Shannon's Sweet Valley High Blog

Read part one of this miniseries here. Read part two here.

The Moral of the Story: I … I got nothing.

Synopsis:

The twins aren’t speaking to each other because Jessica thinks it’s Liz’s fault that everyone thinks her boyfriend is a murdering werewolf. They’re both out to find the truth, but neither wants the other to know what she’s doing. Jessica sneaks into the house of Dr. Neville, the first murder victim. She finds a file labeled “S., Annabelle.” The only thing in the file is a report that Annabelle died from pneumonia nine years ago. Jessica thinks it’s weird that there’s nothing else in the file and she puts it in her bag. She hears someone else in the house and crawls out the window just before Liz comes in. Liz decides to take the file on Robert Pembroke, then goes through the doctor’s Rolodex. She comes across a business card for Mildred Price, Robert’s childhood nanny, and is certain Robert is hiding out at her house. She starts to write down Mildred’s information, but then a noise scares her. She just takes the card and leaves just before the murderer comes in. The unnamed werewolf searches through Dr. Neville’s filing cabinet, goes into a rage about one of the twins having stolen something, and then sees Mildred Price’s name written down next to the Rolodex. He thinks, “Nanny Millie,” and leaves.

Liz goes back to the boardinghouse that night and gets all homesick for Sweet Valley. Then she thinks how lucky she is to have found Luke. She thinks about calling him and then realizes he never gave her his number. Liz looks at the necklace Luke gave her. There’s an “A” engraved on the back of the medallion and Liz wonders if “A” was Luke’s mother, who got him interested in werewolves. Pat, I think I’d like to solve the puzzle. Liz is convinced the medallion has kept her out of danger, but she thinks her twin needs it more than she does so she puts it in Jessica’s bag. Besides, she still has the silver bullet Luke gave her.

The next morning, Jessica wakes up late for work and rushes out the door. Halfway to the tube station, she realizes she’s forgotten her bag. She goes back for it, and when she gets to her room, it’s clear someone has been there. The door is open and Jessica’s bed is made. Jessica has no doubt that Robert has been there. I don’t know why.

When Liz gets to work, Luke asks her where her necklace is. Liz explains that she gave it to Jessica, and then asks about the inscription on the pendant. Luke says the necklace did indeed belong to his mother, Ann. Then Tony Frank, who was just promoted to the crime desk, says there’s been another murder. The victim is Mildred Price. Of course. Liz and Tony leave to investigate.

Then there’s another scene of the murderer tearing the twins’ room apart. He finds the file labeled “Robert Pembroke, Jr.” and the one labeled “S., Annabelle.” That’s great, but he knows one of the twins has a silver bullet. Unfortunately, no amount of vandalism will make it appear. The murderer leaves, figuring the twins have the bullet.

When the twins get home from work that night, they each say they’re missing a file and Liz says her silver bullet is missing. Later, Jessica is looking at the medallion she found in her bag and notices the engraving. She puts the initial together with the file she found and asks Liz where Luke got the medallion. Liz says he got it from his mother, Ann. Jessica thinks, “Ann, not Annabelle. So much for that brilliant idea.” Sigh.

The next morning, the twins find out Lord Pembroke Senior himself has been attacked. Jessica goes to see him at the hospital, and the man is all kinds of doped up. He sees Jessica’s necklace and says it looks like the one he gave Annabelle, the only woman he ever really loved. Then he says he wants Jessica to tell Robert he has a brother.

Liz decides it’s a good time to go snoop around Pembroke Manor some more while the Pembrokes are in the city. Tony Frank goes with her, and she shows him the secret werewolf room. They find a box full of letters from Annabelle. The letters tell them that Lord Pembroke and Annabelle were in love, but couldn’t marry because of their different classes. Annabelle had a baby at some point. Liz and Tony figure he could be anywhere from nine to nineteen years old. They wonder if Robert’s killing spree could somehow be a result of learning he has an illegitimate brother. When Liz tells Luke about Annabelle, he gets all intense and weird and tells her not to go where the werewolf can find her.

That night, the twins have another argument because Liz is a bitch and Jessica is a drama queen. Later, Liz is feeling sad and wants to talk to someone. She goes to Rene’s room and knocks on the door, but he doesn’t answer. She tries to open the door, but it’s locked. For some reason, this sends Liz into a rage and she’s all pissed off at Rene for never being there for her. (I think this is all part of a ploy to make us think Rene is the murderer. There have been a couple scenes in which he’s “acted strangely.” Anyway, Liz is a bitch.)

Jessica goes to Pembroke Green, the family’s city residence, and makes Lady Pembroke talk to her by saying she knows about Annabelle. So Lady Pembroke starts talking and says she hated her husband for having an affair, but also for sending money and resources, including Nanny Millie, to his bastard child. Jessica starts to think the other son must be the murderer. Then Lady Pembroke says, “Lucas is an evil name,” citing that as proof that the boy is no good. Jessica jumps to her feet, shouting that Luke is the killer. I’m surprised she didn’t think, “Oh, she said Lucas, not Luke.” Anyway, she runs out of the house to a telephone box (why didn’t she use the Pembrokes’ phone?) and calls the dorm and the Journal. Liz isn’t in either place. She calls Tony Frank and finds out Liz took Luke with her to check out Annabelle’s old house. He tells Jessica the street name, and Jessica hails a taxi.

Annabelle’s house is in the ghetto, as evidenced by the homeless man outside. There’s no power, so Luke goes to the basement to try to find a fuse box. While he’s doing that, Liz goes upstairs. She finds a bedroom and seems surprised to find someone lives in it. There are newspaper clippings all over the walls, and Liz is kind of horrified to discover they all have something to do with the Pembroke family. Then she opens a diary and reads a passage about the writer waking up on his father’s estate with ripped clothes and blood all over him. Then Liz looks up to see the werewolf in the doorway. She gets scared, but then realizes the wolfman is wearing Luke’s clothes. Liz laughs and tells Luke to take off that horrible mask. He tells her it’s not a mask and Liz gets scared again because her boyfriend is clearly a psychopath.

Luke does an evil villain speech about how he and his mother were denied awesome Pembroke-ish things, and explains that when Annabelle died, Luke vowed to get back at everyone. When he’s done talking, he lunges for Liz, but just then the homeless guy from outside comes in and points a gun at Luke. Liz is relieved to see the homeless guy is really Robert in disguise. Robert says he has the silver bullet. Then Rene and Sergeant Bumpo come in. There’s a scuffle, and Luke gets shot. His mask slips off and he tells Liz they got the werewolf. Then he dies.

In conclusion:

• Luke was a psychotic wannabe werewolf who actually had no idea he was murdering people and framing his brother during his blackouts.
• Robert disguised himself as a homeless man so he could watch over Jessica.
• Rene has been following Liz around to keep an eye on her, which explains his strange behavior.
• Lord Pembroke recovers and turns ownership of the newspaper over to Robert.
• Lucy Friday and Tony Frank get married.

Quotes:

Jessica had a feeling this fight wasn’t going to blow over. It was the worst one ever.

Even worse than that time you got Liz drunk and she killed your boyfriend? Must be pretty bad.

The Cover: Stop wearing those stupid fucking trenchcoats!

And now, fair readers, I need a break. I think I’ll take next week off, at least some of it. I need to get my head on straight again after the ridiculousness of these last few books.

Read part one of this miniseries here.

The moral of the story: Werewolves are serious business.

Synopsis:

Of course Jessica’s not dead. The dead blond woman lying facedown in Jessica’s bed is Joy Singleton, fiancé of Sheriff Andrew Thatcher. Joy and Andrew, like Luke and the twins, are spending the weekend at Pembroke Manor. After Liz’s screams, everyone gathers near the doorway to the bedroom. Jessica says Joy wanted to switch rooms with her because she couldn’t sleep with the full moon shining in her window. Robert Pembroke starts ordering his servants to call the constable and shit like that, and Liz can’t stand how bossy he’s being. Ugh, I hate when Liz decides she doesn’t like people. She’s so annoying about it.

For the rest of the morning, Liz follows everyone around being suspicious of them. She questions the servants, Maria and Alistair, and they say they saw someone leaving Jessica’s room around four in the morning but they won’t say who. Liz goes up to the bedroom to look for clues because you know she’s a better investigator than the actual police. She finds a tuft of animal hair and a scrap of fabric caught in the doorway. Luke and Liz, through the process of elimination, decide that one of the Pembrokes must be the werewolf.

Lord Pembroke, who owns the London Journal, has been suppressing stories about the murders, using exaggerated stories about the missing Princess Eliana as a cover. Liz is talking to Jessica and she expresses her dislike for Robert. Jessica gets mad and storms off. Eliana has overheard the argument and tells Liz that Robert, a distant cousin of hers, isn’t so bad. Liz explains what happened at Pembroke Manor and asks Eliana why Lord Pembroke would keep the murder out of the newspaper. Eliana says there was a scandal involving the Pembrokes fifteen or twenty years ago, and Lord Pembroke has been terrified of sullying the family name ever since. Liz vows to find out what that scandal was about.

