Shannon's Sweet Valley High Blog

Read part one of this miniseries here.

The Moral of the Story: You might think you love someone else, but you’re really supposed to stay with your first love forever and ever and ever.

The Big Deal: Pool party at the Wakefields’ house

Synopsis:

At breakfast one morning, Alice announces she and Hank Patman are going to Chicago again for a week. Liz drags Jessica upstairs and tells her Alice and Hank used to be married and are now having an affair. Jessica wants to just go show the wedding photo to Alice and ask her about it, but Liz doesn’t want her to for some reason.

Todd’s parents are still in Yosemite for another week, Ned is leaving town to go to a seminar or something, and now Alice is going to Chicago. With all four parents out of town, Todd thinks he should move in with Liz. Liz asks Jessica if it’s okay with her, and Jessica says sure, if they do all her chores and make her dinner every night.

As soon as Liz and Todd get “home” after school on Monday, Liz gets a call from Bruce and tells Todd she has to borrow his car and rush right over to the Patmans’ house. When Jessica gets home, she decides it’ll be fun to freak Todd out. She tells him the whole story about Hank and Alice and makes Todd worry that Liz and Bruce are “comforting each other.” In fact, Liz and Bruce are in the Patmans’ attic looking for more old stuff. They find a love letter from Alice to Hank, and then they find Alice’s wedding and engagement rings. After two hours, Liz suddenly remembers that Todd exists and she hurries home to make it up to him.

The next night, Todd wants to have a romantic evening with Liz, but she reminds him they have to do laundry because it’s Jessica’s turn. And I guess the laundry has to be done on Tuesdays or else. Todd thinks it’ll be fun to go to the new “videomat” where they can watch a movie while they do the laundry. Liz overdoses on espressos and acts like she’s drunk, and Todd puts too much detergent in the washer and makes a huge bubbly mess.

The next morning, Bruce shows up at the Wakefields’ house before school. Liz kisses Todd on the cheek and says Bruce is going to give her a ride because he has to talk about something really important. Bruce tells Liz his mother is moving out and he’s really upset about it. Bruce also gives Liz a ride home that afternoon and they go up to the Wakefields’ attic to try to find more stuff. They find a school paper from when Hank and Alice were in college, and there’s an article that details Hank’s heroic food drop. Liz and Bruce simultaneously come to the conclusion that they need to take a trip to the college to find out more about what Alice and Hank were like back then, and maybe they’ll be able to “understand what’s motivating them now.”

Liz has been sort of avoiding Todd because having him at the house is a little too much. Todd wants to fix things, so he goes shopping and comes home with groceries to make a romantic dinner. When he gets to the house, Liz and Bruce are sitting around eating cookies in their swimsuits. Liz says she invited Bruce to stay for dinner, and they go outside while Todd starts cooking. Later, Liz and Todd have a fight and Liz explains she just feels sorry for Bruce. They join Bruce and Jessica in the living room. Bruce sees a note next to the phone and says, “Room four forty-four, that’s my dad’s room.” The twins are all, “No, that’s our mom’s room….Wait a minute!” Jessica thinks it’s just a mistake and wants to call the hotel to make sure, but Liz won’t let her. Why? Oh, I just hate her.

Bruce and Liz sneak off the next day to visit the university. They don’t really find anything useful, but they do make googly eyes at each other and have the exact same thoughts: “If my mother/father could fall in love with Hank/Alice, then it’s not crazy for me to fall in love with Bruce/Liz.” On their way back to Sweet Valley, they see a car broken down on the side of the road. It just so happens to be Todd. They stop to pick him up, and Liz gets all indignant when Todd seems upset that she’s with Bruce. Everyone goes to the Beach Disco that night, and Liz dances with Bruce the whole time. The next day, Bruce and Liz both feel bad and decide to focus more on their relationships with Todd and Pamela.

On Saturday, Todd and the twins are preparing for a totally awesome pool party they’ve decided to throw that night. Then Bruce calls and Liz invites him to go shopping with them. Todd has had enough and blows up at Liz, and she gets all mean and tells him he can just stay home if he doesn’t want to go shopping with Bruce. So he does. I don’t know why he just doesn’t go back to his own house.

At the party, Pamela notices the way Bruce looks at Liz, and she asks him if he has feelings for her. Bruce admits that he does, and Pamela runs off. Bruce goes inside and finds Liz in the kitchen. They start talking about their parents and how much everything sucks, and then suddenly they’re making out. They don’t stop until they notice Todd in the doorway. Bruce goes outside and Todd is pissed. Liz makes it all about her, though, and gets angry when Todd won’t give her the benefit of the doubt. Ugh.

Todd leaves to go driving around to let off steam. He comes to the conclusion that the problems with Liz are partly his fault and he shouldn’t have overreacted when he caught Liz and Bruce together. What?! Your girlfriend was making out with another guy! Todd decides to go back to the party and “really listen” when he talks to Liz.

Pamela comes up to Liz outside and tells her that she and Bruce just broke up, so Liz is free to be with him. Liz thinks about her feelings and decides that since Bruce kissed her and she willingly kissed him back, she must be falling in love with him. Jeez, these kids have a funny definition of love. Liz is upset and confused and she decides to get in the pool. She bounces way too high on the diving board. I guess she hits her head on the bottom or something because she doesn’t resurface. Jessica screams for someone to help her, and Todd just so happens to be coming back from his drive. He jumps in the pool and saves Liz.

Todd takes Liz up to her room, and suddenly Alice comes home. She’s pissed about the party, but also about Todd’s duffel bag in the hallway and his shaving kit in the bathroom. She tells Liz she’s disappointed in her, and Liz accuses Alice of sneaking around with Hank Patman. Instead of being totally pissed off, Alice tells Todd to go find Bruce, and then she has a little story time. She tells the kids about her engagement to Hank and how she left him at the altar. She also explains that room four forty-four is a two bedroom suite at the hotel and she is absolutely not having an affair with Hank Patman. So now everyone’s happy except for Bruce, whose parents are still splitting up. Jessica decides to try to get them back together.

Quotes:

Lila snorted. “They are just so out of it. Don’t they know playing house is totally uncool?”

Oh, how I love Lila.

“We’ll call the hotel and ask. It’s as simple as that.”

Elizabeth grabbed the receiver from Jessica’s hand and slammed it down. “We can’t do that,” she whispered. “We just can’t.”

Jessica doesn’t argue and they just allow themselves to get worked up when they could just call the damned hotel.

The Cover: Todd, you need to find some pants and stop shaving your legs. Also, your breakfast is burning.

The moral of the story: Be wary of anyone who worships Jessica Wakefield. He or she is clearly not right in the head.

The Big Deal: Party at the lake, party at Lila’s

Synopsis:

Famous theater director David Goodman has chosen Sweet Valley High for his annual student theater production of Macbeth. Jessica is going out for the part of Lady Macbeth and is sure she’ll get it. She makes it through the first two cuts, and Steven asks her if she’s sure she wants to be in the play. Apparently, there’s some curse associated with Macbeth, people dying before the play can be performed, that kind of thing. Jessica thinks he’s teasing. Meanwhile, there’s this weird sophomore girl named Paula Perrine who has been following Jessica around and it’s getting creepy. Jessica finally confronts her and says she’s seen Paula watching her. Paula gets all crazed and falls all over herself to tell Jessica how awesome and popular she is. When Jessica says, “You’re Paula Perrine, right?” Paula just about faints because Jessica Wakefield knows her name. Wow.

Jessica starts being nice to Paula now that she knows she adores her. Paula helps Jessica with her lines and prepares her for the final audition, and in the meantime, starts sitting with Jessica, Amy, Lila and their friends at lunch. Jessica’s hard work pays off and she gets the part of Lady Macbeth. Lila is cast as one of the witches. Ha.

One night, while Paula is at the house, Jessica leaves her alone in the living room when Sam calls. Liz can’t believe how rude Jessica is being, so she takes some soda and cookies and goes to talk to Paula. Paula can’t believe how nice Liz is, but then says that of course she’s nice, she’s Jessica’s sister. Then she asks Liz what Jessica is like and what it’s like to be her friend. Paula reminds me an awful lot of Dobby the house elf. Liz asks Paula about her family and finds out Paula’s mother died last year and her older brother ran away a couple months ago to get away from their abusive, alcoholic father. Paula is in Sweet Valley living with friends of her mother’s. Later that night, Liz tells Jessica what Paula told her. Jessica decides to be even nicer to Paula. She gives her a fakeover and talks her into auditioning for one of the smaller roles in the play.

