Book review: Sweet Valley Confidential by Francine Pascal

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…

This book is a pure nostalgia trip; from it’s bubblegum pink cover and red lettering (I was so pleased to see that the publishers had stuck to the original cover format) to it’s fabulously over the top soap-style storyline; I loved it!

I was a fan of Sweet Valley when I was a teenager, starting off with the Sweet Valley Twins books and graduating to Sweet Valley High as I grew up. Elizabeth and Jessica’s sun-drenched California high school escapades never failed to grip me and transport me to a world that felt a million miles away. And as followers of this blog will know, I’ve been excited to read this book ever since I heard it was coming out.

The story is split between two locations; Sweet Valley, where Jessica and many of the original cast of characters still reside and New York where Elizabeth is working as a journalist. The book opens with Elizabeth in New York and we discover that the twins have had a falling out of epic proportions with Elizabeth vowing never to speak to Jessica again. The Elizabeth of ten years later is a much tougher and angry character than in the original series which I was pleased to see and although on the surface Jessica seems much the same as ever, as the book progresses we see that she has grown up (a little) too.

The full details of the fall out and the events of the last ten years of Elizabeth and Jessica’s lives are revealed in flashback sections of each chapter. It took me a little while to get used to the jumping back and forward and the change from third person narrative for the main part of the story to first person point of view in the flashbacks but once I’d got past the first few chapters I enjoyed comparing past to present and filling in all the gaps from the original characters’ stories. It’s been a good while since I read any of the original series so I found the flashbacks to the twins’ high school and university days helpful in reminding me what had gone on before. Reading this book was like catching up on gossip about people you knew at school but don’t see any more but with added drama!

Most of the old gang are back with appearances from Todd, Bruce, Lila, Enid, the rest of the Wakefield family and many more and the changes to their lives have been dramatic. You’ll have to read the book to find out who is gay, who has battled alcoholism, which character has met an untimely death and who has married (and sometimes divorced) who.

There were a few little things that niggled such as Jessica’s constant overuse of the word ‘like’ but overall, Sweet Valley Confidential reminded me of everything I enjoyed about the series and I was so involved that I read it in a couple of sittings. When I visit my parents next week I’ll be digging out my old SVH books to indulge in the nostalgia a little longer

4/5

Sweet Valley Confidential is released today and I’d like to thank Natalie at Random House for sending me a copy to review.

You can find out more about Sweet Valley Confidential at: http://www.sweetvalleytenyearslater.com/