The next day, Liz pretends to be Jessica and goes to talk to Lady Pembroke, ostensibly as a follow up about her mink coat that went missing last week. She asks if Lady P. has any enemies and says it could even be someone holding a grudge for, oh, say, twenty years. Lady P. gets super pissed, calls “Jessica” ill-bred and kicks her out. Robert calls Jessica later and asks her to dinner because he wants her to get along with his mother. Jessica realizes what Liz has done and wants to kill her. Of course, Jessica thinks Liz was out to sabotage her relationship with Robert.

Liz has lunch with Rene, who has finally come around and stopped being so mad at Liz for not being in love with him. She tells him that she and Luke believe the murderer might be a werewolf. Rene tells her that’s ridiculous, and suddenly Liz doesn’t believe in werewolves anymore. Then she and Luke go see The Howling and then Liz believes in werewolves again.

I hate this book.

Not satisfied that she’s completely ruined Jessica’s love life, Liz decides she’d better pull another twin switch and get back out to Pembroke Manor to talk to Robert’s father. We get a chapter inside Lord Pembroke Senior’s head and find out he, like Luke, is a werewolf scholar. The reason he’s been keeping news of these murders out of the paper is because he knows a werewolf is behind it and he wants to be the one to hunt it down and kill it. The only problem is that he’s worried the werewolf might be his son Robert. Liz-as-Jessica calls to ask if she can come talk to him about his wife’s mink. Pembroke thinks it’s really sweet that she wants to impress him by making the story seem more important than it is. He tells “Jessica” that he’s grateful for the changes she’s brought about in Robert and that Robert loves her very much.

When Liz arrives at Pembroke Manor later, the place is a madhouse. Maria the cook has been murdered in the same fashion as all the other murder victims, her throat torn out. Liz explores Robert’s room and finds a robe matching the scrap of fabric found at the scene of Joy’s murder. The robe has a tear in it. Liz goes to the library and starts to pull a book off the shelf. When she does, a secret door opens onto Lord Pembroke’s secret werewolf room. All the trophies on the wall are wolf heads and all the books are about werewolves. It’s weird. Liz opens one of the books and finds an inscription from someone named Annabelle. Liz decides Annabelle, whoever she is, has something to do with this whole thing. What? Liz snoops a little more, but is interrupted by voices from outside the library. She leaves the secret room and hides under the desk in the library. There, she overhears Sheriff Thatcher telling Pembroke to turn over his evidence and out the werewolf. Pembroke says he will, but he wants to talk to his suspect first. Thatcher gives him until ten o’clock that night. As soon as Pembroke goes away, Liz finds a phone and calls the Journal office to tell Luke what she just heard. Tony Frank tells her Luke isn’t there, and then mentions that Jessica took the day off to go to hang out with Robert. Liz freaks out about her sister spending the day alone with a werewolf.

Jessica and Robert have plans to go to Stonehenge, but they don’t actually make it out there. While Liz was calling Luke, Lord Pembroke was calling Robert to tell him to get out of town for a few days. When Robert picks up Jessica, he takes her to breakfast and tells her he has to disappear for a while. Jessica is depressed and decides to go to Harrod’s, figuring shopping will make her feel better. Meanwhile, Liz starts running all over London looking for Jessica. She goes to the newspaper office and tells Tony Frank everything and says they have to find Jessica. Then Jessica comes in all disheveled. Some hairy creature attacked her and now she’s convinced a werewolf is out to get her.

One of the other kids at the boardinghouse, David, discovers that Lina is really Princess Eliana. David is poor, and he and Eliana have been dating. After his discovery, Eliana says he should claim the million pound reward. Liz and Tony Frank arrange a press conference. After Eliana outs herself to the reporters, Sheriff Thatcher kind of takes over and says there’s a warrant out for the arrest of Sir Robert Pembroke, Junior. Jessica is distraught and decides it’s all Liz’s fault.

This book is horrible.

Quotes:

“Don’t make light of werewolves, Jessica,” Luke said in a quiet voice. “They’re very serious business.”

Best quote of the book.

“Lord Pembroke must be some kind of werewolf fanatic,” [Elizabeth] whispered, more because of the eeriness of the room than out of a fear of being discovered. “How creepy!”

Liz talks to herself a lot in this book. In this case, I can just imagine her considering speaking in a normal tone of voice and then deciding a whisper is more appropriate. I hate Liz.

The Cover: I guess that’s Lina and David being all shocked about the newspaper. I’m not sure, but I think that’s Jessica on the tube platform running away from the “hairy creature” that attacked her.

The Moral of the Story: All the cool stuff in London is within walking distance of wherever you happen to be.

The Big Deal: Summer vacation.

Synopsis:

It’s summer again, but this time, instead of interning at the Sweet Valley News, the twins are going all the way to London to be newspaper interns. Lila throws them a party the night before they leave, and shows the movie An American Werewolf in London. Now Liz is afraid of werewolves. When they arrive at the airport, they get a newspaper and find out Princess Eliana is missing. Everyone is talking about it. The twins take a cab to HIS, Housing for International Students, and Jessica screams at the cabbie that he’s driving on the wrong side of the road. *facepalm*

At HIS, the twins meet their roommates: Lina Smith, a poor but sweet girl who works at a soup kitchen, and Portia Albert, a Lila Fowler wannabe who fancies herself an actress. When Liz and Jessica go down to tea, they’re shocked to see Rene Glize from France. He’s working at the French embassy for the summer.

The twins go to the London Journal office the next morning to find that Henry Reeves, the editor, seems to have forgotten they were coming. A doctor named Cameron Neville has been murdered and Mr. Reeves doesn’t have time for the twins. He dumps them on Tony Frank, who writes the society page. Tony can see they’re not super excited to cover aristocratic tea parties and turns them over to Lucy Friday in Crime. The twins are all excited until Lucy assigns them to Sergeant Bumpo’s beat. Bumpo seems to be kind of a joke, and the first story the twins are assigned is Lady Wimpole’s missing Yorkshire terrier. They go to the Lady’s house and get the story, then over to Essex Street to the scene of the murder. They sneak past all the police officers and hide under a window outside. They look in and see the dead body. The reporters and officers are talking about the murder and they say the man’s throat has been ripped apart. There’s a very handsome man in the room who doesn’t seem to fit in and the twins wonder who he is.

The twins go back to the office, and Liz starts writing up the dog story while Jessica is sent back out on another of Bumpo’s cases. Liz gets asked out by a shy guy named Luke who writes poetry when he should be working on newspaper stories. Jessica gets asked out by Lord Robert Pembroke, the son of a woman who insists her mink coat was stolen. Robert happens to be the son of the very handsome man the twins saw at the murder scene. Lord Pembroke the Elder owns the Journal.

The twins’ dates go smashingly, and when Liz gets back to HIS, she finds a rose on her bed. It’s from Rene. He has also left her a note asking her to dinner the next night. Liz writes back to accept. She is still dating Todd, by the way. That night, all the kids at HIS decide to sneak out to some hip club called Mondo. It’s the happening place to be for all the young famous people. How this ragamuffin crew gets in I’ll never know. When Jessica points out Princess Eliana’s older sister, Lina goes pale and says she has to leave. Liz goes with her and they start walking home. Halfway there, they find a dead dog on the street with its throat ripped out. It’s Lady Wimpole’s Yorkie. Liz notices that the moon is almost full and gets totally freaked out.

When the twins get to the Journal office the next morning, they find Lucy Friday having an argument with Mr. Reeves because her story about the murdered doctor was butchered and moved to the back of the paper. She quits and storms out, so the twins are dumped back on Tony Frank and the society page. Tony has Liz write the update on Lady Wimpole’s dog, and then Luke asks her if she can take the afternoon off to hang out with him. Tony tells her to go, so Luke takes Liz to a wax museum, where she gets freaked out by a wax dummy of a werewolf. Luke gets a little creepy and starts going on about werewolves as if they’re real. Liz doesn’t mind at all and starts thinking she’s been terribly close-minded until this point to not believe in werewolves.

Liz and Luke go to dinner and she tells him all about the dog and the murdered doctor. Luke thinks it sounds like the work of a werewolf. Luke takes Liz home and kisses her goodnight, and then Liz goes inside to find Rene waiting for her. She apologizes for forgetting their date, but Rene is really upset and walks away. Liz is all indignant and acts like Rene is overreacting.

Liz and Jessica go through the newspaper archives and find a story from the previous month about a dead nurse. They think it reads like the snipped version of Lucy’s story about the doctor’s murder. Luke and the twins go to Tony Frank and tell him everything they know about Mr. Reeves suppressing the murder stories. They all go to Lucy’s house and talk to her. Lucy thinks Lord Pembroke Senior has something to do with it all. It just so happens that Lord Pembroke Junior has invited the twins to spend the weekend at Pembroke Manor. Liz invites Luke to come along. They agree it will be an excellent way to find out what the Pembrokes are up to.