Paula starts hanging around all the time. She gives Annie a present (a headband) and gets Lila to give her some tennis lessons. She does a lot of things that make me think that the whole story about her family was a lie. Paula starts doing little things to turn Jessica’s friends against her. She purposely does things to make Jessica angry, and then Jessica yells at her in front of everyone. The whole gang knows about Paula’s troubled past and they can’t believe Jessica would be so mean to someone who’s been through so much.

Jessica starts to get wise to Paula, and she knows for sure that something is wrong when Paula doesn’t tell her that Lady Macbeth’s understudy got mono and Paula has taken her place. Then she finds out Lila, Amy and Paula organized a party at the lake and didn’t invite her. Jessica is really tense around Paula and a little scared of her, but everyone thinks she’s just being a bitch.

Finally, it’s opening night of the play. Just two hours before she’s supposed to be at the school, Jessica gets a call from Paula, who says she’s an hour away in Cold Springs. She gives some sob story about how she thought her father was in the hospital, but he really just wanted money and stole Paula’s bus fare home. As much as she dislikes Paula, Jessica doesn’t want her to be stranded in Cold Springs. She drives up there and tries to follow the directions Paula gave her, but they don’t make any sense. She finally finds a map and discovers that none of the streets Paula gave her even exist. She calls the school to tell Mr. Goodman she’s on her way, but he says they can’t wait and Paula is already there in costume.

Jessica gets to the school and slips into a seat beside Liz, Sam and Todd. When Liz got home earlier and discovered that Jessica wasn’t there, she called Paula’s house and found out that not only is Paula’s mother alive and well, but her father has been dead for ten years. When Liz called, Paula and her brother were at the mall. Liz tells Jessica all this on the way to Lila’s cast party after the performance.

At Lila’s, Jessica confronts Paula in a most melodramatic and ridiculous way, with Liz and the boyfriends being the only ones behind her at first, but most everyone else moving to stand next to her by the end of her speech. The whole thing ends with Liz starting a slow clap.

The next morning, the twins have their friends over and everyone is hanging out by the pool. Then Paula shows up and doesn’t notice that everyone is giving her the evil eye. She finally catches on, says a few bitchy words and then turns around to leave, but Prince Albert the dog trips her and she falls into the pool. She refuses Jessica’s helping hand and pulls herself up and walks away in a huff.

There’s a hilarious side story about Lila playing the witch.

Quotes:

“Stop playing big sister with me,” said Jessica. “Remember, you’re four minutes older, not four years!”

Ooh, a twist on the usual page 2 spiel.

“Oh, wow! I don’t believe Jessica Wakefield actually knows my name!” cried Paula. Then she stopped, blushing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It’s just that you and your friends are so beautiful and so popular, I never dreamed you would notice someone like me.”

That’s just fucking creepy.

“Sleep shall neither night nor day hang upon his penthouse lid,” [Lila] said, throwing out her arms dramatically. In the process, Jessica noticed, she carefully positioned her hands directly in front of Annie and Rosa’s faces.

This actually made me giggle. Lila is awesome.

The Cover: Remember when we all wore our button down shirts knotted like Jessica’s? And our jeans all up around our waists? ‘Cause the early nineties were so awesome. Paula looks like a bitch.

The moral of the story: Remember the moral of Bruce’s Story? It can also be applied to Todd’s Story.

The Big Deal: Celebratory party at the Dairi Burger

Synopsis:

So, there are a few things wrong with this book first thing:

• It’s summer. Again.
• Cara is in Sweet Valley and apparently has not moved to London.
• But this takes place after Todd has moved to Vermont and back.
• Jessica has not met Sam.
• But the twins’ Jeep is still referred to as “new.”

Todd’s been getting some weird hangup phone calls lately. He and Liz are at the mall one day when Todd sees a guy named Kevin Holmes and freaks out. Todd has never told anyone about this, but when he was living in Vermont, he tackled Kevin in an alley to stop him from mugging someone. After the trial, as Kevin was being led away in handcuffs, he told Todd he was going to get even with him. And now he’s in Sweet Valley. Oh, dear.

Meanwhile, Todd’s having problems with his dad. Mr. Wilkins wants Todd to follow in the old man’s footsteps and get involved in the business. Todd and Liz and a bunch of their friends have lined up two-week jobs at Secca Lake as day camp counselors, but Mr. Wilkins wants Todd to intern at his company after that. Todd doesn’t wanna, and Liz thinks he should say so, but Todd says Liz just doesn’t understand.

The first day of camp at Secca Lake, Todd is horrified to discover Kevin Holmes is going to be a counselor. Kevin, Todd and Jessica will be the sports counselors. Kevin acts like he doesn’t know Todd, and to everyone else he seems like a happy and likable guy. Todd starts to think maybe the guy has reformed, but then Kevin threateningly tells him not to tell anyone about the mugging. Todd tries to tell his parents his concerns, but they say they heard from an old co-worker in Vermont that Kevin was in Sweet Valley to start over. They even try to tell him to be friends with the guy. Jeez, no wonder these kids never want to tell the adults what’s going on.

Kevin keeps beating Todd at volleyball and basketball. Todd handles it badly and it makes him look like a sore loser. Everyone loves Kevin and can’t figure out why Todd doesn’t like him. Liz is totally idiotic and thinks Todd is so moody lately because he wants to break up with her. Kevin and Jessica have been making eyes at each other all week at camp, and one night he asks her out. Liz, who clearly hasn’t been paying attention, thinks they should make it a double date. She’s sure that if Todd just spends enough time with Kevin, he’ll warm up to him. Somehow, Todd gets talked into letting everyone meet at his house before the movie. When Kevin gets there, he starts kissing Mr. Wilkins’ ass, and Mr. Wilkins ends up offering to try to find him a job at Varitronics, his company.

In every scene at Todd’s house, his parents talk about how nicely Kevin turned out and how great it is that he turned over a new leaf. After Todd lies and says he had fun with Kevin and the twins on their date, his parents tell him to invite Kevin over for dinner that night. Instead of lying and just telling them Kevin can’t make it, Todd actually invites Kevin over. Todd catches Kevin looking through Mr. Wilkins’ desk and runs to his father to snitch. Mr. Wilkins tells Todd he asked Kevin to bring him something. Now he’s all disappointed in Todd for being so unforgiving.

On Friday, Todd puts himself between Kevin and Liz, and Liz gets all pissed off and wants to know what Todd’s problem is. He says he would just like her to stay away from Kevin. Liz wants him to explain, but Todd can’t. So Liz breaks up with him. She thinks this whole thing is about her because Todd is unable or unwilling to communicate with her.

Christ, I’m bored. This book is going on forever. We’re only halfway through.

On Monday, Kevin spends all day at camp flirting with Liz while Jessica stands off to the side with her hands on her hips. Todd is watching them when one of the kids in his group starts drowning in the lake. He jumps in, but Kevin swims faster and gets there first. Once the kid is safe, Kevin says Todd should have been paying attention. Todd finally snaps and says something about Kevin turning the rescue into a competition. So now Todd looks like an ass, like he just cares who made the rescue and not that the kid is okay.

Ever since camp started the week before, people’s stuff has gone missing: Liz’s lavaliere, Winston’s lucky hat, Cara’s keychain. And on Tuesday, Todd reads in the paper that an old man was beaten and robbed just a few blocks from the apartment Kevin is renting. At camp that day, he spends the lunch hour alone in the lodge, leaving everyone outside to talk about him. Kevin tells some lies about the way Todd was in Vermont, saying he had a reputation as a bully and had once had a problem with a girl who had jumped out of his car to get away from him. All Todd’s friends say they don’t believe it, but you can tell they totally do.

On Wednesday morning, everyone is talking about the second mugging that took place the night before. Kevin joins in the conversation and acts all concerned. Todd can’t believe a person could mug someone at night and be so calm about it the next morning. So now he thinks Kevin must be innocent. Someone interrupts Todd’s thought process to ask him what he thinks about the muggings. Todd doesn’t know what to say and gets all weird and walks off. That afternoon, Kevin asks Liz out to dinner. At that moment, Todd is walking by and Liz thinks that if she can catch Todd’s eye and if he looks hurt or upset, she’ll turn Kevin down. When Todd just looks at Kevin all angry and bitter, Liz thinks he doesn’t care about her, so she tells Kevin she’ll go out with him. On their date, Liz realizes Kevin is kind of a jerk who only wants to talk about himself and keeps talking about how “things are falling into place.” And he gets angry when she doesn’t want to kiss him goodnight.

