Sweet Valley Diaries

Book #30: JEALOUS LIES [Podcast]

All the mysteries of Pi Beta Alpha, REVEALED AT LAST!

Ah, complicated teen friendships. Ah, high school sororities. Some experiences are universal. Avid girlhood Sweet Valley reader (and current therapist) Cherelle Solomon joins Marissa to examine this timeless text.

 

Reference Shelf:

Joanne the Scammer

The DUFF

BTW, the last PBA pledge season was 26 books ago, not 16. Time flies!

"Sweet Valley Confidential" Part 2: The Other Things

YET ANOTHER SUPER SPOILER ALERT!!

Okay, okay. You've had a few months. Has everyone finished reading at this point? Like it or not, it's time to put your books away and get pencils out. I'm giving you a pop quiz?

1.Who sleeps with more guys in this book, Elizabeth or Jessica?

2. Which Men of Sweet Valley fall in love…with each other?

3. Which character(s) grew into reportedly despicable adults?

The answers to the above questions encompass (1) my favorite about-face in this brave new SVC world (and one I find somewhat believable); (2) the part of the book that makes me most giddy, despite the fact that it seems totally unbelievable; (3) the one thing about this book that really, truly stinks (putting aside my dismay about Jess and Todd ending up together). Let's explore.

ANSWERS:

1. Elizabeth. I haven't pored over every page of the book looking for sex scenes (I swear!) but by my count, Jessica only gets busy with two guys in SVC: Todd (past and present), and the rich guy she ditches in France. Elizabeth, on the other hand, has (to start) chapter one's infamous “crying orgasm” stranger. This event doesn’t occur during the book, strictly speaking, but I think we can agree that linear timelines and Sweet Valley are mortal enemies, and that’s true in this new book even more than in the never-ending junior year of the SVH series. Then there’s Todd of course (mentioned in the past-tense), the saucy playwright Will Connolly, and, ultimately, Bruce. At least two of those pairings are reactionary, Elizabeth acting out against her goody-goody, sweet, and trusting past, the past that wounded her so deeply.
   
   Jessica, meanwhile, thinks of seducing others (her co-worker, most notably), but decides to put that out of her mind in favor of love. Now, that doesn’t sound much like Jessica. But when one is trying to put one’s life together after a failed relationship (or, in Jessica’s case, after MANY failed-by-design relationships), one often tries to make a drastic change, lest you make the same mistake twice. Especially at 27. Even though I was a bit disappointed that Jessica didn’t decide to seduce anyone in this book, you know, just for old times’ sake, I have to say that this particular turnabout in the lives of the twins makes sense to me.
2. Steven Wakefield and Aaron Dallas. Let me say that again, in case any of you are reading this instead of the actual book. Steven Wakefield and Aaron Dallas fall in love in this book. With each other. It’s kind of awesome, in a shocked-and-surprised-but-oh-what-the-heck sort of way. Of course, in real life, young men (and women) discover their homosexuality post-high-school, and most of us probably have at least one or two high-school peers whom we friended on Facebook only to find that, against expectations, they’d come out.
   
   But seriously, now. Aaron Dallas, the soccer star with the anger management problem, and Steven Wakefield, the handsome brother who dated a high school girl (in the book, he and Cara are married, you’ll recall) while he was in college? These are not the prime suspects for gaydom in the Sweet Valley Universe. Who would I have picked, you ask? Easy:
   
   Nicholas Morrow (infamous ascot wearer) and Tom McKay (though he had several girlfriends, it was once suggested that Jessica “turned him off the female sex forever”). Wouldn’t they have made a lovely couple? Sure, it wouldn’t have been particularly helpful to the story, but it would have been more believable. Or perhaps Steven could have fallen for one of them instead of Aaron. As one twitter follower pointed out, Steve and Nick could have adopted a daughter and named her Regina. Sweet.
3. Pretty much all of them. Enid is a bitchy doctor who Liz doesn’t even keep in touch with anymore, and she’s ashamed of her affair with mere salesperson (note sarcasm) A.J. Morgan. Lila and Ken have a disastrous and complicated marriage/divorce. Steven is keeping his homosexual affair a secret from his wife. Betsey Morgan is reportedly a drunk again. Don’t even get me started on Jessica and Todd. It used to be that only Jessica and Lila were consistently awful, and at least then it was with a fragment of soul that kept you interested. These 27-year-olds are just sort of awful.
   