In other news, Jessica and one of the other boarders at HIS find a really sparkly and expensive dress in Lina’s closet. Lina is supposed to be poor, so they worry she’s stolen the dress. Liz is fiddling with Lina’s glasses one day. She puts them on and realizes the lenses are just glass with no prescription. Then Liz is telling Jessica she thinks Robert Pembroke sounds like an arrogant jerk (I have no idea why she thinks this), and Lina says Robert’s not so bad. (“I mean, I’ve heard he’s not so bad.”) Meanwhile, all anyone can talk about is this missing princess thing. Hmm…

Portia the snobby roommate has given everyone at HIS tickets to see her play on opening night. Liz goes upstairs to get Lina, but Lina says she can’t be seen going to a fashionable West End theater on opening night of an important play. Liz is confused and Lina has to spell it out for her. Liz finally figures out Lina is really Princess Eliana. The princess wanted to get out and see her city and give something back to the world without the paparazzi watching her. Liz promises to keep her secret.

Everyone else goes to the play, and Portia performs beautifully. Her character is exactly like herself, and Liz realizes the snobby way Portia’s been acting has just been rehearsal for the play. Portia confirms this after the show and now everyone is friends with her.

Luke and the twins go off to Pembroke Manor. Liz takes an immediate dislike to Robert because she’s a judgmental bitch. When Luke introduces himself to Lord Pembroke Senior, the old man gets weird for a second and looks like he recognizes Luke. Later, Luke and Liz go exploring the grounds together and come across some wolfsbane growing near a stream. Liz gets scared and Luke gives her a pendant, saying it will protect her from werewolves. Then they make out. Later, the constable comes to the manor to tell Lord Pembroke that four of his sheep were found with their throats ripped out. Liz and Luke are more convinced than ever that they’re looking at the work of a werewolf. Liz has a nightmare that night about being chased by a werewolf. When she wakes up around dawn, she runs to Jessica’s room and finds her facedown on the bed, dead. Yeah, right.

Quotes:

“I almost forgot about Rene,” [Elizabeth] mused out loud. “We never really got to explore our feelings for each other in France.”

Liz, you have a boyfriend. You always have a boyfriend. If you want to explore your feelings for other guys, you need to stop having a boyfriend all the time.

Either way, [Rene] overreacted. It was a simple mistake, and it’s not like he’s my boyfriend. He doesn’t have any claim on me.

Oh, shut up, Liz.

The Cover: That must be Liz in the blue coat, since she’s the one who spends the whole book being afraid of everything. I guess they’re wearing trenchcoats because that’s what you wear when you’re solving mysteries in London. That wolfman is so unscary. Liz is a wuss.

The moral of the story: Doing cocaine will get you murdered.

The Big Deal: A party at Winston’s is mentioned, but we don’t actually see it happen.

Synopsis:

• It’s summer again.
• Liz is going out with Todd (he’s out of town), but Sam Woodruff appears not to exist.
• The twins are working as interns at the Sweet Valley News. Again? Still? Not sure.
• It’s only their second week there.
• But they have the Jeep instead of the Fiat.
• But Adam Maitland is living with the Wakefields again/still.
• It’s still the same summer as the other Super Thrillers, though, because the twins are still sixteen.

As with our first trip through this time loop, Jessica is bummed about working for the summer, but a handsome news editor named Bill Anderson makes it more bearable. Seth Miller still works there, but I guess Jessica is over him. Not far away from the Western Building, where the newspaper office is located, George Fowler has a project underway. The construction of Fowler Tower is interfering with the phone lines at the newspaper office, and Jessica spends a whole morning listening in on other people’s conversations. She overhears a man calling himself Greenback make a murder threat. She tries to tell Liz, but of course Liz just thinks she’s being paranoid. She convinces Jessica she must have misunderstood, and Jessica decides to focus on snatching up Mr. Gorgeous, the hunk who works across the street. From Jessica’s window, she can see Mr. Gorgeous at his desk.

Jessica listens in on another phone call and hears Greenback saying something diabolical. She gets all scared and skips out of work to meet Lila at the beach. Once she’s out in the sunshine, she decides it’s much too nice of a day for anyone in Sweet Valley to be planning a murder. She and Lila hang out at the beach for a few minutes, and then someone screams. A dead body is floating in the water. Ew.

The next day, Jessica goes to the police station and tells a Detective Jason about the phone calls. He writes everything down and asks her to keep listening to her phone. He wants to know about any more phone calls, but he tells Jessica not to tell anyone, even Liz, that she’s helping the police. He doesn’t want a leak. Jessica tells her family, but nobody else. That weekend, Steve answers a phone call for Jessica, but when he hands her the phone, the other person doesn’t say anything, just breathes. Jessica gets freaked out. She gets freaked out again at work on Monday when she thinks a guy in a baseball cap and sunglasses is following her. She goes to the Western Building coffee shop, but runs out when the guy sits at the table next to her. In the lobby, she runs right into Mr. Gorgeous, who barely glances at her before hurrying away.

Her ego a bit deflated, Jessica returns to her desk. Later that afternoon, she looks out the window to see Mr. Gorgeous looking at her. He smiles when he recognizes her, so Jessica writes her name and number on a piece of paper and holds it up to the window. Mr. Gorgeous, whose real name is Ben Donovan, calls her a second later and they agree to meet after work. They go out for coffee, and Jessica is disappointed to discover Ben likes books and classical music.

The police identify the dead girl as Tracy Fox, a runaway from San Diego. Liz calls the family and finds out Tracy ran away after Mrs. Fox found a packet of cocaine in Tracy’s dresser and the two of them had a fight. Seth tells them the police found a packet of cocaine on Tracy’s body, and this information coincides with one of the phone calls Jessica overheard in which Greenback mentioned getting all the packets from “her.” Liz and Jessica realize Greenback must be involved in a drug ring, and they spend half a page talking about Regina and how destructive drugs are. Later that night, Liz sees a picture of Tracy and is sure she’s seen her somewhere before.

When Jessica gets to work the next day, Bill Anderson tells her the receptionist got a new job and quit, and Bill thinks Jessica would be perfect for the job. He’s replaced her phone with the reception switchboard, so she can’t listen in on phone calls anymore, but she’s not that concerned since Greenback has been quiet since Tracy was killed. Later in the day, however, she decides to try dialing her own extension to see if she can eavesdrop. It works, and she uses a Dictaphone to record a couple calls from Greenback. The last call scares her, because Greenback tells his associate that the “nosy girl” isn’t spying today and he’ll handle her “when the time comes.” He says there’s an undercover cop at the newspaper office, and he also mentions a “buddy at the police station,” so when Detective Jason makes his daily phone call to find out the haps, Jessica doesn’t feel comfortable telling him. She lies and says she’s working on the receptionist’s phone now and can’t eavesdrop anymore.

That night, Liz answers the phone. The person on the other end says, “If I had my way, you’d be shark bait by now, Jessica Wakefield.” Liz and Jessica are both terrified when the phone rings again. This time it’s Detective Jason, and Jessica is suspicious because she already told him she can’t eavesdrop anymore and it seems like he’s keeping tabs on her. She’s sure he’s the bad cop. The next day at work, Jessica is thinking about Seth Miller because he seems to have a lot of money lately. He just moved into a swanky condo and bought a new car. Jessica goes to his office and asks him where he got so much money. Seth is amused but secretive. Just as Jessica is about to leave, Seth’s “telex machine” (what is that?) starts printing out a news report. It makes the same noise she heard in the background of Greenback’s last phone call, so now Jessica is convinced Seth is Greenback. Ugh.

Liz gets a call from a man named Old Riley who lives in Big Mesa and has some information about Tracy. She drives out there to talk to him, and the man says he saw Tracy on the beach a few times. He drew a picture of her, which he gives to Liz. He says that one day a man met her there and they talked for a minute. Liz asks if he can describe the man, and Old Riley draws a picture of him. Liz thinks the man in the picture looks familiar. She takes the sketches back to the office, and Jessica says the man looks like Seth, and goes on to tell Liz her newest theory. Liz scoffs at her and they walk out to the building’s lobby. Suddenly, Liz remembers that this is where she saw Tracy about a week or so ago. Jessica says they can find out what she was doing there if they check the visitors’ log. They discover Tracy was in the building to visit Seth.

Late that night, the twins go to the Western Building to snoop in Seth’s office. They don’t find anything, but hear footsteps as they’re leaving. They freeze in terror, then breathe huge sighs of relief when it’s just Bill Anderson. He says he’s just picking up some things he forgot. Then he hands Jessica a little cassette, saying he picked it up by accident thinking it was his. Jessica realizes it’s the tape on which she recorded Greenback’s phone conversation. She’s greatly relieved it was Bill who found it instead of Seth. The twins are followed on their way home, but Liz shakes the guy off their trail.