Later that night, Todd is restless so he drives out to Secca Lake to hang out. While there, he sees Kevin mug Melissa, one of the other camp counselors. Todd is too shocked and stupid to do anything about it, so he goes home. The next day after work, Todd decides he has to get some of this off his chest, so he tells Winston and Aaron about his history with Kevin. He’s decided he’ll go to the police in the morning. He goes to the lake early Friday morning to tell the ranger he’ll need to take part of the morning off, but the cops are there and they arrest him. A pen with his initials on it was found in the “precise location” where Melissa got robbed. And no, this isn’t enough to arrest a man, but when asked, Todd says, “I wasn’t carrying the pen, it was in my car, and I didn’t go on the beach, I stayed in the grass.” So stupid.

That afternoon, the counselors are having a barbecue to celebrate the last day of camp. Everyone is all sad about Todd getting arrested. Everyone except Kevin, who suggests a game. He says he has a Frisbee in his car and Jessica offers to get it. She finds Liz’s lavaliere in the backseat, then gathers Winston, Aaron, Enid and Cara around her. They decide that if Kevin stole the necklace, he could have stolen all the other stuff, too. And if he did that, then maybe Todd was telling the truth about what happened in Vermont. And if that’s true, then maybe the wrong man is behind bars!

Todd’s father picks him up. Todd is a minor so he’s being released to his parents until the hearing. He has his father drop him off at the lake so he can pick up his car. At the same time, Liz and Kevin are taking a walk. As soon as they’re in the woods and away from everyone else, Kevin gets all weird and starts telling Liz she shouldn’t care so much about Todd. He starts to get really angry and Liz gets scared. Todd gets to the lake and asks Jessica and the others where Kevin is. They realize both Kevin and Liz are gone. In the woods, Kevin starts babbling about a car accident that killed his brother and about how he never meant to hurt anyone. Then he tells Liz he wants Todd to know what it’s like to lose everything. He starts strangling Liz, and then Todd comes out of the woods to save the day.

At the police station, Kevin’s big confession is that he killed his brother in a car accident a few years ago. Kevin’s parents have never gotten over it and have always treated Kevin as if they wished he was the one who died. So that’s why he’s a lunatic.

Everyone goes to the Dairi Burger that night to celebrate Todd’s heroism.

Quotes:

“You could’ve let things slide and lived with the fact that Todd wasn’t giving his share to your relationship. Instead you took a positive step to change things.”

I love that Enid thinks it was so good and right of Liz to break up with Todd for having a few bad days. I mean, seriously, call him moody or whatever, but she broke up with him after only five days of him acting that way.

Kevin was asking her for a date. Her first instinct was to turn him down. With her heart aching over Todd, Elizabeth knew she couldn’t enjoy herself with another boy, particularly a boy her own sister was very interested in. At the same time, it seemed cruel to reject Kevin outright.

It’s not cruel to turn down a date with someone you don’t want to go out with. It’s okay to say no!

The Cover: Ew, look at this guy. First of all, his shoulders are way too big. Second, he looks like he’s at least thirty. Third, he looks like he thinks he’s really awesome.

The moral of the story: Don’t read any books with Sara Eastborne as the main character.

The Big Deal: Lila’s beach party, pool party at the Wakefields’ house

Synopsis:

Today we meet Sara Eastborne, who recently moved to town with her mother and who seems terrified of her twin brother, Tim. Sara is very mysterious about her brother and tells everyone he stayed on the east coast with her father after their parents got divorced. In reality, Tim is in reform school because he drinks, does drugs and stole a car. Sara’s mom gets a letter from Tim and tries to tell Sara to stop being so hard on him because he’s really cleaned up his act, but Sara says he’s an embarrassment to the family. Her mother tries to tell her to go to Alateen, the teen version of Al-Anon, but Sara doesn’t think she needs help because everything would be fine if Tim would just change his ways.

Sara goes to dinner with her boyfriend, Bob, that night. It’s her first time meeting his parents and they’re going to the country club. Bob’s parents are total snobs. Sara tunes them out and then looks stupid when she doesn’t hear a question Bob’s mother asks her. After dinner, Bob tells Sara she really blew it with his parents. Sara gets mad for a second, but does the Sweet Valley girl thing and apologizes to Bob. He asks her to a beach party Lila’s throwing and Sara is relieved that he still wants to date her. At the party, Sara is distracted because she’s thinking about all her problems (what problems?), and Bob gets mad at her for not having a good time. When she gets home, her mother tells her Tim is moving to Sweet Valley. Sara is terrified that she’ll lose her prince of a boyfriend. Ugh. When Tim gets to town, Sara tells him she’s been lying about his past and he just better not ruin things for her by telling anyone the truth.

Liz writes an article about Sweet Valley’s battered women’s shelter and everyone praises her and tells her how much she’s helping society by writing articles like this. Blah. She’s doing a whole series about different programs, and she sits in on an AA meeting. She meets Tim and hears his whole story about the things he did and the way his sister is treating him. Liz and Tim talk after the meeting, and Liz offers to show him around school the next day.

Over the next few days, Tim becomes pretty popular. He starts dating Sara’s best friend, Amanda, and becomes close with Liz and Todd. Then Crunch McAllister’s van gets stolen, and Tim is the prime suspect. His whole past comes out. Amanda is pissed at Sara for not telling her the truth about Tim because best friends are supposed to share everything. Bob breaks up with Sara, but come on, he’s a jackass anyway, right?

Sara blames all her problems on Tim, who takes it pretty well. Sara finally tells Tim she thinks it’s his fault their parents got divorced. Tim is hurt and tells Sara their parents were having problems long before he stole that car. He tells Sara she should go to Alateen. And she does one day, but only after Liz asks her to go with her. ‘Cause it’s always Liz. After that, everything magically turns around. Sara and Amanda make up, Tim and Amanda make up, Tim gets cleared of all charges regarding Crunch’s van, Sara realizes she never really liked Bob, anyway, and everyone goes to an awesome pool party at the Wakefields’ house.

In other news, Jessica is still all annoyed at the things she has to do as Miss Teen Sweet Valley, and Liz ends up posing as her and passing out cheese samples at the mall while wearing a formal dress and a tiara. Why? So Jessica can accept a date to go surfing with some guy.

This book made me want to scream. I mean, more than usual. The quotes below are just a taste of the horrors I endured. Sara’s an obnoxious martyr and I hate Liz and this just wasn’t fun at all.

Quotes:

Bob grinned. “Wear that white swimsuit you bought last week, OK?” he said. “I want all the other guys to wish you were their girlfriend.”

Sara felt vaguely uncomfortable, but she ignored the sensation. Bob just wanted her to look her best, she figured. There was nothing wrong with that.

If there are any young girls in the audience, just remember that if something makes you uncomfortable, then there is something wrong with it.

For a moment, Sara was furious. Then she remembered how much she liked Bob Hillman, and how popular he was at school.

Somebody kill me.

Because she knew it was important to Bob that she appear to be having a good time, Sara threw herself into the volleyball tournament.

Why isn’t it important to Bob that you actually have a good time?

Elizabeth and the Number 137!

He didn’t need to tear other kids down to feel good about himself, and that was another of the million and thirty-seven things Elizabeth liked about him.

The Cover: I don’t know what happened to Elizabeth. This looks like SVT Liz with boobs (sort of) and slightly shorter hair. And look at that troubled expression on Tim’s face. I think he’s really upset about his denim tuxedo there.

The moral of the story: You don’t need to take steroids to win, you just need to think you’re taking steroids.

The Big Deal: All-County track meet

Synopsis:

Liz and Todd have been so busy lately they’ve hardly had any time alone. They manage to ditch their friends at lunch one day and eat together, but then Roger Barrett-Patman sits down with them and says the son of a friend of his mother’s is coming to visit. Mitch is thirteen and going down a bad path. Roger asks Liz to come to a barbecue on Friday to welcome Mitch to town and Liz agrees, even though she already promised Todd they would do something alone. Liz goes home that night and passes Roger’s barbecue invite along to Jessica. Jessica can’t go because she has to go to some store opening and cut a ribbon because she’s Miss Teen Sweet Valley, a title she hates now that she’s found out she actually has to do stuff.

