I totally paused!

Remember how when I read the last SVT book I said it was way boring? No? I didn’t either, until I started reading that review again. I didn’t think the books could get worse, honestly, but I was wrong. This one was awful.

The blurb on the cover, where it says “Is Elizabeth about to make the biggest mistake of her life?” That should really be amended to “Is reading this book about to be the biggest waste of reading of your life?” I mean, it has been since September 18 that I wrote about one of these kinds of books! It took me two goddamn months to finish a book that has huge type and 104 pages! Pathetic!

On to the plot then, for what it’s worth. Seriously, y’all have no idea the sacrifices I am making so you don’t have to. And please, do me a favor and DO NOT EVER have any of your children read this book. I mean, they’re all kind of bad, but jesus!

Today in the lives of Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, we meet poor Sophia Rizzo. She has curly brown hair and her clothes are bad, so naturally she is the worst person Jessica has met in EVER. And also, this means that Liz has to take her under her wing, because who wouldn’t benefit from the talents of the lovely older Ms. Wakefield?

The school is having a play and they want the students to put it all together, so a committee is formed and it turns out Sophia is a great play writer! So she writes the whole play, it’s about real life family stuff, how people should be honest and get along with each other, blah blah. Really it’s probably actually a good message but it’s so boring that I couldn’t get past that.

Also, Jessica is totally hating on Sophia, calls her “Shabby Sophia” and gets the Unicorns to boycott the auditions for the play. Aaaaand Sophia has this awful older brother, Tony, who punches Steven so Ma and Pa Wakefield forbid Liz from seeing Sophia outside of school.

Uncharacteristically for Liz, she goes against their wishes and toooootally keeps hanging with Sophia. She even plans a birthday party for her! And switches places with Jessica so Liz can be sure to be in town instead of in LA at some rock concert! Whoa Liz, slow down with the rebellion there!

The Wakefields find out about the party and are not pleased that Elizabeth didn’t trust them, but because everything has to end well, they realize how both Sophia and her mom are good people and should be given a second chance. So Mrs. Wakefield hires Mrs. Rizzo to make shit for her designer firm. I mean, what life in Sweet Valley wouldn’t be improved by some intervention by the perfect Wakefields!

And now you totally know how this book went, so see how spending 5 minutes here saved you 45 somewhere else?

Holy boring story Batman!

I’ve never really been a big fan of horses, I chalk it up to getting bit by one when I was very young. I’m not scared of them, just don’t really have that urge that so many other girls have to ride and be obsessed with horses. So all I ever knew of them I learned from this book, which made me want to go to sleep.

Lila gets a horse, Thunder, and lets people see/ride him for favors like doing her homework. Cuz what Lila Fowler wants, she gets. Liz is in love with horses so she betrays her best friend and twin sister all to please Lila and ride that damn horse. The whole damn book is about horses and riding and some high school stable hand called Ted.

I wanted drama! Deception! None of that was here! Well, a little bit of deception maybe but nothing worth noting. No fun outfits, although at one point Jessica wears a lilac jumpsuit. Man, jumpsuits…I only ever had one and I hated it with a passion.

There was no mention of ballet in this book, so it looks like they’re over that. Wonder if horses come back, since Ted buys Thunder at the end and tells Liz she can ride him whenever she wants.

I honestly can’t even think of anything else to say about this book. It totally sucked and was so not worth the reread.

This cover doesn’t make any sense until the last two chapters of the book. Guess that’s better than nothing?

I’m pretty embarrassed to admit this, but I totally understand how Jessica felt the first third of the book. See, her friend Mary keeps coming over constantly, and just hanging out with Alice Wakefield instead of either of the girls. She invites herself over all the time, just asks if one of them is headed home and can she go with. Speaking from experience, this kind of thing is really annoying and I have about the same amount of tolerance for it as Jessica had. Hopefully this will be the last time in my life I ever agree with her about anything.

Jess gets mad at Mary and forbids her to come over, but doesn’t tell Mary anything just makes up excuses for not letting her come over, until Liz finally feels bad and tells Mary what’s up and Mary gets super sad. A few days later, to make it up to Jessica, Mary gives her this bracelet that is her most prized possession. I remember in elementary school we used to trade things with the people we liked the best, maybe we got it from this book! And also, Jessica is so shallow that this honestly works.