Liz convinces Jessica to give her at least until Monday morning to clear Seth. When Monday rolls around, Jessica decides to tell Bill. Moron. Bill listens to Jessica’s accusations and her “evidence,” and tells her she’s absolutely right and Seth must be Greenback. He asks her to meet him that night around nine and they’ll go to the police station together. Jessica is sure Bill is the undercover cop Greenback mentioned. How is she so dumb?

Liz goes to Seth and tells him Jessica’s suspicions and about Tracy coming to see him. Seth says he never saw Tracy, but he does remember getting a phone call from a girl who had a story to tell him, but who never showed up. He tells Liz he isn’t Greenback, but he thinks he knows who is. He won’t say who he suspects, but asks Liz to meet him that night, as he’s supposed to have some information faxed to him at home. Liz stops at the grocery store on her way home and runs into Rose, the former receptionist. Liz asks her about her new job and Rose looks puzzled and says she didn’t quit, Bill fired her. Liz, who is just as dumb as her sister, wonders why Bill would lie.

Later that night, Jessica goes back to the office to meet Bill. When she gets there, of course, Bill is all weird and not himself. Jessica sees a vial of white powder with a tiny spoon in it and realizes it must be cocaine. It’s clear she’s made a big mistake, so she starts to run out of the office and Bill chases her. He catches her and takes her up to the roof.

Meanwhile, Liz and Seth are at the Box Tree Café, where Seth is showing Liz the faxes he received. All his evidence points to Bill being the murderer. Liz tells him Jessica is with Bill right now, so they rush out of the café and over to the newspaper office just as Ben Donovan, aka Mr. Gorgeous, rushes out of the building across the street. He sees Liz and says he’s glad she’s all right and was worried Bill Anderson had gotten her. Liz tells him he’s got the wrong twin, and Jessica is inside with Bill. Ben flashes a badge and calls someone on a radio, then they all run inside.

On the roof, Bill shoves a packet of cocaine in Jessica’s pocket and is about to push her over the edge when our heroes show up. Ben tackles Bill, and after a struggle, Bill falls over the side. There’s some talk about how drugs are bad, and we find out for sure that Ben was the undercover cop, Detective Jason was the bad cop and Bill was Greenback. We find out Seth got his money because he finally got a contract with a publishing company for five more mystery novels. We hear a little more about how destructive cocaine is. The next day, Rose the receptionist gets her job back and Jessica is treated like a hero.

Quotes:

“A packet of cocaine was found in the pocket of the jacket she was wearing when her body was found. They’re sure the killing was drug-related.”

Jessica gasped. “Drug-related!”

It’s already a murder, Jessica. How is it worse that it’s drug related?

“It’s horrible!” Elizabeth cried. “That poor, stupid girl. Oh, Jess, I hate thinking about it. It reminds me of what happened to Regina Morrow. Drugs are so destructive. Why would anyone get involved with them?”

I guess not everyone is as smart and wonderful as you, Liz.

The Cover: Jessica looks all weirdly proportioned, like a Skipper doll. That is one of the ugliest skirts I’ve ever seen.

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: The boy you reject in high school could grow up to become a murderer and then he’ll return to your hometown and try to kill teenagers who look like you, so it’s best to go out with everyone who asks you on a date.

Synopsis:

It’s still summer and the twins are still working at the Sweet Valley News. Lately, Lila and Jessica have become obsessed with a Ouija board Lila brought home from London. Liz makes fun of them and Lila gets all pissed off and wants to get back at her. Everyone’s all excited about some Endless Summer concert (I can’t tell if Endless Summer is a band or a theme or what), and Lila knows the concert is going to be postponed a week. She and Jessica make Liz use the Ouija board with them and move the planchette to say the concert will be delayed. Liz thinks that’s ridiculous because she and Seth are doing a story about it for the paper and she thinks she’d know if there was going to be a delay. A few minutes later, Seth calls to tell her it’s being postponed and Liz is shocked. The whole next chapter is Liz being puzzled and disturbed about the Ouija board. The next part of Lila’s plan is to make the Ouija board tell Liz that Bruce Patman is dying so Liz will start being nice to him. I’m not really sure what Jessica gets out of this, but Lila’s secret motivation is Jeffrey. She wants Liz to hook up with Bruce so that Jeffrey will be free for her. I think Lila needs to just get over Jeffrey.

At work the next day, Liz can think of nothing else but the weird Ouija board stuff. Then a call comes in about a man named Donald Redman who has escaped from a nearby psychiatric hospital. Liz and Seth Miller are assigned to find out about Redman’s background, and Liz discovers he was a student at Sweet Valley High. He was a disturbed kid who wound up getting expelled after he kidnapped a girl he had a crush on. He’d asked the girl out numerous times but she kept turning him down. After a while, his crush on her became a joke and a lot of his classmates made fun of him. Liz goes to her baby-sitting job that night and tells the mother, Elsa Bartel, about the escaped psycho. Elsa gets all freaked out and decides to stay home. Who wants to bet that Elsa is the girl Redman kidnapped back in the day?

When Liz gets home, Lila and Jessica put their plan in motion. Everything goes swimmingly and after just a few minutes with the Ouija board, Liz is practically in tears about Bruce. Jessica suggests they all go to the Beach Disco and Liz agrees even though she feels slightly guilty for going without Jeffrey. When they get there, Liz immediately finds Bruce and is totally nice to him while he leers at her inappropriately. Liz feels sorry for him and thinks his arrogance is all a front. They hang out together the next day at the beach and Jessica sees Bruce put his arm around Liz. Jessica wants to tell Liz it’s all a joke, but Lila tells her that would mean she’d have to tell Liz she read her journal and letters from Jeffrey to come up with things for the Ouija board to predict. Jessica doesn’t want to do that, so she continues to go along with Lila’s plan. She does tell Bruce that Liz is only being nice to him because she thinks he’s dying, but he doesn’t seem to care.

On Monday at work, Jessica skips out to go see a movie with Lila. While she’s gone, Liz answers a phone call. It’s Redman and he says there’s a bomb at the Valley Cinema. Liz and Seth call the police and then go to the theater, which has been evacuated. Jessica and Lila are standing around outside with Bruce and Neil Freemount when Liz tells them about the phone call. Everyone is mostly just mad that their movie was cut short. That night, Liz is baby-sitting at Elsa Bartel’s house again and she keeps getting hang-up phone calls. Then a man comes to the door and says he’s an old friend of Elsa’s. He asks Liz what her name is and she gets freaked out and just says she’ll tell Elsa he was there before closing the door on him. Then Bruce calls and wants to come over. Liz tells him he can’t, but he does anyway. He tells her how depressed he is and how hard it is to be terminally ill. Liz’s heart does a lot of lurching and swelling as she tries to control all her idiotic emotions. It’s clear to her that Bruce wants to kiss her, but she keeps him at a distance and finally tells him he should go home.

A couple days later, Liz gets another phantom phone call at home. Jessica knows it’s Lila and she’s sick to death of the whole thing, but she can’t say anything. Then Bruce comes over and acts all obnoxious. The doorbell rings and when Jessica answers it, she’s relieved to see Jeffrey, who has come home early from camp to surprise Liz. Jessica thinks that if he’s home, this crap with Bruce can stop. Jeffrey is not happy to find Liz and Bruce together in the kitchen, and even less happy when Bruce says he and Liz are going to a pre-school year rally at the high school football stadium. Bruce says Jeffrey can follow him and Liz to the rally, but Liz says she’ll ride with Jeffrey. Bruce leaves and Jeffrey is all, “What the hell?” Liz says she can’t tell him why she’s hanging out with Bruce but promises there’s nothing going on between them. This shit with Bruce is so not Super Thrilling.

Bruce sits with them at the rally and he and Jeffrey get all competitive and annoying. They start arguing over who’s going to get Liz a root beer, and she tells them she’ll just go get it herself. She’s walking through the school corridors when she sees Principal Chrome Dome come out of his office and go running off to the football field. She starts following him and then someone runs past her going back into the school. She recognizes him as the man who came to Elsa’s house the other night. On the field, Chrome Dome announces that the stadium needs to be evacuated. Everyone starts screaming about bombs and the whole mob starts trying to get out of the stadium. The bomb is another fake.

The next day, Liz finally realizes that Elsa’s “friend from college” looks exactly like Redman. She’s about to call the police, but then decides to call Elsa instead to make sure. Elsa tells her there’s nothing to worry about and that the guy really is just an old friend. When she hangs up with Liz, she’s all upset about lying to her. Turns out Redman is her brother (okay, so I lost that bet). He’s tracked her down for some reason, and is now confusing Liz with Melanie, the girl he kidnapped in high school. Elsa just doesn’t know what to do. Uh, how about you call the police?

Liz is getting ready for a date with Jeffrey when Bruce calls and tells her he’s all depressed because he just lost a tennis match and doesn’t know how long he can keep going. He asks Liz to meet him at the tennis courts at school and she runs out of the house, telling Jessica and Lila not to tell Jeffrey where she’s going but she’ll be back as soon as she can. After Liz is gone, Lila pretends she left something in her car and goes outside to wait for Jeffrey. When he shows up, she tells him that Liz is meeting Bruce. Jeffrey drives off toward the tennis courts.