At the barbecue, Liz thinks Mitch looks pretty rough because he’s wearing all black and has a pierced ear. Annie Whitman is at the barbecue with Tony Esteban, track star extraordinaire. Liz and Annie start grilling burgers while the boys talk about sports (don’t even get me started), and Annie says that Tony is the first guy she’s really liked since she broke up with Charlie Markus, but they haven’t even been on a real date yet. When Tony drops Annie off later, they share their first kiss. Tony feels like he’s on top of the world, which means something is going to happen pretty soon to make him miserable. Tony goes to the gym to get something and we find out his father is one of those overbearing “I will live vicariously through my children” kind of dads and Tony’s sick of it. At the gym, Tony sees a guy named Lou and thinks there’s something strange about him. Lou’s a nice enough guy, but something about him makes Tony uncomfortable.

Everyone goes to the big track meet the next day. In a ridiculous contrivance of plot, Liz is covering some sports for The Oracle now because some staff writers have resigned. She takes notes on the track meet while sitting right next to John Pfeiffer, the sports editor, who is doing nothing. Anyway, Tony falls and busts his knee. At the hospital, his father yells at the doctor when Tony is told to stay off his knee and walk on crutches for a week. After a whole day of being cooped up at home, Tony is tired of being an invalid and feels like he needs to get out. He goes to the gym to sit in the whirlpool. Lou is there and offers him some “magic vitamins” to help him get better. Tony is an idiot and doesn’t know what Lou is talking about.

Annie hates seeing Tony so down, so she suggests they go mini golfing with friends. Todd and Liz go, but Todd is pissy the whole time because Liz accepted the invitation on his behalf and he’s still whining about them not spending any time alone. Roger brings Mitch, who seems to be responding really well to Tony. Roger tells Tony that Mrs. Patman found an empty beer bottle in Mitch’s room. Tony offers to take Mitch to Saturday’s track meet and talk to him. He tells Mitch drinking is bad and makes him promise not to do it anymore.

Tony goes to the doctor, who tells him he can start running again. Tony is disgusted with himself when he’s not immediately running as fast as he used to. He goes to the gym to swim and Lou offers him his “magic vitamins” again. He claims he gets them from a doctor up north and they won’t prescribe them as far south as Sweet Valley. He promises Tony that his knee will heal super fast and he’ll feel great. Tony shells out ten dollars for the pills. He’s clearly never heard of steroids.

After a week, Tony is feeling great and running as fast as ever, but he only has four pills left. He goes to the gym to find Lou, and Lou tells him ten dollars was a special deal and if he wants more it’ll be an even hundred. Tony promises he’ll be back early next week with the money. He takes his last pill on Friday and worries about how he’s going to get through the weekend. He and Roger overhear some guys in the locker room talking about a guy who took steroids. Something they say makes Tony worry about Lou’s magic vitamins, but he does his best to ignore the idea. On Sunday morning, he goes to the gym and Lou tells him to come back on Tuesday. He won’t tell Tony what’s in the pills and gets pretty unfriendly. So Tony’s pretty sure they’re illegal or something, but feels like he needs to keep taking them, at least until the All-County track meet. The whole gang goes bowling one night, and Tony gets really competitive and ends up screaming at Mitch and accusing him of cheating. He also starts getting really testy and annoyed with Annie.

In case you care, Todd is now being really obnoxious. Liz tries to make dates with him and he bails, I guess as some kind of payback for her not taking his requests for alone time seriously enough. Jessica tells Liz she should kidnap him and take him to Miller’s Point. Todd has the same idea. He tells Winston he and Liz never have any time together (maybe you shouldn’t be canceling your dates then?) and asks Winston to blindfold Liz and kidnap her for him.

Annie goes to get one of her books out of Tony’s locker one day and finds a full bottle of mysterious pills. She takes one of them and puts it in her pocket so she can find out what it is. Her cousin, Beth, has access to a lab or something and tells Annie the pills are steroids. Annie confronts him, but Tony denies everything. Annie tells Liz and Roger what’s going on, and Roger suggests she get some fake pills made to look like Tony’s pills and replace the steroids with the placebos. Annie’s cousin makes the placebos and Annie and Liz switch out the pills. That afternoon, Mitch comes by the school to say goodbye because he’s going back to L.A. Tony apologizes for yelling at him at the bowling alley, and Mitch says he’s going to turn over a new leaf and stop drinking. Tony feels like a phony. Good.

Winston kidnaps Liz. Enid and Annie kidnap Todd. They all end up at the same restaurant at the same time. Does anyone care? I sure don’t.

Tony unknowingly takes the placebo pills for a week, then goes to the gym and overhears Lou and another guy talking about the pills. So now Tony knows for sure he’s been taking steroids and decides to tell his father and coach. He and his father have a heart to heart and Mr. Esteban realizes he’s been pushing Tony too hard, blah, blah, blah. Annie tells Tony he’s been taking fake pills for the past week, so that’s good news when he talks to Coach Featherston. He calls some kind of meeting and makes Tony take blood tests to make sure he’s okay to run in the All-County meet. Turns out he’s fine and hasn’t even been taking the pills long enough to feel anything but psychological effects. Tony runs like the wind and wins the race.

Quotes:

Elizabeth believed that beauty pageants were sexist, dated, and fundamentally unfair, and had argued that beauty queens weren’t selected for their talents or intelligence, but on the basis of their appearance only. Once she’d participated in the pageant herself, Jessica had grudgingly conceded that her twin was right. Elizabeth was glad Jessica wasn’t one hundred percent thrilled with her title. The lesson she’d learned might not have been easy, but it was very important.

I don’t even have the words to express my hatred for Elizabeth and the smug cloud that hovers over her day after day.

“Liz and Todd,” [Bruce] drawled. “I guess you’ve come for our ‘rescue a hoodlum’ barbecue.”

Bruce can be pretty funny sometimes. I just wish he wasn’t such a total ass.

“Just tell me when and where, and I promise to produce one blindfolded blond Wakefield twin for a little lesson in romance!”

Kink-ay.

Tony felt as if his heart would burst with joy. He knew now that magic didn’t come from pills. Magic was something you made yourself.

I think Tony should work at Disney World.

The Cover: Annie, what are you doing with that slob? Look at this guy. Put on a shirt that fits, would you? (I am not a fan of muscle shirts.)

The moral of the story: When you first move to Sweet Valley, you’re not allowed to drive yourself around in your own car without raising suspicion and breaking hearts.

The Big Deal: Nothing happening today. These kids have gotten boring lately.

Synopsis:

There’s a new girl in town, Andrea Slade, who just moved to Sweet Valley from New York. Andrea has blond hair, blue eyes and a peaches-and-cream complexion. Ooh, I hope they do the triplet prank in this book. Liz and Enid like Andrea immediately and invite her to join them at the beach on Saturday. Liz offers to pick her up, but Andrea says she’d rather meet them there because her house is still a mess. Then Liz goes home and Jessica asks her to make dinner so she can go to Lila’s and check out the “amazing compact disc player” her father brought home from Japan.

Lila, Jessica and Amy are all chilling in Lila’s room listening to the new Jamie Peters album on the aforementioned compact disc player and reading a magazine article about the guy. Jessica and Lila are in love with Jamie Peters and nearly die of excitement when they read he’s thinking of moving to California to start a film career. Amy starts making fun of Jessica and Lila because she’s too cool to be in love with a rock star. Lila informs her friends that she’s decided to become a professional musician. Her private music teacher, Max Sharpe, will decide soon what instrument she’ll be playing. A few days later, Lila invites Jessica and Amy over to tell them the results: she will be playing the marimba.

Enid and Liz have a wonderful time at the beach with Andrea, and then invite her to go to the Dairi Burger with them later. She again declines Liz’s offer to pick her up and says she’ll meet them there. Enid and Liz wonder why she’s being so secretive, and even though Andrea already said her house is a mess because it’s not unpacked yet, they’re sure she’s hiding something. All of Liz’s friends love Andrea, but they can’t figure out why she’s so mysterious and reluctant to talk about her father. A week or so later, Liz, Enid and Andrea run into Nicholas Morrow at the mall. Andrea and Nicholas get to talking and it’s clear they like each other, but when he asks her to go sailing with him, she says she’ll meet him at the marina. Enid and Liz exchange knowing glances and I want to punch them both in the face.

Lila has a dentist appointment one day, and when she gets back to school she tells everyone she saw Jamie Peters at the drugstore. Nobody believes her, but then Jessica figures that if Jamie is in Sweet Valley, she needs to be the next one to spot him. Lila calls that evening during dinner and tells Jessica she saw Jamie again and is currently speaking to Jessica from her car phone while she sits at the end of the driveway Jamie pulled into. She and Jessica make plans to sneak onto the property over the weekend and see Jamie up close. Um, girls? That’s stalking. And it’s creepy.

