Yes, yes , I did. I must feel pretty comfortable to admit that. A few months ago my sister-in-law showed me her collection of books from her pre-teen years. On the shelf sat nearly 50 Sweet Valley High books, books that made my stomach flip. I remembered devouring Francine Pascal’s teenage mini-novels that followed the perfect Wakefield twins – novels with titles like “Double Love," "Playing with Fire" and "Dangerous Love." As a middle schooler, I gobbled up these books every month and I know I was not the only one. Even though I roll my eyes as I recall the books, they have a part in my history and good memories from being a pre-teen.
So after reminiscing about the books, I laughed when not long afterwards I saw that the author had written a sequel and Sweet Valley Confidential recently hit the bookstores – what in the world would Jessica and Elizabeth have to say to me now as a 39-year-old? The book was set 10 years after the height of SVH (you heard me, I harkened back to the small red flag with the letters “SVH” on the covers) and it is not the Sweet Valley I remembered. I remembered the stories of Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield with their California lives and great friends. At first, I would feel a bit sick when I compared my scrawny, bespectacled, brown-haired self to the model-perfect twins, but after reading them, I thought that somehow the girls were like me – never got into too much trouble, “real” trouble (drinking, being too rebellious, testing the boy/girl world) was uncomfortable and a bit scary, and they just wanted to be liked by friends and have one good boy like them back. With that I could relate to them and so their stories were fun.
No more, I says! Somewhere in the past 10 years (fiction time frame) of the Wakefield twins, 25 actual years have passed and it is more certainly 2011. Nobody seems to be a nice person; everyone has turned jaded and some are just plain jerks. Language that would never, >ever< happen in Sweet Valley is tossed around. To have Elizabeth comment on her orgasms? Hell-o! For Mrs. Wakefield – with her page-boy haircut – to drop an f-bomb? No one seems to be happy or loyal; infidelity and surface relations are the norm. A main character comes out. This is stuff you find in many books written today – but to have this happen to characters whom seemed so innocent not that long ago? I must be naïve to think that the SVH characters would remain unjaded and committed to each other, especially in today’s world. That is what I loved about them at the time, so this book just seemed sad to me.
If you loved the original books, I would recommend rereading them instead of reading Sweet Valley Confidential. If curiosity gets the best of you, get it from the library – don’t waste your money on it – and give yourself a day to read through it. As for me, I am hopping over to my sister-in-law’s house and borrowing the first 10 of the original Sweet Valley High series. I think I can get through them in a long, lazy bath.
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