Nostalgia Cum Nausea

If there's a lesson to be learned from "Sweet Valley Confidential," it really has little to do with etiquette regarding boning your twin sister's boyfriend, and everything to do with knowing your audience. (Spoilers ahead, natch.)

According to self-divulged information from an informal Facebook poll posted in March 2011, the vast majority of Sweet Valley fen are in their twenties and thirties. Many of them grew up reading about the wonderful world of the Wakefields alongside the Babysitters' Club and Nancy Drew mysteries. Most recall a particular fondness for the world of Sweet Valley, and can cite with considerable clarity unique memories of the series. (For me, it would be having my mom take away my stack of "Sweet Valley Twins" novels, claiming that they were all she saw me reading, and then giving them back once she realized that, hey, your kid reads. Another time, I remember writing a short screenplay of a scene from the infamous "Evil Twin" arc from "Sweet Valley High" to perform in my Language Arts class in sixth grade. Good times.)

The majority of Sweet Valley fans are female, and are pretty laid-back regarding character pairings and the like, at least in comparison to other online fandoms. In part, this is probably because most Sweet Valley fans grew out of the universe where everyone is blonde, thin, and perfect, seeking loftier fare. That's not to say Jessica and Elizabeth's zany adventures aren't enjoyable - fluff is fun, after all - but the unspoken expectation seemed to be that, surely, Francine Pascal must have grown with her audience.

Spoiler alert: She didn't, nor are Jessica and Elizabeth's adventures at 27 all that zany. Part of the book reads like a bullet-pointed list of "where are they now?" It's dull and inorganic; there's no point in writing an entire book about what everyone's up to if everyone includes essentially three original characters. Xeroxing the fabled "Sweet Valley Bible" and selling it for the price of a Sweet Valley University Super Thriller would have sufficed.

Similarly, it's no surprise that other characters, when they are mentioned, have the depth of a two-sentence Wikipedia blurb: That is, this is the first and only SV book Francine Pascal has written. While this should be cause for joy, instead, it makes fans wish that she'd called upon one of her trusty ghost writers to do the job. At least there'd be better continuity; one of them might know that Lila's dad's first name is George, at least. In addition, it might not be so awkward to read Pascal's trying-too-hard shout-outs to a handful of Top-40 artists and various social networking sites, a failed attempt to make the setting seem modern. (Naturally, the fact that the twins grew up in the '80s and should actually be in their '30s now has little bearing on the tale.) I don't even know what the author was thinking when she had Jessica throw in like, so much valley speak. Somehow, I don't think a so-called successful Communications major who now is a highly-respected member of a small, eco-friendly cosmetics company working in marketing would want to sound all of twelve years old; except even at twelve, Jessica never talked like that. Fans know this, but apparently, Pascal does not.

In a nutshell, "Sweet Valley Confidential" is 200+ pages of Jessica and Elizabeth fighting over Todd Wilkins, aka the Most Interesting Man in the World (on Opposite Day), flashbacks, and unnecessary/confusing POV/font changes which allow Pascal to retell the same scene in 2-3 different ways. Yawn. Instead of character development, Jessica and Elizabeth fall into the same pitfalls as young adults as they did at 12, 16, 18. This would be fine if Pascal were tongue-in-cheek about it, but instead, Jessica continues to make decisions the way somebody with his/her frontal lobes removed would. While Elizabeth spends most of the book patting herself on the back for no longer catering to the whims of her mentally-five-year-old sister, she eventually regresses along with her. Also, as one might expect, because they are both Wakefields, all of their problems are neatly packaged and even more neatly forgotten in the most unsatisfying way possible. (Okay, maybe it was satisfying to hear Alice Wakefield swear as the rest of the family descended into carnage. A little.) That is, Elizabeth's starving artist schtick ends (dully), and Jessica gets married for a third time, which I'm sure will last until Elizabeth's next paper-thin revenge scheme involving a cute guy. Seriously, even if you haven't read this book, if you've read other Sweet Valley books, you can guess exactly how it will turn out.

The focus on romance is perhaps the most insulting aspect of the story, as it showcases just how little Pascal knows her audience. At best, the Jessica-and-Todd story should have been a subplot. Instead, the entire book throws the reader reluctantly into the whole sordid affair, and how pissed off Elizabeth is about it. Of course, everything changes after Elizabeth finally just goes back home and Jessica flirts with her date. In the meantime, Elizabeth has sex and drinks a lot in New York and is still apparently Mother Theresa. As a corollary to the whole "Wakefields just win at life" thing, watching every dude with a pulse throw himself at Jess and Liz's well-groomed feet gets old fast. Of course, it helps to know that the twins are beautiful and perfect, which Pascal reminds us of, frequently.

When the other original characters do make an appearance, it is fleeting. Todd is so dull as an up-and-coming sports writer that he's practically unmentionable, whereas there seems to be an untold story about Lila Fowler's boob implants and dyed hair and failed marriage that's way more interesting than anything the Wakefields are getting up to, and yet, it remains untold. Same with Enid-cum-Alexandra-cum-Enid-again Rollins' life as a right-wing, recovering alcoholic OB-GYN; it'd also be nice if Winston Egbert made an actual appearance instead of simply being told he was a misogynistic jerk (by characters who are themselves jerks, no less) whom we shouldn't feel sorry for when he falls off a balcony.

Some other 'developments' seem even cheaper: Bruce Patman loses his folks in a car accident, so of course, he's as rich and pretty as he used to be, but he no longer needs to almost-rape girls in his Porsche because he's sensitive, now. Other characters apparently fought cancer or something, but nobody cares about that. Apparently, not one member of Jessica and Elizabeth's graduating class had kids. More than once, Pascal describes how a bit character was "saved" from being promiscuous by her current husband, which reeks of misogyny. Jessica writes off Steven's boyfriend as "ugly" because he has two differently-colored eyes. Really.

Perhaps what stinks most, however, is the author's readily-apparent fat phobia, which crops up whenever a character's body type or relationship with food is described. (Spoiler alert: It is. A lot.) While most modern, young adult literature seeks to thwart such problematic motifs, Pascal apparently spent all of her research time looking up Justin Timberlake lyrics rather than suggestions for how to be write realistic, likeable characters whose lives don't depend on being a perfect size four. Even her attempt to rouse the audience into sympathizing with Steven Wakefield and his newfound homosexuality seems cheap, as he comes to it by cheating on his wife, and is generally ignored by everyone except for Jessica, who decides it's okay because she had a gay roommate in college who was, like, so cool. It's difficult to begrudge Steven his happiness - and unlike some critics, I personally don't feel like his lack of homosexual liaisons in previous books meant much in terms of how likely he was to be in a gay relationship a decade or so later (sexuality's fluid, after all) - but it feels cliche, and like it was only included in the book at all to be trendy.

In the end, "Sweet Valley Confidential" is a steaming turd of a book for Sweet Valley fans, young and old. I'm sure this would seem more accurate if anybody in Sweet Valley pooped.