Andrea and Nicholas have a wonderful time sailing and Andrea accepts when Nicholas asks her to dinner that night. But when she again offers to meet him rather than be picked up, he gets all hurt and annoying. Andrea starts thinking she’d like to tell him “the truth,” but she just can’t. Gee, I wonder what the truth is. Their dinner is great and they go out again the next night. Andrea is all aflutter about being a normal and happy teenage girl.

Jessica, Lila and Amy sneak over to Jamie’s house. It seems he bought the old Kitterby estate in Lila’s neighborhood. Lila used to be friends with Alexis Kitterby, so she knows the best places for spying. The three of them are hiding in some bushes when Jamie Peters walks out to the pool and sits in a lounge chair. Amy makes a noise and Jamie looks in their direction, so they run away. They decide that the only person they’ll tell is Cara because they don’t want to share Jamie with everyone. Cara wants to go with them to spy on Jamie some more, so they all go on Monday after school. When they see Andrea Slade at Jamie’s house, they get all crazed and can’t believe Andrea is Jamie’s live-in girlfriend. Wow, these girls are idiots.

At school the next day, Liz gets an anonymous suggestion for her Eyes and Ears column that insinuates a relationship between Andrea and Jamie Peters. Then Penny comes in and says she found out from a friend at the Sweet Valley News that Jamie Peters has moved to Sweet Valley. Liz tells Enid she thinks Jamie is Andrea’s father. Jessica and the girls announce to Liz and Enid that Andrea is Jamie’s girlfriend. Liz is disgusted by the rumor, but then wonders why Andrea would hide her identity if she was Jamie Peters’ daughter.

When Andrea comes back to school the next day (she’s been out with a cold), everyone treats her differently. She realizes that her secret has come out somehow. Lila comes up to her at lunch and tells her she plays the marimba and wants her to set up an audition with Jamie Peters because, after all, he is Andrea’s boyfriend. Andrea laughs at her sarcastically and walks away. Lila and Jessica are shopping that afternoon and they run into Nicholas, who is on his way to meet Andrea. Lila tells him Andrea is a two-timer living with Jamie Peters. Nicholas doesn’t even question this. He just gets pissed and leaves a nasty note for Andrea at the restaurant where they’re supposed to meet. Andrea is crushed. Later that night, Jamie Peters himself calls Liz and asks if she knows where his daughter is because she never came home. He asks her to call Enid and then come over to his house so they can all figure out where to look.

Liz picks up Nicholas, and on the way to Enid’s house, she tells him Andrea is Jamie’s daughter. Nicholas feels like an ass. They go to Enid’s, then they all get in Enid’s car to go searching around town. Nicholas has a sudden flash of inspiration and tells them to go to the marina. They find Andrea, tell her they like her for herself and then take her home. Jessica and Lila are hiding in the bushes again when Andrea comes home and introduces her friends to Jamie. Lila almost falls over into the bushes and the noise brings everyone outside. Lila apologizes to Andrea for spreading the rumor and somehow comes out of the whole thing with a bit part in the movie Jamie is making.

Setup for the next book: Mrs. Morrow has something of Regina’s that she wants to give to Liz.

Quotes:

“I think I’ve practically memorized the whole first side of Pride.”

CDs were newfangled contraptions back when this was written and I’m guessing Ms. Ghostwriter didn’t have one. A big deal is made of Jessica having Jamie Peters’ “compact disc,” and then she says this.

“Your friend Lila is calling from her car phone,” [Ned] said, half amused and half annoyed. “Apparently something earth-shattering has come up, and unless she can talk to you this very second, she claims she will die.”

I’m cracking up trying to imagine Lila explaining this to Mr. Wakefield in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice. “Mr. Wakefield, it is essential that I talk to Jessica right now, or I will simply perish.”

“Nicholas…our house is still a complete mess. I think it would be a lot easier if I came over to your house, and we went from there.”

Nicholas bent over the boat and secured the rope. When he stood up again, he looked really hurt.

“It isn’t me, is it?” he asked seriously.

God, everyone is so uptight about Andrea wanting to drive her own car and meet people instead of having them pick her up. What’s the big deal, guys?

The Cover: At no point in this book does Andrea show any interest in a guitar or in scowling. And she only talks to Jessica once at the end. But look at that awesome shirt she’s wearing. Remember when we all had shirts like that? Weird turtleneck/tank top monstrosities.

The moral of the story: If you stop hanging out with Elizabeth Wakefield, your life will suck.

The Big Deal: Ice skating party, Christmas Eve party at George’s house, New Year’s Eve party at Lila’s

Synopsis:

It’s Christmas again. Todd is visiting family in Utah over the school break and Liz is feeling lonely. After the last day of school, Enid and Liz join what appears to be their entire class at the Dairi Burger. Liz goes back to the car for her jacket and ends up walking in with Jeffrey French. There’s mistletoe in the doorway and everyone starts screaming for them to kiss, so Jeffrey is all dashing and bends Liz back over his arm and kisses her. Liz is completely rattled by this, but tells herself it’s just because she misses Todd already. What? Then Jessica comes in and really outwhores herself. She stands under the mistletoe with her “twinkling” eyes and says, “Well?” Bruce Patman comes up and acts like he’s doing a favor by kissing her, then Jessica walks around giving out candy canes and flirting with all the boys. She realizes the only boy she hasn’t dated is Jeffrey, so she decides she must have him. She pulls the mistletoe down and holds it over her head while she stands next to him. He kisses her as quickly as he can. Then Jessica tries to flirt with him, but is unsuccessful.

Yeah, so far Enid’s Story seems to be pretty Enid-less.

Liz gets up to go talk to Penny, and Jeffrey sits down in her place to say hi to Enid. They start talking about how it’s too bad they don’t really talk anymore now that Jeffrey and Liz have broken up. There’s an ice skating party the next day, and they decide to go together. As friends. Yeah, right. Enid is relieved when Liz says she doesn’t feel like going to the party, because that means Enid doesn’t have to say anything about going with Jeffrey. Liz decides to go after all and gets totally pissed when she sees Enid and Jeffrey together. Enid calms her down by saying they’re just friends and hey, Liz, he’s not your boyfriend anymore. Then Enid feels a little guilty because she thinks maybe she is starting to like Jeffrey as more than a friend. She decides to deal with it later.

Jessica sees some hot guy and, even though she’s an expert skater (because there’s not a thing in the world she can’t do perfectly), she acts like a clumsy beginner as she skates past him so she has an excuse to grab onto him. She tries to flirt with him, but then Enid, who is a terrible skater, crashes into them and Jessica falls down. She sits there waiting for Brian to help her up, but he doesn’t. He asks Enid if she remembers him. Enid says she does, apologizes for her clumsiness and then skates away. Jessica is pissed. Enid’s always cock-blocking the evil witches of Sweet Valley, and I love it. Almost this same thing happens when Amy is trying to hook up with Lila’s cousin Christopher, but he wants to hang out with Enid because they knew each other already. Where does Enid meet all these guys? And when is Jessica going to realize that Enid is formidable competition? Enid’s dated more college guys than she has.

Jeffrey and Enid have such a good time skating that they decide to go see a movie later. On the way to the theater, they talk about Liz, which makes Enid think Jeffrey’s not interested in her. But she thinks he might become interested in her and that makes her happy. I guess the guilt and confusion she felt earlier have disappeared. She decides to go for it.

Meanwhile, Enid’s having trouble at home. Her father is going to be in town, so she’s asked her mother to cancel some trip they’d planned. Her mom’s giving her all kinds of grief just because she wants to spend the holiday with her father. Adele has apparently been telling Enid that her father has a drinking problem, but Enid thinks her mom is lying. Dave Rollins is supposed to get into town the day before Christmas Eve, but calls and says he’ll have to meet Enid the next day for lunch. Enid’s mom freaks out and gets mad because she had tickets to the Nutcracker. She was going to surprise Enid with them, and now her ex-husband has ruined everything.

Jeffrey calls Enid and wants her to come over so he can ask her something. She gets all excited, but when she gets there, Jeffrey says Liz brought him a present that morning and he wants Enid to tell him what it means. Enid realizes Jeffrey only likes her as a friend and goes home all dejected. She wants nothing more than to talk to her best friend, but she can’t since Liz is part of her problem. Then Brian, from the ice rink, calls and wants to hang out. Enid isn’t sure she should because Brian is from her partyin’ days. But he assures her that he’s changed and tells Enid he had a crush on her back in the day. I figure Enid was thirteen during her difficult phase, and if this guy is in college now, he had to be about sixteen or seventeen back then. Crushing on a thirteen-year-old. Anyway, Enid is flattered and decides to go out with Brian.