A side plot in this book is that Elizabeth has entered her paper, The Sweet Valley Sixers, in this local school paper contest. She gets mad at Jessica for getting facts wrong for an article, rewriting another article, and printing in the paper that Mary is gonna be adopted. And then Liz gets really upset because the teacher likes the “spunk” of the article that Jessica writes. OMG don’t you dare take away Liz’s paper, Jessica doesn’t even know how to write!

We also get a fun outfit description of a fashion guru, “She had on strange-looking webbed tights, bright-orange shoes, several layers of colorful socks, and a large baggy type of overblouse.” What exactly is an overblouse? Is it like a hoodie with buttons? I like strange-looking webbed tights too, that is way descriptive.

At the end of the book, Mary’s real mom shows up. And wouldn’t ya know it, she looks like she could be sisters with Alice Wakefield! Which explains the cover and why Mary just wanted to hang out with Alice the whole time. Also, the reason Mary wasn’t with her mom is cuz she was kidnapped by this woman called Annie. Maybe things were different back then and I don’t remember it, but there had to have been some way to find her in less than seven and a half years. Mary’s mom said she looked for her and gave her name to the authorities, but don’t they ask for descriptions or something? Like, couldn’t they have her look at pictures of all the blonde girls called Mary around that age group in the California system?

Also, Sweet Valley is such an awesome place to live that Mary wants to stay there foreva! So Alice convinces Mary’s mom to move there.

I basically remembered this whole book, which is amazing because it’s probably been 15+ years since I read this. The gist is that Brooke Dennis is a big bitch and hates everyone, is nasty to them all. In some ways, even meaner than Lila, but just barely. To get back at her for being so mean, Jessica invents a third Wakefield, Jennifer, and everyone goes along with it. I find it hard to believe that you can convince your entire school to go along with there being a triplet, but whatev. Jess and Liz spent time taking turns as Jennifer, though Liz seems to be Jen more often than Jess is.

In true Elizabeth form, she starts to change her mind about Brooke as “Jennifer” spends more time with her and learns the reasons she is so mean. Liz sure changes her mind a lot, one second she’s all “aww, poor Brooke her mom left her” and the next it’s “OMG you said something mean about Jessica! I am going to esplode!”

But in UN-Elizabeth fashion, she does say this “Whatever we do, I hope she falls flat on her face.”

I THINK MY WORLD JUST ENDED! Elizabeth Wakefield said something mean!

Also, this made me laugh, “Do you think Jessica would give up a chance for all those sympathy votes? No way! She’s just using me to get more attention.” – Brooke Dennis

Followed by a line from Liz’s mind about “…she had no right to judge someone so harshly and unfairly.” It’s true, Brooke barely knew Jessica well enough to make that totally honest assessment. Someone should have to know Jess for at least a week to say something like that, right? Or maybe just have a class with her.

As the books go, this one was pretty entertaining cuz of all the drama. But you know, it ends up happily ever after and everyone feels bad for Brooke and the WHOLE sixth grade then wants to be her friend. Cuz there are only like 30 of them apparently.

How many books will Brooke be mentioned in after this…we’ll see. Nora Mercandy hasn’t been mentioned for a few and Jessica/Lila were about as bad to her.

Jessica looks like she’s running away from home, not going to a forbidden rock concert. Also, the title is kind of misleading – she didn’t really have to sneak cuz no one was home when she left!

As a side note, and maybe this cover isn’t such a good example, but I always thought the twins were way cuter on the SVT covers than the SVH ones. And am I just crazy, or do other people have a hard time telling them apart on the covers? I usually look for the barrettes to see which one is Elizabeth. Otherwise, they both kind of dress like crap, despite Jess supposedly being the fashionable one.

There’s not really much to say about this book, it was relatively boring. Lila wasn’t even mean, for once! I wonder if there is any mention at all about Jessica having to walk Sally the dog for a month after this book. I’m guessing no.

Also, I will never understand how anyone can allow Jessica to continually be such a shit. She is awful, through and through!

The look on Liz’s face is just killing me here! She’s like, totally worried about Amy trying out for the Boosters and getting humiliated! And what’s up with Amy’s outfit? I’d be worried about my friend if they wore jeans that high and a shirt 5 sizes too big too.