Donald Redman is building a bomb in the utility closet at the Sweet Valley High stadium, which is conveniently located right next to the tennis courts. As he’s working, he hears a boy and girl talking. He goes to investigate and recognizes Liz, but he still thinks she’s Melanie. Meanwhile, Jessica and Lila are playing around with the Ouija board. It tells them Liz is in danger at the stadium. Lila and Jessica accuse each other of moving the planchette, but finally figure out it was probably Jessica’s subconscious because she and Liz have that freaky twin ESP. They think Redman must be at the stadium, but don’t call the police because they’d sound crazy.

Jessica and Lila decide to go to the stadium – and what? Use their charm and beauty to stop the bomb from going off? They’re getting into Lila’s car when Elsa Bartel comes running up to them. She tells them Redman is her brother and that Liz is in danger. She’s come over to warn Liz. Jessica takes her inside so she can call the police, and the three of them go to meet the cops at the stadium.

At the stadium, Liz and Bruce are in a deep and meaningful embrace when Jeffrey shows up and demands to know what the hell is going on. Liz – get this – is furious at Jeffrey because he “shattered a special, deeply personal moment between her and Bruce.” She can’t believe he would think anything is going on. After all, she asked him to trust her. What a bitch. She tells Jeffrey the whole thing is perfectly innocent, but Jeffrey says he ran into Bruce at the mall earlier and Bruce was bragging that he had a date with Liz that night. Liz realizes she’s been duped and runs away from both of them. She wants to be alone, so she goes to the utility closet to hang out for a while. Redman closes the door behind her. She screams and then hears Jeffrey and Bruce coming to find her. Redman twists her arm to make her scream again, and the boys enter the room. He has them all trapped. His bomb is set to go off, the remote control in his hand.

Suddenly, the police and Elsa are yelling for Redman to give himself up. He says he won’t because he has to get back at “Melanie” for being so mean to him. Then Jeffrey tackles him and the remote control goes flying and ends up underneath a cabinet. Bruce picks up the bomb and runs away with it. Redman says he already pushed the button and then goes running after Bruce. Jeffrey moves the cabinet and Liz reaches under it to get the remote. The timer is counting down and Jeffrey tells her to smash the thing and rip out the wires. She does and the timer stops. Then they hear an explosion from outside. Jeffrey and Liz go out into the hallway and see Bruce coming toward them. Damn, he’s still alive. The cops come in and Bruce tells them Redman took the bomb from him and ran. He died in the explosion. Outside, Jessica hugs Liz, apologizes for tricking her and promises she’ll never use a Ouija board again.

I want to give the twins this lunchbox:

Quotes:

She had once sabotaged everyone’s slam books, saying that Jeffrey was in love with Enid and that Elizabeth was in love with Roger Barrett Patman, Bruce’s cousin, who had been legally adopted by the Patmans.

Uh, no. The slam books said Jeffrey was in love with Olivia and that Liz was in love with A. J. I guess marginal characters like Olivia and A. J. don’t exist in a Super Thriller.

She felt as though she had to speak to him, to let him know he had her support in his time of crisis.

Oh, shut up, Liz.

The Cover: They sure to look goofy on this one. Liz seems unsure of how a phone works and Jessica is practicing her pinup girl face.

The moral of the story: Summer is a dangerous time to be a Wakefield.

Synopsis:

The endless summer is dragging on and the twins are still working as interns at The Sweet Valley News. Mayoral elections are coming up and Jessica thinks Kincaid should win because he’s handsome. He’s doing well in the polls, but nobody really knows much about him. What they do know seems shady. As usual, Liz and Seth Miller are on the same side, and the whole newspaper is backing Kincaid’s opponent, Miles Robinson.

The newspaper is having their company picnic at a park in Ronoma County, about forty miles outside Sweet Valley. Liz decides to invite Nicholas Morrow to the picnic to cheer him up since he’s been so depressed about Regina lately. He’s not having any fun so he decides to explore the woods around the park. Liz goes with him and they come upon a big old house with a sign out front that proclaiming it “Bayview House.” The house is all beaten up and spooky, but they meet a girl there named Barbara. She’s Liz’s age and, of course, beautiful. She lives in Switzerland (what is Francine’s obsession with Switzerland?) and is living in the big house for the summer with her uncle and an ancient housekeeper. Nicholas is enchanted by Barbara and tells her all about himself and Sweet Valley. Barbara hears her uncle calling from the house and gets up and runs off, explaining that he gets terribly angry if she doesn’t come as soon as she’s called. Nicholas is distraught that he didn’t get her last name or her phone number or anything.

Nicholas drives back out to Bayview House the next day. The creepy uncle comes to the door and is all mean and tells Nicholas to leave and not come back. So he drives away with his Jeep’s top down and hears Barbara’s dog barking. Then he can hear Barbara singing. She’s delighted to see him and seems to think there is nothing odd about his claims that he’ll just die if he can’t ever see her again. She says they can meet, but her uncle can never find out.

At work on Monday, Jessica and Liz get their big special assignments. Liz will be working with Seth on the election story, while Jessica will be working with Dan Weeks on a story about an artist named Paul Lazarow who headed an artists’ colony in Ronoma County in the forties and now has a posthumous exhibit going on at the Sweet Valley Art Museum. After work, the twins stop at the Morrows’ house to see how Nicholas is doing. He says he’s about to go see Barbara and wants them to go with him. When they get to Bayview House, there’s a Jaguar parked in the driveway that wasn’t there last time. Barbara meets Nicholas and the twins in the woods and tells them it’s a bad time because Uncle John has a visitor. Apparently, John is always in a bad mood when “the visitor” comes. Barbara’s dog starts growling and Nicholas and the twins hide just before Uncle John finds Barbara, twists her arm and kicks her dog. He makes sure she knows she’s not allowed to see anyone as long as she’s living there, then drags her back to the house.

The next day at work, the twins are talking about their assignments. Jessica thinks it’s strange that neither of them has ever heard of this Paul Lazarow guy and his artist colony before and remarks on what a coincidence it is that all this stuff about Ronoma is coming up lately. Right after that, Seth shows Liz the yearbook from mayoral candidate Kincaid’s high school. Turns out Kincaid was studying art. Liz looks at the picture of Kincaid and thinks he looks like someone she’s seen recently, but who? Liz, you make a terrible investigative reporter.

Nicholas goes back to Bayview House to see Barbara. She tells him she’s been having a horrible nightmare every night about a man chasing her off the cliffs near the house. There’s a birthday cake in the dream too. She says her birthday is next Friday, which also happens to be her grandmother’s birthday. Coincidentally, her grandmother’s name was also Barbara, she looked just like Barbara, she had a dog just like Barbara’s and she died from falling off the cliffs on her birthday. Very strange. Barbara tells Nicholas that he and the twins are in danger because Uncle John is a crazy person. When Nicholas leaves that night, he sees the silver Jaguar again. Oh, and Barbara’s great-grandfather was an artist.

Nicholas has lunch with the twins the next day and when he gets back to his car there’s a note on his windshield telling him to stay away from Barbara. Liz tells him to go to the police, but he says Barbara told him if anyone goes to the police, Uncle John will hurt Josine, the housekeeper. Okay. So Liz tells him to stay away from Barbara, but he looooves her. He decides not to tell Barbara about the note. He tells Barbara to sneak out of the house so he can take her to dinner and they can forget all about Bayview House for one night. She agrees, even though Josine will be in terrible danger if Barbara gets caught. When they get to the restaurant, Nicholas sees the silver Jaguar parked outside. Because he promised not to talk about any no-fun stuff, and because he’s a fucking idiot, he doesn’t say anything to Barbara and they go inside and get seated. There’s a man at a nearby table gaping at them and Nicholas thinks it’s lucky that Barbara has her back to him because he wants her to have a good time tonight. After he takes Barbara home, he sees the Jaguar parked on the side of the road, empty.

Nicholas goes to visit the twins the next day and sees Russell Kincaid’s picture on Liz’s newspaper. He’s never seen him before (he’s been too depressed about Regina to look at a newspaper in ages), and he recognizes him as the man from the restaurant, who must be the owner of the Jaguar. He must see Barbara, so he goes out there, even though she told him never to come during the day. When he gets there, she’s wearing jeans instead of the old-fashioned dresses she usually wears and she’s been crying. Apparently, her dog is missing and she’s sure Uncle John has done something with him as a warning. She and Nicholas search for him, but all they find is his collar. Barbara tells him not to come back for a few days because it’s too dangerous. She walks him back to his Jeep and they find the tires slashed and the windshield busted.