Brian takes her to dinner and they have a nice time. Enid doesn’t mind when he orders a beer (so how old is this guy, really?) because she understands that people can drink responsibly. After dinner, though, he takes her so a big party where everyone is getting drunk and high. Enid loses Brian for a few minutes, and he’s already drunk by the time she finds him again. So she calls a cab and goes home totally disappointed with her life.

Enid goes to meet her father for lunch the next day and finds him drunk when she gets to the restaurant. She leaves, disgusted, and goes home to blame her mother for everything. Adele tells her there’s nothing anyone can do, but Enid thinks her father would quit drinking if he loved her more.

Two days without Liz and your life turns to total crap. See what happens?

Jeffrey calls and invites Enid to a party at George Warren’s house and she accepts. At the party, Liz and Jeffrey have a private talk. She tells him she really loves Todd and asks if Jeffrey likes Enid. He says he does and he plans to talk to her that night. They go back to the party, but end up under some mistletoe. Liz is glad when she doesn’t feel anything from kissing him this time. Enid sees them kissing and goes outside to sit on the deck and feel sorry for herself.

Jessica is wandering around the party looking for a new guy to flirt with when she sees Brian. She tries to flirt with him, but he just asks her if she’s seen Enid. Jessica gives up on him, then sees Jeffrey and starts trying to flirt with him. He asks if she knows where Enid is. She says no and tries to talk to Liz, but Liz just wants to know if she’s seen Enid anywhere. Jessica is annoyed.

Brian finds Enid first and apologizes for the way he acted the night before. She’s all ready to tell him to fuck off, but then Liz comes up to her with an earnest expression on her face and says she wants to talk. Enid is mad at Liz about Jeffrey, so she pretends to be in a deep and flirtatious conversation with Brian. She tells Liz to get lost. Enid and Brian are dancing when Jeffrey interrupts. Enid just tells him where he can find Liz and keeps dancing. She leaves with Brian and he takes her up to Miller’s Point and manages to convince her to smoke some weed with him and drink some bourbon. Oh, Enid.

At the party, Jessica finally meets a guy who doesn’t know Enid and starts flirting. After a few minutes, they decide to head up to Miller’s Point. That Jessica, she moves fast. There’s another car next to them at the Point, and just as Jessica and Michael are about to start making out, the people in the other car turn their radio up really loud. Jessica gets out and knocks on the window. When nothing happens, she opens the door and sees Enid and Brian with an empty bottle between them. Jessica gets back into Michael’s car and tells him to take her back to the party.

Adele Rollins is sitting around waiting for Enid to come home. Liz calls for Enid, then tells Mrs. Rollins that Enid left the party an hour ago with Brian. Now Adele is freaking out because she knows Brian was one of Enid’s druggie friends. Then Enid’s dad shows up and Adele tells him what’s going on. Dave thinks it’s his fault that Enid is upset enough to go back to hanging with her old crowd. He goes to Kelly’s Roadhouse to see if she’s there. The sight of the old boozers hanging out at the bar kind of freaks him out and he realizes he’s well on his way to being one of them. He takes the flask of gin he has in his glove compartment and throws it out the window. And that, my friends, is the swiftest alcoholism recovery I’ve ever seen.

Dave goes to George’s house to see if Enid is there. A crowd gathers around him and Jessica sees it as the perfect time to tell everyone she just saw Enid drunk at Miller’s Point. Instead of hating Enid the way she’d hoped, everyone is mad at Jessica for just leaving her up there. Which is kind of bullshit, if you ask me, but Jessica starts to feel bad and leaves with Jeffrey, Liz, Lila and Dave to go find her.

Enid wants Brian to take her home, but he’s not done partying yet. He drives through town like a maniac, Enid screaming the whole time. They finally crash through a guardrail and the car flips. Enid wakes up to see her father tapping on the window and telling her to unlock her door. Dave carries her up the bank, then goes back to the car to get Brian out. Then the car explodes.

Enid wakes up in the hospital and is told her father and Brian are in the burn unit. Adele, Liz, Jeffrey, Jessica and Lila spend Christmas morning with Enid in her hospital room. Enid goes to see her father and he tells her he’s going to check himself into a clinic and stop drinking. Brian also decides to quit drinking and partying.

Lila has a big New Year’s Eve party. Todd is back in town, so he and Liz go together. Jeffrey wants to go with Enid, but she says she’d prefer to meet him there. In the end, they both realize they aren’t ready for a relationship, but agree to share a New Year’s kiss.

Quotes:

Just about the worst event that had ever happened to Elizabeth was Todd’s family moving to Vermont earlier that school year.

a.) If that, out of all the other things that have happened to Liz, is the worst thing ever, then she really needs to get her priorities straight. I mean, even forgetting all the crap that happens in Specials, because that stuff doesn’t really count. Just in the regular series her parents have split up, she’s been stuffed in some crazy stalker’s trunk, she nearly drowned…the list goes on and on.

b.) More evidence that the SVH timeline is severely screwed up. It’s Christmas right now. Todd moved, fell in love with Suzanne Devlin and came back to break up with Liz at Christmas. This is insane.

Just to be mischievous, Jessica had once said that Bruce kissed like a jellyfish. The truth was that Bruce was really a pretty good kisser.

Well, there’s that mystery cleared up.

Even though she had changed her life, it was not really any better. Maybe it would never be any better.

Oh, quit your whining, Enid. You’ve had two crappy days. That’s not exactly a horrible life.

The Cover: There she is, the chick who snags all the college boys. She’s not so bad, though I’m ashamed to say I did my bangs like that for years when I was younger.

The moral of the story: If your whole family is fighting, they’ll probably all make up if you run away from home.

The Big Deal: Costume party

Synopsis:

Before we were so rudely interrupted by Bruce’s sad excuse for a story, Ned and Alice Wakefield were in the middle of splitting up and Jessica was spending all her free time talking to a guy named Charlie, who she met on a teen party line. Ned had just decided to run for mayor of Sweet Valley. This book opens with Ned moving out of the Wakefields’ lovely split-level home and into a crappy apartment that makes Liz want to cry. Liz wants to cry a lot of the time, actually, because she’s determined to blame herself for her parents’ breakup.

Alice gets the phone bill and Jessica has to tell her it’s so high because of the party line she’s been calling. Alice tells her she’s suspending Jessica’s allowance and making her get a part-time job to pay off the bill. Jessica thinks that’s unfair, so she complains to daddy and he offers to talk to Alice about softening the punishment. At school, Amy and Lila are hounding Jessica about Charlie and making fun of her for having a boyfriend she’s never even met, so Jessica tells them she and Charlie are going roller-skating on Saturday. This is a great big lie, and Jessica decides that she’ll have to convince Charlie to go roller-skating with her, and if he comes up with another excuse not to meet her, she’ll tell him it’s all over between them. Luckily (I guess) for Charlie, he agrees to meet her at three o’clock on Saturday at the roller rink, and he’ll be carrying a red rose.

Liz does poorly on an English paper and wants to tell Mr. Collins what’s going on, but doesn’t feel like talking about it. Then she goes for a bike ride and ends up staring at her father’s apartment building for twenty minutes. When she gets home, there are two messages from Todd on the answering machine. Liz forgot she was supposed to go shopping with him to help him pick out a birthday present for his mother. Liz apologizes and says she wants to stay home with her mom. Todd tells her to remember he needs some attention sometimes, too. What an incredible jackass. So now Liz is feeling guilty about that. After school on Friday, Todd tells Liz he got tickets to some show and wants to take her out that night. She tells him she wants to be with her mother and he gets all disappointed and tells her it seems like she doesn’t want to be around him anymore. She kind of says, “Yeah, you’re right.” She breaks up with him because she’s so disillusioned about relationships and she’s sure she and Todd would break up sooner or later anyway. She’s also feeling like such a screw-up lately that she figures Todd is better off without her.

Ned calls for Alice and they have a fight about Jessica, then Alice yells at Jessica for going behind her back to Ned. A few days later, Jessica asks Lila if she can borrow some money to buy a new outfit for her date with Charlie. Lila says no, but tells Jessica how to play her father for money and gifts now that he’s probably feeling all guilty about the separation. So daddy buys her a suede vest and “western-looking” jeans and she goes off to the roller rink. Amy tags along just to make sure Charlie is real. There’s a guy with a red rose who introduces himself as Charlie, but Jessica thinks his voice is different than it sounds on the phone, and he acts all stiff and weird. Then Charlie calls her later that night to tell her what a great time he had and Jessica assumes he’s just bad at first dates. They have dinner on Wednesday, and Jessica tells him afterward that she doesn’t want to see him again, though she’d still like to be friends and talk to him on the phone. One day, she calls the party line again and talks to one of her phone friends, Sara. Sara tells Jessica that the guy she met wasn’t really Charlie. The real Charlie doesn’t think he’s good-looking enough for Jessica, so he got a friend of his to pretend to be him.

