Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later

Remember when you were a child and you desperately waited every couple of months for your favorite series to release a new book so you could lose yourself in the lives of fictional characters? Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley University is one of the reasons I loved to read. This was one of the first series I kept up with until Francine Pascal stopped writing the books years ago.

So when I heard she was releasing an epilogue to the series I was super excited. Then I began to read it and that excitement turned into abject horror. This is NOT a good book. I don't know what happened. I'm almost positive Francine Pascal is not a terrible writer. She just couldn't get this book to...flow. She utilized this dual point of view which made the book so aggravating to read. Every other page became a flashback and every other chapter was a different city. I'm sure she could have told the story without using this method.

Then the actual characters. It's 10 years later and you'd hope Jessica Wakefield would have grown up a little bit but she hasn't and it's reflected in Pascal's writing. She writes Jessica in first person narrative and she's throwing in “like” everywhere and it made me want to hurl. I'm almost positive people from California actually don't speak like that and if that's the only way she thought readers would be able to discern Jessica's personality and motivations from Elizabeth's then she was sorely mistaken. Besides Jessica though these characters are at their most shallow which doesn't make any sense. We've sat with these characters for YEARS. How is it that she's reduced them back to their high school caricatures? The stereotypes that they began with? I was almost embarrassed reading this book because if these were the same characters that kept my attention for years then I question my own taste in books.

At the end, I appreciate the work she did wrapping up every characters' journey to their place in this book. It's bittersweet reading the ending to all these people you made friends with when you were younger. It made me tear up a little bit. I was invested in these characters and their lives. I felt like I put a piece of my own childhood to rest when I finished this novel.

That's why even though the plot was weak and the characterization was laughable that I will still give this book 3 stars because at the end of the day this book marks the end of an era for me and that deserves some respect.

Goodbye Sweet Valley, I wished the ending had done you justice.