Nicholas accompanies the twins to the art museum to check out Paul Lazarow’s paintings. They’re all shocked to see a painting entitled “Artist’s Daughter” that could easily be a painting of Barbara, right down to the blue dress she’s wearing. They go to the newspaper office to look through the archives and find that Russell Kincaid was part of Paul Lazarow’s artists’ colony. Wow, I never would have guessed that all these things are connected somehow. The three of them go to Bayview House and find Barbara and Josine talking in the woods. Barbara says she knows Uncle John is trying to confuse Josine by making her wear her grandmother’s clothes. Then Josine tells her that her grandmother was murdered.

The next night, Liz goes through the archives again and finds an article about Russell Kincaid being questioned in Barbara’s grandmother’s death. She studies the picture and realizes why Kincaid looks so familiar. He looks just like Uncle John! They must be brothers! Just then the phone rings and a threatening voice tells Liz she’s being watched and she needs to stay away from Barbara. The next day, the twins find some more old newspapers. Apparently, Kincaid and some guy named Jack were competing for the first Barbara’s affection.

Nicholas and the twins are convinced that John is going to kill Barbara on her birthday, so they go to Bayview House with the intent to kidnap her. The plan is for Jessica to stay in the car and keep it running while Liz knocks on the door and distracts whoever answers. Nicholas will throw pebbles at Barbara’s window to get her to come out. But Liz falls and sprains her ankle and Jessica comes after her. Liz tells her she’ll have to be the one to go to the door. Jessica runs off and then John comes out of the woods and accosts Liz. She manages to get him to tell her that yes, he is Russell Kincaid’s brother, and he doesn’t want Kincaid to be mayor. He brought Barbara to California to make Kincaid think he’s seeing a ghost. Whatever, this is very stupid. John knocks Liz out.

Jessica and Nicholas see Russell Kincaid pulling Barbara toward the cliff and then pull her over. Barbara is holding onto a ledge, but Kincaid is nowhere to be seen. Nicholas pulls Barbara up. They all go to look for Liz, but all they find is her lavaliere. Aw, just like the dog. They go inside to see if Josine knows anything. She’s tied to a chair and we get some revelations that I don’t really care about by way of her demented ramblings. Then she says John came in carrying Liz, got the key to the studio and went back outside. They race to the studio, which is a smaller building out back, and find Liz and the dog inside. It looks like John took off when he thought Kincaid and Barbara were both dead. Liz is pretty messed up so Nicholas calls an ambulance. Nicholas and Barbara go to the police station while Liz and Jessica go to the hospital. As they’re leaving, Nicholas notices Kincaid’s Jaguar is gone.

Christ, I still have fifty pages left to get through.

Later that night, Jessica meets Nicholas and Barbara at the police station and listens to Barbara tell the cops what happened. Then some other cops bring John in after catching him trying to go to Mexico. He confesses everything. Here’s the rundown: Back in the day, John and his brother Russell were part of Lazarow’s artists’ colony. Russell and a guy named Jack both loved the first Barbara, but she loved Jack. She and Jack married in secret because her father was overprotective and she later had a baby, our Barbara’s mother. Russell was insane with jealousy and pushed Barbara over the cliff but was never convicted. He and John started some kind of business together and everything was fine until Russell decided to run for mayor of Sweet Valley. John wouldn’t support him so Russell ended their partnership and took John for millions of dollars. John wanted to get back at him and make him quit the race by making him think he was insane. So he lied to our Barbara’s parents and said he was a cousin of Barbara’s grandmother and wanted her to come visit for the summer. He made Barbara dress in old clothes and walk along the cliffs at dusk and made sure Russell saw her and thought it was the first Barbara’s ghost.

Dude.

Barbara has a talk with Josine, who tells her everything else. After the first Barbara died, Jack freaked out and kind of went crazy. He couldn’t take care of the baby, so a friend of Barbara’s adopted her and that’s why our Barbara’s mother didn’t know anything about her family. It turns out Jack is still alive and living in a rest home. Barbara goes to see him and he ends up going back to Switzerland with her.

The end.

Quotes:

“You can’t tell me not to come back,” Nicholas cried. “I won’t be able to stand it!”

This is just a taste of Nicholas’ proclamations of love and desire. This particular quote is from his second meeting with Barbara, after he’s known her a grand total of ten minutes.

“You guys, this is weird! I think Barbara is a ghost!”

Sometimes Jessica makes me laugh a lot. I love the way she says this in total earnest.

The Cover: That would be such an awesome picture if it weren’t for those blond nuisances in the foreground.

The moral of the story: People are inherently good. Except for the bad guys who want to kill you. Everyone else, though, is good.

Synopsis:

This book takes place later in the same summer as Double Jeopardy and the twins are still interns at the newspaper. Everyone is all up in arms about the DeLucca trial. Frank DeLucca is on trial in New York for murder and all the witnesses who were going to testify against him have suddenly clammed up. It’s a big national deal. At the Sweet Valley News office, reporter Dan Weeks and some new bitch intern named Darcy think nobody will come forward to testify and DeLucca will get off, but Seth Miller and Liz believe in the goodness of mankind and think if someone knows something, they’ll make sure DeLucca goes to jail. Jessica, who just helped solve a murder a few weeks ago, has “had it with law and crime and all that stuff,” so she doesn’t care one way or the other.

New bitch intern Darcy and her father just moved to Sweet Valley from Ohio. She’s really only a bitch to Liz, whom she immediately dislikes for some reason. Liz can’t figure out what she did, but she thinks something must be wrong with the girl, because that’s the only reason anyone would not like her. Every day, Darcy pulls some crap at work that makes Liz look bad. She loves Jessica though and they become friends.

The Wakefields see on the news that a doctor named William Ryan has come forward and will be testifying in the DeLucca trial. Dr. Ryan’s evidence convinces the jury to put DeLuuca away, probably for life, and Liz is suddenly worried about him. She’s sure DeLucca’s henchmen will kill him. Seth tells her not to worry, that he’ll probably go into the witness protection program and start a new life somewhere. Hmm, I wonder where he’ll end up.

A week later, Liz is getting coffee when she meets a nice guy named Eric. He and his father just moved to Sweet Valley from Ohio (just like Darcy!) and he’s working at the office building’s coffee shop for the summer. He and Liz hit it off right away. Then Darcy meets him and comes back to the office to tell the twins all about him. Liz is upset that Eric told Darcy he’s a poet and she wonders if he likes her, but then she brushes that thought aside because no way would a sensitive guy like Eric like someone like Darcy. That night, Liz stays at work late and on her way to the bus stop, Eric shows up and offers her a ride. They decide to get together the next day for dinner and a tour of Sweet Valley. Liz does not mention that she has a boyfriend, and when she talks to Jeffrey later, she does not mention Eric. She also doesn’t tell Jessica that she and Eric are friends.

There is something mysterious about Eric. You can tell by the way his face darkens whenever Liz asks him about his father or Ohio. After their tour of Sweet Valley, they stop at Secca Lake where Liz read’s Eric’s poems and he reads one of her short stories. Blah, blah, they’re both very talented. Liz thinks Eric’s poems are sad and he thinks her story is too optimistic. Meanwhile, Darcy is hanging out with Jessica. She decides to call a friend of hers from back home who lives in Cleveland, where Eric is from. The friend doesn’t know him, but she tells Darcy that two weeks ago, a teenage girl was murdered just a couple towns over.

Liz and Eric go see a movie at the mall and Liz thinks someone is following them. She mentions it to Eric without really believing it, but when Eric gets really freaked out, Liz wonders what his deal is. Then he asks her if anyone knows they’re hanging out. She says no and he says it should stay that way because it will make their friendship even more special if it’s a secret. After the movie, they go for a walk on the beach and Liz tries to sort out her feelings about Jeffrey and Eric. It’s obvious Eric wants to make out with her, but she manages to fend him off.

Darcy goes to the coffee shop one day and finds Eric sitting at a table writing in a notebook. He gets up to deal with a customer and Darcy starts looking through his notebook. He freaks out and tells her it’s poetry and he doesn’t like other people reading it. Darcy asks if it’s “love poetry” and Eric says it sort of is. Then Darcy says, “It’s for me, isn’t it?” Jeez, ego much? Eric stutters and then just tells her yes, it’s about her. Darcy waits for him to set the notebook down again, then tears out one of the poems and takes it upstairs, where she shows it to the twins. Liz can’t believe Eric has written a poem for Darcy. She feels like crap.

The twins’ dad has been helping Eric’s dad, Rich, with a business contract and has become friends with the guy. He mentions at dinner one night that Rich told him Eric talks about Liz all the time. Jessica thinks that’s weird, since she didn’t know they’d been hanging out or anything. Ned says he’s invited Eric and Rich over for a barbecue that weekend.

Darcy has talked to her friend Sue in Cleveland again. Sue has told her some things that lead Darcy to believe Eric is the one who murdered that chick. If he is, then the police are probably, you know, looking for him, but Darcy is horrified when Jessica suggests they call the police. She thinks they just need to keep an eye on him and watch out for any suspicious behavior.

