme la bouche, Liz. Also? The twins are like, super stoked to make friends on this trip, and the first few days are all up in arms that they don’t have someone to hang out with. Like they can’t possibly fathom being somewhere where not everyone is clamoring to hang out with them.
They are staying with a woman named Avery Glitze, who we hear several times is a slender woman. The fuck? Like it matters? The fam speaks English, but Liz insists on speaking in French. Of course.
Avery has a son named Rene, who at first is awesome, because he hates the twins on site and makes overtly snotty remarks to them all the time. But as meddler Liz finds out, Rene is ANGRY! He’s HURT! Because his American father abandoned the family. And you know what happens to teens without a heterosexual two parent household…So Rene hates all Americans. Plus, he was swimming at the beach once and his friend drowned so he’s also afraid of the water. Kind of unrelated, but very convenient to the plot. The meaner he is to Liz [he actually invites her to go to lunch with he and his friends, and berades her the whole time. It's kind of awesome] the more she tries to meddle with him and find out his feelings about his father and Americans. It’s such an unstable inverse relationship between the two.
Jessica decides to take a jog one morning, and meets some guy at his house because he drivesd an expensive car. She agrees to let him take her out and see the town. Oh, I mean “the Riviera”. She finds him boring because he doesn’t want to talk about her all the time. Meanwhile, Liz finds a puppy and it turns out that it belongs to a Countess. The Countess invites Liz over and they chat and she tells liz that she is an intelligent, intriguing young lady. This is the theme of the trip- Liz seeking out people who will kiss her ass. The Countess instroduces Liz to her grandson, Jean-Claude (of COURSE that’s his name) and they go and hang out. J-C is like the French Bruce Patman.
Jessica is bored with Marc but of course gets all hot under the collar for J-C, so she pulls the old twin switcheroo (A-GAIN) and pretends to be Elizabeth and secretly hangs out with J-C behind Elizabeth’s back. Liz thinks J-C dumps her so she spends her time working on Rene. She discovers that Rene’s father writes him every month but Rene throws away the letters. Liz, in her meddliest of meddling, SAVES one of the letters behind Rene’s back and convinces him to read it. BUTT THE FUCK OUT, LIZ. (I couldn’t figure out how to say that in French).
Meanwhile, nerdy Marc stops by the house and Liz figures out what Jessica’s been up. Liz, so devastated by the fact that she hasn’t made ANY friends on the trip, forces Marc to hang out with her. He takes her to a gallery opening, where she talks to the artist about her interpretation of his work, and the artist points out that Liz is a mature, intelligent insightful young lady. Of course.
Liz, of course, is talking to all of these people in perfect, fluent French. Of course.
One night Jessica is late for dinner because she and J-L were picnicking on a small island (where J-C of course brought several types of cheeses to sample) and the sailboat capsized in the storm. Liz makes Rene help save them and they both dive in the water, saving them! I feel like this is the eighth time that one of the twins jumps in water to save someone. Well, at least here , here, here, and here. In fact, Rene suddenly overcomes his fear of swimming, JUST TO SAVE THE WAKEFIELDS! Liz cures his fear! He also then decides that Liz helped him overcome his hatred for his father! Liz is all, “good thing I saved the letter from your father and read it!”
Liz also forgives Jessica for deceiving her, pretending to be her, and stealing her date, and thus enabling her. Audrey Glitze also forgives Jessica by totally disregarding her rules and staying out late. Because she’s a fucking Wakefield.
This all happens in the first three days of their vacation. I shit you not. The book ends with the twins looking forward to the second half of their time in Cannes, now that they all have made friends and established themselves as the center of the world. If the book were to go on, I am sure the French president would have made them dignitaries or something.
Oh, I almost forgot. Audrey’s daughter, Ferney (yea), is staying with the Wakefields. It is an exchange, remember? Ferney is a dead ringer (pun intended) for Tricia Martin. Wait, another one? What, is she a cylon? Of course, Steven, who is always home to hang out with her, total neglects Cara and Cara has a near-meltdown. The exact same thing that happened when that Andrea girl showed. up. DO YOUR HOMEWORK EDITORS. Is that too much to ask. Also, do Cara and Steven fight as much as Liz and Todd? That might be true.
I can’t believe The Hills is still on. And that I’m watching it. Please comment over on the site!
Or rather, what I have read. It’s true, I also read age-appropriate books!
Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y. Read this for my book club. Zoinks, there was a lot going on! Apparently it is dubbed “chick lit for geeks”. Whatever. This had its flaws but it really was a page turner. It is about a grad student in English lit and thought experiments who finds her way into the Troposhpere, which is the physical manifestation of everyone’s collective unconscious. Yea, also includes some quantum physics, time travel, religion, and secret government wartime weapons. Yes, quite ambitious.
Motley Crue, The Dirt. Pretty badly written, but fascinating and trashy. If you have the fascination and obsession with 80s metal that I do. I cannot believe how much drugs these guys consumed and can live to tell about it. And how their record company encouraged it. The drugs helped them write good albums. [Example: Theater of Pain was written sober. And it sucks. However, Dr. Feelgood, also written sober, is awesome.] Also, Nikki Sixx is my husband.
Junot Diaz, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I’m mixed on this one, despite everyone going gaga over it. [I mean, the Pulitzer Prize are about as legit to me as the Grammy Awards.] It is written from different characters perspectives, which I usually love, but the only one I really cared about was Oscar, and that was less than half the book. He was such a tragic figure and epic nerd, and I loved him for that. Even no one else did. Basically, I’m the white female version of Oscar.
Chuck Klosterman IS MY GOD. His nonfiction pop culture essays make me cry they are so clever. When I heard he was going to give fiction a try, I was dubious. However, in Downtown Owl, he does several things awesome (A) this book is from multiple character’s perspectives (B) he used High-Fidelity-esque lists and charts and (C) He gives a great depicition of a small midwestern town in the 1980s. However, the ending was a bit unexpected and perhaps a bit too extreme for the previous tone of the book. But the way he uses “translations” of what characters really mean what they are saying and their different backstories is really brilliant. Oh Chuck, why can’t I have your career?