After a conversation with Jessica, Liz decides breaking up with Todd was a good idea, and she’s going to play the field from now on. She goes to school on Monday wearing one of Jessica’s miniskirts and by lunchtime she has a date with Paul Jeffries, who is apparently a womanizer, at least according to Enid. On Tuesday, she goes out with a different guy. Jessica starts to get annoyed that Liz is getting so much attention from the guys at school. She picks a fight with her after school one day and Steve gets involved. The whole thing escalates until Jessica says their parents’ breakup is all Liz’s fault because Liz gave Alice’s assistant the phone number at their cabin in Tahoe.

Liz tells Enid she’s going to run away from home. She figures either her grandparents in Michigan or her aunt and uncle in Texas will take her in. Enid tells her she’s crazy and offers to let her stay at her house. Liz agrees and writes a letter explaining that she’s staying with “a friend.” She and Enid deliver the letters to Ned and Alice. When Ned gets his, he goes to the Wakefields’ house and everyone is all frantic about where Liz could be. Enid’s phone is busy all night and nobody else has seen her. The next morning, Liz feels much better after a whole night of relaxation. She puts Enid’s phone back on the hook and waits for her mom to call. Alice comes to pick her up and the whole family sits down to talk. Liz finally gets it through her thick skull that she’s not to blame for her parents’ breakup.

Things are almost back to normal, or at least on their way to normal (I can’t tell if Ned’s moved back home or not), but Jessica wants Liz and Todd to get back together. She enlists Steve to help her. On Sunday afternoon, Jessica gets a look at what Liz is wearing and then dresses the same way. She calls Todd and tells him to meet her at Secca Lake to talk. At the lake, she tells him she wants to get back together. He says he loves her and wants that, too. Liz hears the whole thing because Steve made her take a walk with him to a spot where they could eavesdrop. Jessica pretends she needs something from her car and gets up, letting Liz take over from there.

There’s a costume party at school and Jessica is all pissed that she doesn’t have a date. She knows Amy doesn’t have a date, either, so she decides that she’ll take Fake Charlie and Amy can take Real Charlie to the party. She calls Charlie up and tells him she knows the truth and somehow manages to convince him to go to the party. Brook (Fake Charlie) is as boring as ever and is dressed as a golfer. Charlie is a pirate, Jessica is an “intergalactic princess,” and Amy is a cheerleader. That’s right, she just wears her cheerleading uniform. Jessica expects Charlie and Brook to be fighting over her all night, but it doesn’t happen and it makes her furious. (Setup for the next book:) She decides she’s going to help her father win the race for mayor so all her “friends” will be jealous when she’s the daughter of such an important person.

Quotes:

“But I need your help choosing a birthday present for my mom, remember? What am I going to do now? Her birthday’s tomorrow!”

Hey, Todd, how about you shop for your mother yourself? Jackass.

“Why should this time be any different from usual? I’m impulsive and Steven’s stubborn and only Elizabeth is perfectly reasonable.” She glared at her sister. “Why don’t you stop and listen to yourself for once? You sound so self-satisfied!”

Tell her, Jess!

True, he wasn’t classically handsome. He had a bumpy nose, he was a little too thin, and his eyes were spaced too close together, but there was something very appealing about him.

Jeez, I’d hate to see know what Jessica would think of real people who live outside Sweet Valley.

The Cover: I love the tagline. “Elizabeth is running away!” Yeah, she spends the night at Enid’s house. Hardly the dramatic act I was envisioning. This cover ranks right up there with Jessica’s runaway cover.

The moral of the story: If you don’t like your potential stepmother, you can expose her as a phony and get a party out of it.

The Big Deal: A party to celebrate Lila

Synopsis:

It’s summer vacation and Lila’s father has been seeing a woman named Joan Borden. Lila hates her. She doesn’t like vying for Daddy’s attention, especially since he’s hardly ever home anyway. He’s been acting funny lately, too, asking her to watch her spending. She gets home from the beach one day and her father asks her about a six hundred dollar charge on the credit card. Lila lies and says she never spent that much money. George says he doesn’t have time to straighten it out now because he’s on his way out the door to go see Joan. Lila gets pissed and doesn’t feel so bad for lying about the credit card charge. The next morning, George tells Lila he’s invited Joan and her daughter, Jacqueline, over for lunch. When they get there, Lila instantly hates Joan and thinks her daughter is sickeningly sweet and obnoxious. After they leave, George tells Lila he likes Joan a lot and he wants Lila to make them feel welcome whenever they come over.

Jessica, Lila, Liz and some others go to a concert. Lila meets a really hot guy and falls in love with him, but Jessica tells her the guy is Evan Armstrong, who’s been going out with Sonia Bentley for ages. Lila is all depressed until Jessica also tells her that Sonia used to have a major crush on Bruce Patman and Evan was jealous of him. Lila decides to try to get Sonia and Bruce together, so she asks Bruce to help her out and hit on Sonia. Bruce wants to know what he gets in return, but neither he nor Lila can think of anything she can give him. They decide she’ll owe him one. This is going to end in tears. Later that day, Lila and Jessica meet George, Joan and Jacqueline for lunch and Lila reflects on what a conniving phony Joan is. Ironic, eh?

Aaron and Winston throw a party at the Beach Disco the next night, so Lila and Bruce decide that will be when they put the first part of their plan in action. Bruce shows up at the party and immediately cuts in on Sonia and Evan and asks Sonia to dance. Then he sits down with them and flirts with Sonia until Evan gets pissed and goes outside. Lila follows him and puts her wiles to work and eventually Evan gets her number and asks her to come to some drag race with him the next day. At the races, Lila does her best to pretend she cares about it, and then she and Evan go out to dinner. She knows she shouldn’t because her father wanted her to have dinner with him, Joan and Jackie, but Lila can’t think of anything but Evan. They have a lovely time and hold hands at the restaurant and stuff. When Lila gets home, she finds Jackie wearing her bathrobe and Joan and George having brandy in the living room. They’re spending the night and Lila is horrified. The next day, Lila goes out with Evan again and they end up making out at Miller’s Point. They start spending a lot of time together and Evan finally tells Sonia things are over between them because he’s found someone new.

George makes Lila introduce Jackie to her friends, so the two of them meet Amy, Jessica and Liz at the beach. Lila’s sure they’ll all hate Jackie, but they get along with her just fine and tell Lila to lighten up. Lila calls Evan that night to bitch about Jackie, but he doesn’t get what her problem is. Evan takes Lila out one night and apologizes for being distracted lately. There’s a race he wants to be in, but it would cost him five hundred dollars and his parents won’t give it to him because they think drag racing is dangerous. Lila wants to loan him the money but doesn’t know how she’s going to get her hands on five hundred dollars. Then she remembers her father’s emergency stash and decides to take the money and blame Jackie. She hides the safe key and one of her own necklaces in Jackie’s room to make it look like she’s been stealing more than just money. Later that night, though, the key is back on George’s desk and the necklace on Lila’s dresser. The next morning, Lila finds out Jackie neglected to give her a message that Jessica had called and invited her to some show or something. Lila’s pissed, but Jackie claims she wrote down the message and put it on Lila’s dresser next to her gold necklace. Ooh, well played, Jackie. George and Joan depart for Hawaii the next day and leave Jackie and Lila alone at Fowler Crest. As soon as they’re gone, Jackie reveals herself to be the conniving, manipulative Jessica Wakefield clone Lila always suspected her of being.

Bruce calls one night to remind Lila she owes him a favor and he finally knows what she can do for him. Lila tells him to meet her at the Box Tree Café, but when she goes to get her keys, she discovers Jackie has taken her car. Bitch! Nobody drives the Triumph but Lila! She takes the bus to the café and Bruce makes fun of her ‘cause he’s a douchebag. He tells Lila he has a bet riding on the drag race and he needs Evan to cancel. Lila’s now ready to kill someone. When she gets home, her father and Joan have come home from Hawaii early to announce their engagement. Oh, just shoot her now.