Liz has been avoiding Eric, but when Seth asks her to get her some coffee, she has to go see him. She tells Eric she’s upset about him writing Darcy a poem and he tells her it was really for Liz and he just said it was for Darcy so she’d go away. Liz is all relieved until Eric says he doesn’t know what he’d do if Liz had someone else in her life. That reminds Liz she has a boyfriend. Ugh.

The Wakefields’ neighbors, the Beckwiths, come to the barbecue, and Mr. Beckwith keeps saying Eric’s dad looks familiar. Rich keeps telling him they don’t know each other, but Mr. Beckwith won’t shut the fuck up and I kind of want to punch him in the face. His constant questioning makes Eric and Rich nervous and this tells Jessica she and Darcy are right in thinking Eric is the murderer from Cleveland. She goes to Darcy’s the next day to tell her everything and Darcy tells her to pretend to be Liz and get Eric’s notebook, which she thinks he uses as a diary.

Jessica goes to Eric’s house and Eric, thinking she’s Liz, asks if she wants to get together that night and meet at “the same place.” He gives her the notebook and Jessica leaves. Now she’s worried about Liz and is sure she’ll be Eric’s next victim. On her way back to Darcy’s, Jessica is followed by a black Mercedes. About a block from Darcy’s house, a man jumps out of the Mercedes, tells Jessica to stay away from Eric and snatches the notebook. Jessica tells Darcy she wants to go to the police, but Darcy says they don’t have enough evidence yet. Dumbass.

Jessica goes home to warn Liz not to see Eric anymore, but Alice says Liz is spending the weekend at Enid’s. Jessica slips a note under Enid’s door, and then she and Darcy spend all Saturday looking for her, but can’t find her anywhere. They finally end up at the Dairi Burger with some friends from school. Eric shows up and sits with them just in time to hear Aaron and Winston mention Jeffrey. When Eric finds out Jeffrey is Liz’s boyfriend, he gets pissed and storms out of the restaurant.

That night, Liz is supposed to meet Eric at the Beach Disco, but he doesn’t show up. As Liz is driving back to Enid’s, she notices a blue sedan following her. It pulls up next to her and the driver flashes an FBI identification card and starts asking her questions about Eric. Confused, Liz goes to Enid’s. Enid tells her there was a note from Jessica, but the cat must have gotten to it because it’s all mangled and unreadable. Liz decides it can wait and she keeps trying to get Eric on the phone.

Darcy gets her friend Sue to send her a copy of the composite sketch of the Cleveland murderer. It looks a lot like Eric. Thankfully, Liz is out of the office that day and far away from Eric. Jessica and Darcy have still not gone to the police. When Liz gets back to the office building, she goes straight to the coffee shop. She tells Eric they need to talk, so he grabs her by the arm and forces her outside. Jessica and Darcy are shouting and coming toward them, so Eric starts running. He and Liz end up in an alley and he puts his hand on her mouth.

This next bit is so convoluted. Darcy and Jessica go back to the office to call the police, but as soon as they get there, they see Mr. Beckwith shouting about a child who’s choking in the coffee shop. What the hell? Where did Mr. Beckwith come from? And then Eric’s dad is there too and people are screaming about the choking kid. Then Eric and Liz come in and Liz can’t figure out why Jessica is surprised she’s okay. No explanation given for why Eric was so mean and aggressive just a few minutes ago. Eric’s dad does an emergency tracheotomy on the kid and then Mr. Beckwith is shouting that he recognizes him because Eric’s dad is really Dr. Ryan, the guy who testified against Frank DeLucca. Eric and his dad leave the building and Liz follows them.

At the Ryans’ house, Liz tries to convince Dr. Ryan that they can stay in Sweet Valley because it’s the most magical place on earth and nobody would hurt them there. He tells her she’s wrong and starts packing. Then a couple of guys come in with guns. They order Liz and Eric (whose real name is Michael) upstairs so they can “talk” to Dr. Ryan. Upstairs, Liz notices they have the Good Neighbors alarm system. They press the button, which makes the alarm go off in six neighbors’ houses. One of the neighbors calls and asks Dr. Ryan for the password. He’s playing it cool for the bad guys and pretends it’s a wrong number so the neighbors will know he’s in trouble. A minute later, all the neighbors burst in and tackle the bad guys just as the cops show up. Holy crap, this is so bad. Dr. Ryan and Michael tell Liz how right she was to keep believing in people, but they need to leave Sweet Valley anyway. Michael gives Liz his notebook of poems. I’m going to throw up.

So, to wrap up, Liz is in love with both Michael/Eric and Jeffrey, Jessica doesn’t like Darcy anymore because she’s not at all apologetic for leading her astray about Eric being a murderer and the guy who really murdered the chick in Ohio is caught. We learn we should always listen to Liz when she tells us to believe in people.

I hate Super Thrillers.

Quotes:

“He seems so jumpy whenever you ask him anything personal.”

“That’s true,” Jessica conceded. “I thought that was the Midwestern style, I guess.”

Midwesterners are jumpy?

“You’re sure I don’t look a little–you know–voluptuous?” Darcy worried.

She did have a pretty curvy figure, but Jessica honestly had to admit she thought the redhead looked sensational.

I thought curves and voluptuousness were good things? Well, now I’m confused.

The Cover: The twins actually don’t look half bad for once, though Liz’s shirt is pretty hideous.

The moral of the story: If you want a mystery writer to go out with you, you have to actually solve a murder mystery.

Synopsis:

Well, it’s summer again in Sweet Valley. What is that, the fourth one this year? The twins have internships lined up at The Sweet Valley News. Jessica isn’t happy about it at first, but then she meets Seth Miller, a superfabulous twenty-two-year-old reporter. She’s totally in love with him, but she’s worried Liz might develop a thing for him too, what with Jeffrey spending the summer out of town as a camp counselor and all. Steve solves her problem when he invites a college buddy, Adam Maitland, to spend the summer at the Wakefields’ house. Jessica figures she can get Liz interested in Adam, leaving Seth free for her. Unfortunately, Adam has a girlfriend and seems to be really wrapped up in her. He tells the Wakefields that Laurie is the granddaughter of some oil tycoon who doesn’t want her to have anything to do with Adam. He wants her to marry the son of some other rich guy, but Laurie doesn’t like him because he’s unbalanced. Jessica tells Liz that Adam seems really down and suggests she spend time with him. Oblivious somehow to Jessica’s real intentions, Liz agrees and vows to spend as much time as she can with Adam to make him feel at home.

Seth Miller writes mystery novels in his spare time, so to get him interested in her, Jessica thinks she should come up with some real life mysteries to tell him about. So she starts spying on the neighbors. At work on Monday, Seth is working on a story about a fire at the Box Tree Café. Jessica tells him she has a source who told her it was arson. Seth whisks her off to the restaurant to ask some questions. The owner laughs at them, saying he saw the whole thing. It was just some rags that were too close to the stove and caught on fire. Seth is pissed, but Jessica uses her wiles to placate him.

Jessica decides the best way to get Liz interested in Adam is to forge a love letter from him. Liz finds a typewritten letter under her pillow. She’s shocked that Adam is in love with her. She hides the letter in her bookcase and decides to forget all about it and not even confront Adam.

The next day, Jessica tells Seth she knows who stole some money from the bank. She invents a whole story about it and Seth writes an article and gives it to the boss, Mr. Robb, who takes it back to his office to check it out. Later, he calls Seth and Jessica into his office and threatens to fire them both for the phony story. Jessica “selflessly” takes the blame to keep Seth from getting fired. Mr. Robb lets Seth keep his job and demotes Jessica, handing her over to Sondra in data entry. Jessica tells Seth he doesn’t have to thank her, but if he wants to take her to dinner she’d be okay with that. Seth is incredulous and stomps off. Jessica ends up working until ten o’clock that night, and when she finally packs up to leave she’s the only one left in the office. In the parking garage, she sees a man carrying something wrapped in a blanket. When he shifts his weight, a woman’s arm comes loose. Jessica freaks out and races home.

Her family is out when she gets home but she’s too scared to be alone. She calls Seth and somehow makes him believe that she saw something. He comes over and they go back to the garage to see if the man’s white Trans Am is still there. It’s gone, but Jessica notices Adam’s car is there. Seth drops Jessica off at home and she tells her family everything. They’re skeptical, but then the phone rings. It’s the police and they have Adam in custody. He has apparently been charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Laurie. He found her body in the trunk of his car and called the police. When they got there they found the murder weapon in his glove compartment. The police want Jessica to come down to the station to explain what she saw, though how they know anything about Jessica, I have no idea.

The next day, Liz is freaking out about Adam’s love letter, which says things like, “You’re all I really want in this world, and if I can’t figure out something soon, I may have to do something drastic.” It’s looking pretty bad for Adam, and Liz feels she has to speak up. She gives the letter to her father. A couple days later, the letter has made headlines. Jessica surprises me by doing the right thing and going to the police. The sergeant tells her not to tell anyone else about the letter because he wants the killer to be comfy thinking Adam is going to take the blame. However, Jessica can’t resist telling Seth that she really wrote the letter. She asks for his help in finding the real killer.

