In addition being written in a weirdly stilted voice that is littered with wanna-be technospeak, this world of stereotypes and sickly-sweet people has now transformed into a cast of sad, lonely, bitter people. The primary thrust of the book is the upcoming family event that Elizabeth is expected to go back to Sweet Valley for, which Jessica and Todd – who are now a couple – will attend as well. Jessica, former cheerleader and general silly flirt, now works for a cosmetics company and, Todd, our basketball star-turned-alcoholic-turned-vagrant loser is now a successful sports writer. From there, the series continues to be peppered with Jessica’s schemes in various contexts, and as the series proceeds, Todd is described to be Elizabeth’s “steady” and is the only recurrent character in Elizabeth’s love-life to crop up in the various spin-off series.Īs Confidential opens, Elizabeth is now in her late twenties and is working as a journalist, having escaped to New York after her discovery of an affair between Todd and Jessica.
In the very first Sweet Valley book, Sweet Valley High #1: Double Love, published in 1983, Jessica tries to steal Todd Wilkins away from Elizabeth, who has a crush on him. Nevertheless, I pre-ordered it and, despite being overwhelmed by schoolwork, read it from cover-to-cover the day it came out. So, my expectations for Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later were low. It’s a sappy-sweet world of silly drama surrounding the Wakefield twins, Jessica (the wild/fun twin) and Elizabeth (the good/holier-than-thou one). My sister’s name is even Jessica!īut lets face it, Sweet Valley was always sort of, well, drivel, for lack of a better word.
She wore a single-strand, lavaliere necklace and so I did, too. Elizabeth liked tall, brown-haired boys who liked to write and so did I. I decided in middle school that I wanted to be a journalist because Elizabeth was a journalist. It almost becomes a not entirely terrible book, but tragically-slash-comically crashes and burns in a sugary, taffeta-and-chiffon-covered mess in the last 30 pages or so.īetween watching the show and reading the 500+ Sweet Valley books I owned, I spent a large chunk of my childhood enthralled with the World of Sweet Valley and desperately wanting to be like the smart, pretty, responsible, well-meaning, but somewhat conservative Elizabeth Wakefield. Sweet Valley Confidential is a hot mess of a book that is bookended by an awkward beginning and a nauseating ending. By Jennifer Marie Lin on Mar 30th, 2011 (Last Updated Sep 20th, 2018)
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