Really this book was pretty boring. More of the same Unicorns are mean to everyone in sight, Liz wants to help everyone in the world and can’t stand to see someone getting hurt in any way, people are mean to Ken Matthews. I was rather amused that Elizabeth was so shocked that Jessica was behind some of the nasty things the Unicorns pulled – she was as angry as she’d ever been in her whole life that Jessica wrote letters to Amy from Ken and to Ken from Amy! I also love that in the sixth grade, you can just write strange letters and that will get people to stop talking to each other.

Some of my favorite parts consisted of Liz thinking Jess was awful for not wanting anyone but the Unicorns to get on the Boosters squad, and then Jess can change Liz’s mind by simply clearing the table. You know you don’t do anything around the house when you can please people by once in awhile doing something like this. “How could she think Jessica was anything but sweet and lovable?” Umm, maybe because she sees what Jessica does constantly and realizes that Jess is INSANE!

It seems like they are better about consistency in the Twins series so far – they have talked about ballet in every book as of now, and Nora Mercandy was even in this book for five seconds! Oh, and have I mentioned that Ken Matthews is short? Cuz he is. People call him midget regularly.

Another thing that caught my eye was them describing school lunch…it’s pizzaburgers again! I don’t even know what a pizzaburger is, I’m relatively certain I don’t want to know either. Anyway, Jess is complaining about them and Lila says “You shouldn’t eat stuff like tht anyway. You’ll get fat.”

Perhaps I’m overly sensitive, but these girls are supposed to be twelve. At that age, you should absolutely still eat pizzaburgers! Or if you don’t, it should be because they sound disgusting, not because of the caloric content. I guess they just must be setting things up for the twins “perfect size six figures” in the SVH books, but man, talk about a bad example. It’s amazing I never became anorexic!

And of course, we get the lead up to the next book. Will Jessica be able to make it to the Johnny Buck concert? How will we ever live in this kind of anticipation?!

I love the shocked look on Elizabeth’s face. Nora looks so calm. That is obviously shocking! Also, the house is supposed to be super scary and it just isn’t :/ And I think the tag line on half the books is about something maybe coming between Jessica and Elizabeth…which, if I were either one of them, I’d probably want something to come between us.

These books are so short I swear you can explain them in two sentences. In this one, Nora Mercandy is the new girl at school and OMG her family is full of witches! So of course all the kids are mean to her and tease her, and actually do some pretty vile things. But it all works out in the end because Elizabeth has faith in her and is her friend. Cuz that’s Liz’s role in life.

This is possibly the most embarrassing thing I’ve admitted in public in a long time, but there was a time in my life where I actually liked Lila Fowler in these books. No idea what I saw in her, because she is so awful! To the point where I have no idea who could even write a character so vile. The pranks and schemes she comes up with to torment Nora with are really so terrible – stealing her quiz and changing the names, making her the Unicorns slave, and faking being nice to her? Wow. Not to mention the lying and saying Nora stole her pen. It kind of makes me wonder what kinds of ideas these books gave kids in school – did plots like this one make bullies well, bullier?

It’s also Halloween during this book, so this is Jessica’s costume:

She had put on lots of Pan-Cake makeup, long false eyelashes, and wore a black wig that hung to her waist. Dressed in the grass skirt, halter top, and flowered lei, she did a few hula steps in front of the mirror.

She’s a hula dancer, if you couldn’t tell. Maybe I’m a bit old fashioned or something, but this book was originally published in 1986 and that seems like a bit of a scandalous outfit for a 12 year old back then. Now days it’s probably normal, but this was a long time ago!

I also love this…

Ellen – Look at Ken [Matthews]. He’s really cute – it’s too bad he’s so short.
Jessica – I think he’s a total loser. He’s practically a midget.

Hey Jess, you are so going to be dry humping him in a few years. And Liz is going to not have sex with him behind your back – just fyi.

I think it’s funny to read these kinds of things, knowing the Twins series was written after SVH. The ghost writers must have read the High series and laaaaaaughed while thinking “What can we do to mess this up?” I cannot come up with any other explanation for why Liz and Amy Sutton are best friends in jr. high, but hate each other in high school. The last line of the book is “Could she lose Amy too?” Umm, yeah! Get used to it!

This is of course leading into the next book, which has Amy trying out for the new Booster Club and if I remember accurately, she pisses Jessica and Lila off by being good and the teacher makes them let her on the squad. Time will tell if my memory is correct.

Oh, and they did mention ballet like twice in this book. We’ll see how long that keeps up for.