Jessica and Seth go visit Adam and ask him about the guy Laurie’s grandfather wanted her to marry. They find out his name is Tom Winslow and he’s a real mess. Depression, you know. Jessica is convinced Tom is the real killer. That night, she’s supposed to meet Lila and Amy at the Dairi Burger but she doesn’t have a ride. She takes the Fiat, even though her parents have told the twins not to drive it because the killer could recognize it. She’s on the road for about five minutes and then she sees the Trans Am with the rust stain on the side. She goes straight to the police station and tells them the guy is still in town. Ned and Alice ground Jessica for taking the car, but then let her go to an office party at the newspaper because it’s, like, important or something.

Seth is supposed to take the twins to the party, but he calls and says he’ll have to meet them there. So they decide to take Steve’s car.  Then the police call Jessica and want her to come by the station. She explains to them that she has a party to go to and they offer to send a squad car to pick her up and take her to the party later. Right, because the cops care about your crappy office party. At the station, the police show her a photograph of Tom Winslow. Jessica recognizes him immediately as the guy she saw in the garage.

Liz can’t get Steve’s car started, she doesn’t feel safe walking to the bus stop and it’ll be forty-five minutes before she can get a cab. She doesn’t want to disappoint Mr. Robb by not showing up at the party, so she takes the Fiat. Liz, Mr. Robb doesn’t care if you come to the party. Your parents may care if you end up dead, though. Stupid girl.

The police sergeant drops Jessica off in the parking garage, you know, the same parking garage where Laurie’s body was found, because I guess he can’t be bothered to walk her inside or something. What the hell is wrong with the people in this town? Jessica is terrified as she walks through the garage to the elevator, and it only gets worse when she sees the Trans Am with the rust stain on it. She gets to the office as fast as she can and I guess she thinks it’s more important to find Seth than to call the police. She finds him talking to someone and calls his name. When the other man turns around, Jessica is horrified to see it’s Tom Winslow. Seth introduces him as a friend of Bob the sports editor. Jessica gets Seth alone and tells him Tom is the man they’ve been looking for. Seth doesn’t believe her and tells her Tom Winslow is Bob’s friend. I must have read something wrong, because I swore Seth was with Jessica when Adam was talking about Tom Winslow. Anyway, Seth sees the panic on Jessica’s face and finally believes her. He tells her to stay put and keep Tom at the party while he goes off to call the police. He’s gone for a really long time and Jessica is finding it difficult to keep Tom from leaving. He finally just leaves and gets out to the parking garage just in time to see Liz pull up in the Fiat. Tom thinks Liz is Jessica and pulls her out of the car. A guard comes along, but Tom knocks him out with a lead pipe he’s somehow gotten hold of. He pushes Liz against the car, where she hits her head and passes out. Jessica, entering the garage, sees this. She picks up a conveniently placed tire iron, sneaks up behind Tom and knocks him out.

Jessica wakes Liz and they start to run away, but Tom wakes up and threatens them some more with his lead pipe. Jessica tells Liz to run for the door and get help. While she’s doing that, Jessica attacks Tom and gets the pipe from him. Just then Seth shows up with some guards. Tom is captured and Adam is free to go. Mr. Robb gives the murder story to Seth and Jessica. Hooray!

Quotes:

“I’m sure once you think about it you’ll realize how unselfishly I behaved,” she said self-righteously. “And you’ll probably want to take me out to dinner or something. In which case–”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Seth snapped, stomping off and leaving her staring, stricken, after him.

Finally, a guy who doesn’t just melt at Jessica’s “charm.” Too bad he totally falls for her at the end.

“You can’t ground me,” Jessica wailed. “You guys, nobody gets grounded anymore.”

Ah, the logic of youth.

The Cover: Liz! You are sixteen years old. You are not middle-aged. You are not really a reporter. Stop dressing like Murder She Wrote.

The moral of the story: Wakefield twins can bring families together and save rock stars from psychopaths.

Synopsis:

Lila Fowler is going to be spending the summer in Malibu as a “mother’s helper,” so of course Jessica wants to go too. Her parents won’t let her go unless Elizabeth goes too, so Jessica convinces her to turn down her internship at the Sweet Valley News so she can go. Jessica goes to Nannies and Company for her interview and the woman is all excited to have twins working for the agency for some reason. Jessica gets a job working for the Sargents, a young couple with an infant who are related to Tony Sargent, a famous singer Jessica’s in love with. She imagines Tony will be dropping by all the time so she takes the job and sticks Liz with a nightmare of a kid, Taryn Bennet.

When it comes time to interview with the families themselves, Jessica can’t make it because of a weekend cheerleading camp so Liz does both interviews. The family she’ll be staying with lives in a huge mansion, while the Sargents live in a tiny house where Jessica will be sleeping on a cot in the baby’s room. This makes Liz think she’s been wrong about Jessica all this time and that she’s being very generous about things. Man, she’s stupid. When they get to Malibu to start their jobs, Jessica is depressed to find the Sargents’ house is as tiny as Liz described, and even more depressed when she learns Mr. Sargent hasn’t seen his cousin Tony in three years. When Jessica meets Cliff, the gorgeous guy who lives next door to the Bennets, she decides to try to convince Liz to switch jobs with her. It doesn’t work.

Cliff is having a party and has invited Lila and the twins, but the Sargents are going out and Jessica is crushed to find out she’ll have to stay with the baby. Liz offers to babysit but she still refuses to switch jobs. She’s sure she can help Taryn, who is an extremely unhappy child. Liz thinks Taryn’s parents are cold and unaffectionate. Jessica seems to actually be good with Taryn, so her new plan is to make sure Liz sees that switching jobs would be good for the kid. It still doesn’t work.

Lila goes windsurfing with some guy named Ben. She thinks he’s at least eighteen and she keeps telling Jessica that she’s over high school boys. Then she finds out Ben is only fifteen and I really don’t care. While Liz is babysitting for Jessica, an old friend of the Sargents’ shows up for a visit. His name is Jamie, he’s twenty-one and gorgeous and he falls in love with Liz.  She agrees to go out with him in a few days and then tells herself how wrong it is to go out with him because he’s so much older than she is. They have a lovely date and Jamie doesn’t tell her he is really seventeen-year-old teen idol Tony Sargent. Tony has had “professional makeup men” dye his hair and give him colored contacts so he can hide out in Malibu from some groupie chick’s boyfriend who is threatening to kill him for going out with his girl. Liz keeps going out with him. Jessica doesn’t like him because he’s too intellectual.

A big horrible storm comes along. Taryn runs away after overhearing a bad argument between her parents. Jessica and the Bennets’ housekeeper go out looking for Taryn and find her on a bridge that’s about to collapse. With help from the police, Jessica manages to save her. Taryn has to be taken to the hospital. I guess she has pneumonia or something. The doctors tell the Bennets that Taryn has to have “the will to pull through.”

Liz goes out into the storm to meet Tony/Jamie. Frankie, the guy who wants to kill Tony, shows up at the Sargents’ house pretending to be Tony’s manager and Mrs. Sargent tells him where to find him. Frankie shows up at the café where Liz and Tony are meeting. There’s a knife fight and then Liz knocks Frankie out with a vase. Liz finds out Tony’s real identity and is all upset about how dishonest he’s been (never mind the fact that he’s been hiding for his life) and now she’s all weird and thinks a huge celebrity could never really like her and convinces herself he was only using her to pass the time while he was stuck in Malibu. Tony and Liz go to the hospital so Tony can get stitches.

At the hospital, Liz and Jessica tell each other their stories about the day. Jessica is totally pissed at herself for being such a jerk to Tony Sargent all this time. Taryn is still doing bad and her parents are all worried about her. Jessica gives them some advice and…just…ugh. Because of Jessica, the Bennets become a real family and now I think I’m going to be sick.

Now that Tony’s not in hiding anymore, he’s putting on a concert in Malibu and he gives the twins and their gang free tickets. Liz is depressed but goes anyway and he sings a song he wrote for her. Aww.

Quotes:

“This probably isn’t any of my business,” Lila said when Jessica was out of earshot, “but don’t you think you’re being kind of selfish, Liz?”

Elizabeth stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“Just that Jessica has her heart set on going to Malibu, that’s all. And your parents won’t let her go unless you go, too. Don’t you think you could forget about the News for Jessica’s sake?”

Elizabeth put down her book. “You really think Jessica wants to go that badly?” she asked, her mouth dry.

Anyone else would have said, “Don’t you think Jessica is being selfish, wanting me to pass up an internship that could further my career so she can hang out in Malibu?” But you know Liz. She’s such a doormat.

“My parents would never approve…I feel terrible doing something I know they’d consider wrong.”

Liz is just so bad at being a teenager!

The Cover: Can someone tell Liz she’s sixteen and she should be showing off her perfect size six figure in a slutty bikini like her sister? She really is bad at being a teenager.