   Of course, the saddest example is Winston. That he becomes rich and famous definitely fits the model, and we know that wealth corrupts. But screw believability (and ignore the fact that I’ve been ranting about it throughout this entry), this is Sweet Valley! Why does Winston have to turn bad? Moreover, why does he have to die? (Sorry, non-readers, but I did say “super spoiler alert”.) This is just the prime example of what seems like the mean theme of this book: People are jerks, and you have to learn to live with it. Rise above it if you can, but it’s inevitable. And, yeah, that might be true, but it’s not exactly the message we Adult Readers of the Sweet Valley Series have been waiting for. As pre-teens reading the SVH series, we got lessons like “Don’t be a drunk driver,” “Don’t hang out with creepy older dudes,” or “Help your friends when they get kidnapped.” Some of us could still benefit from such lessons, I’m sure. One of the reasons I hope there are more volumes in a theoretical Sweet Valley Confidential Series is because I think these characters deserve a chance to redeem themselves, and we deserve a little more from them.
   
   One more thing about Winston: As unpleasant as his storyline gets, it holds some fascinating implications. Remember how Winston and Todd grew apart after the former found out about the latter’s affair with Jessica? Well, what if that betrayal destroyed the fun-loving Winston’s faith in humanity? Success held little joy for him if two people he thought so much of could do something so hurtful to someone they loved. He could only take pleasure in joys of the flesh, so to speak, and they led him to accidental death. So, in a way, his death is Todd and Jessica’s fault. Wouldn’t that be interesting? I think so. Next book, please!

30. Jealous Lies

Someone doesn’t want Jean in Pi Beta Alpha – her best friend, Sandra!

Once she started comparing herself to Jean, she just couldn't stop. -p. 10 I could say I was pleasantly surprised by Sweet Valley High Book 30, Jealous Lies. To be honest with you, though, I’ve come to cherish the hour or two of eye-rolling these books typically elicit, much as I savor the prospect of a truly horrible movie. So call me silly, but I was a little disappointed when Jealous Lies turned out to be, well…kind of good. In the sense that it dealt seriously with how awful teenage girls can be, and the consequences of those actions. Not a terrible lesson for teenage-girl readers to be learning from their pulp fiction. Sandra Bacon and Jean West are best friends and fellow cheerleaders. Lately, Sandy has been feeling jealous of Jean, as if Jean is better at everything that Sandy. In her mind, the OMG AWESOME (and baffling) high-school sorority Pi Beta Alpha is the only prestigious thing she has that Jean does not. Now, everyone is expecting Sandy to nominate Jean for PBA, but Sandy really doesn’t want Jean to be in the club. I know, right? Girls! Without rewriting the whole book (hey…there’s an idea…), let’s just say that Sandy suggests Jean bring hunky, quiet Tom McKay to a PBA party as part of her pledge (Tom dated Jessica once, and “a few people joked that she had turned him off the female sex forever”). Jean gets the date, and then Sandy tips Tom off that he’s being used as a pledge requirement. When an angry Tom fakes an illness and stands Jean up, Jean plots a revenge scheme designed to prove that she’s PBA-worthy. She’ll make Tom fall in love with her, and then humiliate him in front of the whole school. At a dance. On Friday the 13th. Which is her birthday. Just go with it. This school has a lot of dances. Guess what happens? JEAN AND TOM FALL IN LOVE FOR REAL. As they get closer, Tom confesses that he ditched her on purpose for their first date, because Sandra had suggested that Jean was just using him. Now Jean and Sandy are in a fight, and Sandy realizes that she’s been a total jerk. When Jean ends up risking her PBA acceptance by not humiliating Tom in front of the whole school as planned, Sandy explains to the whole coven that she’s been scheming and is in the wrong, even offering to give up her spot in the club so Jean can take it. That’s the story. Perhaps, even now, you’re thinking “who the hell are Jean and Sandra?” I’ve mentioned it before, though not for a while – not these characters, they’re new. There is a somewhat irksome trend in these novels whereby characters are introduced to us suddenly, though they have no bearing on the plot at hand. Then, in the final page of the book, we’re reminded of whatever crisis these characters are undergoing, and prepped to read an entire book about it next month (presuming it’s the 1980s, when these books were released on a month-by-month basis). For example, in Jealous Lies, right after everything’s settled with Jean and Tom, we get to read a couple of paragraphs about Aaron Dallas and some new kid named Jeff. Just a few paragraphs to introduce them, and then we’re back to the regularly scheduled program. It’s like clockwork. It was a tiny bit refreshing to see some characters that can honestly make some mistakes and learn from them. Sandra, Jean, and Tom all pulled some nasty stunts in this book, and they paid for them. They probably won’t revert to their scheming ways, because they are actually nice people. Oh, and they aren’t main characters, so they don’t need to keep forgetting their lessons in order for new stories to happen. But I won’t be sad to see some old standby bitches and patsies return in Book 31. And thanks to our old standby foreshadowing tricks, I know for sure that Jessica, Lila, Liz, and Enid are going to be front-and-center. Now that sounds like Sweet Valley.