Sweet Valley Confidential

Sweet Valley Confidential

written by Francine Pascal

So. Hah. Yeah, I read it. I grew up reading all the Sweet Valley books, so I've actually been waiting to see the girls again for a while. I expected a hilariously bad return, and, well, the badness exceeded expectations. I'm probably in the minority about this, but I enjoyed the SVU books more than the others, and found the SVH books to be horribly dry. So I was disappointed that this mostly followed SVH canon (which makes very little sense. I guess I should be relieved that moments from SVU were mentioned to begin with, but seriously, she must be extremely ashamed of that series or something since plotwise it held almost no relevance). The pairings in this book were absurd, as were the characters Pascal chose to focus on. While I'm glad the main story was between Jess and Liz, I did not like the huge role Todd played (never was a fan of his. What a bore). I enjoyed seeing a lot of Bruce, but awesome characters like Lila and Winston got very little (and very disappointing) screen time, and people like Billie and Tom were nowhere to be seen. I am very glad with the ending Liz receives, but I think this book would have been much more enjoyable if Francine Pascal had taken it from a reminiscent point of view, rather than an attempt to modernize and catch up with the twins later in life. The epilogue, stretched out, would have made a much better book. The constant flashbacks were annoying, as were the accompanying changes in word tense. Everyone is divorced and/or cheating/being cheated on. Actual things that happen in people's normal ordinarily late 20s lives? Nope. Just lots and lots of cheating. This book might as well be a treatise on marital infidelity. Everyone is extremely emotionally stunted. The story picks up a little bit as it progresses, and I would argue that the unintentional star in terms of ~actual character development~ would be Bruce Patman. I just think this should have been more thought out. You'd think Pascal has had more than enough time to think about manufacturing a softhearted reunion novel, but instead we get this pathetic piece of writing that couldn't have taken many brain cells to come up with. She can do better than this. Or at least, her ghostwriters can.

Rating: 2/5

I got this book from...:Amazon