Book Review: Sweet Valley Confidential by Francine Pascal

First published in Great Britain: 14th April, 2011

By: Arrow Books

It’s been ten years since the Wakefield twins graduated from Sweet Valley High, and a lot has happened.

For a start, Elizabeth and Jessica have had a falling out of epic proportions, after Jessica committed the ultimate betrayal, and this time it looks like Elizabeth will never be able to forgive her.

Suddenly Sweet Valley isn’t big enough for the two of them, so Elizabeth has fled to New York to immerse herself in her lifelong dream of becoming a serious reporter, leaving a guilt-stricken Jessica contemplating the unthinkable: life without her sister.

Despite the distance between them, the sisters are never far from each other’s thoughts. Jessica longs for forgiveness, but Elizabeth can’t forget her twin’s duplicity. Uncharacteristically, she decides the only way to heal her broken heart is to get revenge. Always the ‘good’ twin, the one getting her headstrong sister out of trouble, Elizabeth is now about to turn the tables…

My review: 

I picked this book up for the nostalgia factor, however, I'd probably think better of it if I didn't grow up reading the original series. As a story, it's OK, I guess. But I can't get past the fact that it wasn't the Sweet Valley update I was hoping to read.

Sweet Valley Confidential shows us Wakefield twins divided. Elizabeth is living in New York and wants nothing to do with her sister, because Jessica - back home in Sweet Valley - is marrying Elizabeth's longtime boyfriend, Todd Wilkins. The only real story for Jessica is being sad about this. Elizabeth has a bit more: She meets a couple of new guys. But mostly, she is sad and angry about Jessica. That's basically the plot of the novel - everybody is sad because Liz and Jess aren't speaking. 

The twins are 27 now, so they drink, have sex and swear. I don't mind any of those things in a novel, but it's pretty obvious that these are only ways Francine Pascal shows the characters have 'matured'. (Although I will admit, the best thing that happens in the book is Alice Wakefield shouting the F word - it's like hearing a nun tell a dirty joke; you can't help but giggle at the incongruity of it.)

The book is told in two different timelines - as well as the present, we flashback to the events that lead up to it. I preferred the flashbacks to the main story, as they referenced things from past books (the first flashback is a retelling of the first ever book, Double Love) and there's a bit more plot in them. We see the beginnings of the Jessica/Todd affair, another Jessica marriage and the outing of a major character as gay. These flashbacks are told in the first person so they give some insight into the characters thoughts. Unfortunately, this insight often makes the characters come across badly. 

I don't condone cheating, obviously, but I can accept it in fiction if you make the characters' actions sympathetic. Show me them struggling with their feelings for months or show me that they were thrown together by unavoidable circumstances. In Sweet Valley Confidential, Jessica and Todd enjoy each other's company for one evening and then they're in bed together behind Elizabeth's back. Yeah, it doesn't seem like they fought it very hard. In the original series, there was a lot of boyfriend-swapping between the twins, and Jessica and Todd as a couple was an idea often revisited, so I don't find it entirely repellent. But here, it's just not done in an organic or realistic way, so there's no reason on Earth to root for them together.

That's my complaint about all the developments in the Sweet Valley 'verse. Pascal does show us how many of the old characters have ended up, but what's happened doesn't really make any sense or fit with who the characters were before. I always kind of shipped Elizabeth with Bruce Patman, but the person in this isn't even Bruce Patman - he's a completely different guy, who just happens to have the same name. The gay storyline, most of all, feels like Pascal just picked a name out of a hat and decided that character would be gay now. I also thought Pascal's vision of the characters' lives was...dark. Everybody was either adulterous or substance-addicted or dead. There didn't seem to be any happiness at all. It got to the point where, instead of being pleased at old characters being mentioned, I started to dread it, lest I discover a fondly remembered character was now a wife-beating crack addict or something.

OK, so the Sweet Valley books were never great literature. And they always had plenty of continuity issues and ludicrous plot developments. But they were also fun. I think the biggest error of this book is that it's just not very fun. There are some bright points when Pascal seems to realise this and sprinkles in inside jokes for the fans, but these moments are too few and far between. I would've loved to read one last Sweet Valley adventure, with parties and rivalries and scheming and romances. But this isn't it.


Rating: 2.5 stars