by GeniustoBurn

Created on: October 12, 2010   Last Updated: February 13, 2012

Ah, the world of Sweet Valley High! I first started reading these little gems when I was about 12, a recent renaissance got me back into them. They are trash of the very highest form, to be read whenever you need a fix of delicious literary popcorn.

"Have you heard the dialogue the women characters on the soaps are given? They never use their brains! They misunderstand everything that anyone tells them, and they jump to absurd conclusions about the very people they should KNOW they can trust. It makes me sick to watch them."

So says Elizabeth Wakefield, when offered the opportunity to audition for a soap with her twin sister Jessica. Of course, Jessica concocts a scheme to force her to audition; they get the parts and spend a week attending swanky Hollywood parties, before returning to school with the brand new jeep bought with their earnings. Then normal school life resumes, with regular misunderstandings, accusations of betrayal, and sudden relationship breakdowns. Could the writer "Kate William" be poking a teeny bit of ironic fun at our girls with this diatribe?

Jessica and Elizabeth are the most beautiful, perfect, lucky (albeit prone to sudden kidnaps and accident prone loved ones) sixteen year olds who have ever lived. As these books never tire of informing us, Elizabeth is quiet and studious, had ambitions to be a writer, and prefers to spend time with her close friend (Enid the nerd) or her steady boyfriend (she always has one.) Jessica, meanwhile, is wild and crazy. She's so wild and crazy, she has painted her bedroom chocolate brown, she often has clothes all over the floor, and she prefers shopping and sunbathing to studying. (Shocker!)

What the books tend to gloss over is the fact that Jessica is pretty much a psychopath (she does NOT have a conscience, and will do anything to please herself even if involves stabbing her own sister in the back, lying, stealing, cheating etc. (Francine Pascal, the creator of the series, prefers to think of her as being a little bit mischievous). Elizabeth is always described as being abnormally good, but despite her apparent devotion to whichever boyfriend she has (Good old Todd Wilkins is the main man, although Jeffrey replaced him briefly when he (sob!) moved temporarily to Vermont) she has absolutely no hesitation in cheating on him, on a semi regular basis. Every time she goes on holiday with her sister (which happens with alarming regularity for one school year) she finds a new beau and will have perhaps

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