Lila decides she needs to hurry up and come up with a plan to get the Bordens out of her life. First, she starts acting really happy about the engagement. Then she suggests a joint party for the engagement and for Jackie’s birthday. She pretends to be all excited about planning it. This throws Jackie off guard. Lila makes sure the party will be the same day as Evan’s race, then cries at him about how she needs him with her. He agrees to bag the race. So that’s that taken care of. Lila overhears Joan and Jackie talking one day and finds out they don’t have a cent to their name and Joan is planning to file for divorce and get alimony payments as soon as she and George are married. Lila tries to tell her father all this, but he thinks she’s lying, of course.

At the party that night, Jackie spends a lot of time talking to Evan. Lila gets pissed and Evan says she’s overreacting, but since he cradles her face all seductively when he says it, Lila’s totally okay. The wedding is going to be in three weeks and Lila offers to help plan it, figuring that somewhere in there is a way to expose the Bordens as the fakes they really are. Evan starts coming over every day, but it’s not the same. He seems distracted and annoyed. Then Lila finds him making out with Jackie. Asshole! Aw, Lila, you should have known. If he’ll cheat with you, he’ll cheat on you. Poor Lila runs off to her room in tears.

Okay, wedding day. Lila still has no idea how she’s going to stop the wedding until she talks to the planner, who shows her all the tiny microphones set up around the lawn so that everyone will hear the vows. Lila sneaks a few of them into the sunroom from which she, Jackie and Joan will be walking. As the ceremony is starting, Lila tells Joan that Jackie outed herself weeks ago and she knows they aren’t who they say they are. Joan freaks out and starts bitching at Jackie about how close they are to being rich. When they walk out, it’s clear the entire audience heard everything. George tells Joan to pack her bags and get the hell out. He then announces that since the food and guests are already there, the event will now be an impromptu party for Lila for being so brave and resourceful. Bruce introduces Lila to Toby, the guy who won the race Evan backed out of for her. To get back at Evan, Lila dances with Toby all night. Ha.

Quotes:

“Lila, your father just said the most flattering thing to me at the bar. He said I don’t look old enough to have a daughter Jackie’s age. Isn’t that silly of him?”

“It certainly is,” Lila said.

I love Lila. How could you not?

The Cover: I love Lila’s hair. And I love how she’s all purple. She’s so much prettier than Jessica.

The moral of the story: If you have a social life, you’ll lose tennis tournaments.

The Big Deal: The Patmans’ annual blowout party at the country club.

Synopsis:

Liz and Enid are organizing a Big Sister program. They stick Jessica with a little girl named Allison who loves shopping, magazines and fashion. There’s a little girl who loves tennis and Liz thinks they should pair her with Kristin Johnson. Enid’s not sure about that because Kristin isn’t very friendly and never seems to have time for anything but tennis. Liz decides to ask her anyway. When she tells her about Emily Brown, whose mother is dead, Kristin says she’ll think about it but isn’t sure she’ll have time because she has a pro tournament coming up. She goes to her tennis practice with tears in her eyes because her own mother died when she was seven. Her mother was a tennis champ as well, and Kristin wants to win Wimbledon someday because her mother died before she could do it. These days, though, she kind of just wants to be a normal kid, but she’s afraid her father won’t love her anymore or something if she quits.

Liz tells Kristin she’d only need to spend time with Emily once a week and that she could probably take the kid to her tennis practices. Kristin agrees. After school, she gets a message that her tennis coach has an appointment and she’ll be an hour late. Kristin wanders out to the school’s tennis courts and sees a bunch of kids watching Bruce and some other guy play. They convince her to play Bruce, and she lets him win because she knows he’d be humiliated if he loses to a girl in front of all his friends. Blech. Afterward, Bruce gives her a ride to the tennis club and asks her to a movie on Friday. She agrees, and on Friday she tells her father she’s going to the library and meets Bruce on the corner. She’s sure her father wouldn’t approve of her going on a date, not this close to the qualification rounds to get onto Nick Wylie’s team for the Avery Cup tournament. She has fun with Bruce, even though he keeps telling her she worries too much about tennis and not enough about having fun.

Liz is going to do an interview with Kristin for the paper, so she gets to the tennis club early on Saturday morning to ask her some questions. Kristin is late and her father is making a big deal out of it. Liz thinks he’s being awfully critical and unfair, because, you know, she’s allowed to pass judgment on people she’s known for one minute. During the interview, Liz thinks Kristin is being untruthful when she says she doesn’t regret not doing all the things other girls her age get to do.

When Kristin gets home from practice, her father tells her that Bruce called a few times. She calls him back and he says he wants her to come over to see the new speakers his dad bought him. She tells him she can’t because she’s having dinner with her father and her coach. Bruce can’t believe she’d turn him down just for a family dinner. Kristin laughs and says he should give her more notice next time. Then she hangs up. I think I love Kristin. The next day, she takes Emily to the tennis club and shows her around. Emily is really excited to be hanging out with a real tennis star. Bruce comes over that afternoon to take Kristin out for ice cream. She tells her dad she’ll only be an hour, but when she gets in Bruce’s car, he takes her to some jazz club or something and she ends up coming home after ten o’clock. Her dad is pissed about her not taking care of herself before such an important tournament. Because she’s supposed to go to bed early, you know. Kristin is irritated by her father’s constant nagging.

On Tuesday, Kristin isn’t doing so well in the first round of … qualification rounds, or whatever. I’m so unsporty it’s ridiculous. Anyway, she wins, but barely. In the car on the way home, her father tells her she can’t go on anymore evening dates because she has to get her sleep. She says she knows how much sleep she needs because she’s the one in the tournament, not him. Her dad looks all hurt and upset, and Kristin feels bad for what she said.

Bruce calls Kristin and tells her he wants her to be his date at this party his parents are throwing at the country club on Saturday. She really wants to go, but if she makes it past the rounds on Thursday, she’ll have to be in bed early Saturday night for the match on Sunday. She tells him she’ll think about it. At the match on Thursday, Kristin wins again, but she’s still not playing as well as she usually does. Her coach looks disappointed in her, and Kristin snaps and asks why she and her father can’t love and support her whether she wins or not.

Liz and Jessica bring their Little Sisters home to have a cookie baking contest because the ghostwriter just realized there wasn’t enough Wakefield action in this book. Jessica and her kid, Allison, bake fifty cookies in an hour, while Liz and Kim have only three dozen. But Jessica’s cookies suck because they left out ingredients in order to win. The moral of this story is the old tortoise-and-the-hare thing. Whatever. Back to Kristin.

Kristin decides to go to the Patmans’ party, but Bruce wants to meet her there instead of picking her up. Everyone at the party is wearing formal attire and Kristin feels out of place in a sundress and sandals. Bruce doesn’t pay any attention to her and she has a miserable time. She leaves early and is relieved to know she hasn’t been missing anything all these years by giving up a social life. Kristin loses the match the next day. She’ll only be on Nick Wylie’s Avery Cup team as an alternate. She tells her coach she feels like a failure, and her coach, who was best friends with Kristin’s mom, tells her that her mom was going to quit playing tennis after Wimbledon so she could have a normal life and spend time with Kristin. Jeez, don’t you think you could have told her this before? I mean, Kristin’s only been playing tennis this whole time because she thought it was what her mother would have wanted.

The next morning at school, Bruce tries to flirt with Kristin, but she tells him off. Hooray! I love when Bruce gets served. After school, she goes to see Emily. Emily is crying because she thinks Kristin will hate her for losing a tryout to get into tennis camp. Kristin tells her she likes her for who she is, not for her tennis skills. And then a light bulb goes off (yes, exact words) and Kristin realizes her father and coach will love her no matter what. Then she thinks about it and decides she really does love tennis, she just has to play for herself and not because someone else wants her to. Way to go, Emily, for teaching us that important lesson. The next day, Nick Wylie himself calls and says one of his players is hurt. He asks if Kristin can take her place and she says yes.

Liz and Enid find out that Kristin will be playing in the tournament, so they get a group of Sweet Valley High kids to go watch her. Kristin wins the match because she’s playing from the heart, yo.

Quotes:

If Bruce was worth getting to know, he would understand how much tennis meant to her.

Thank goodness, a girl who won’t fall all over herself just because a guy pays attention to her!

“Wow!” Kim Edgars exclaimed when she saw the Wakefields’ Spanish-tiled kitchen. “This is fantastic! Is this where we’re baking cookies?”

Kid, it’s just a kitchen.

The Cover: Damn, she looks mean, holding that racket like a soldier holds a gun. Tennis is serious business.