Friday Fancy: Sweet Valley High

by Devil’s Food Cake

The time I’ve spent back at home has been an invaluable opportunity to examine the artifacts that remain from my teenage years. Much of which consists pretty solidly of – wait for it – books. You can see why I wasn’t very popular in high school.

But, to be frank, I didn’t care. I had my books, and that was pretty much good enough. If your assumption thus far is that I had some kind of literary standard, you’d be wrong – early fare consisted almost entirely of Nancy Drew, Gossip Girl, and, of course, the Sweet Valley series.

For those of you unfamiliar with the delight that is Sweet Valley, the series (there were many of them) revolved around the fictional town of (you guessed it) Sweet Valley in California. The main protagonists were two blonde, blue-eyed twins named Elizabeth and Jessica, whose adventures ranged from the cute and mildly entertaining (Sweet Valley Kids and The Unicorn Club) to the more grown-up tween issues (Sweet Valley Junior High) to my personal favourite all-out soap opera (Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley Senior Year).

From the abovementioned titles, I can only assume you’re making rapid deductions about my high-brow consumption of literature. But wait. Seriously. It was good. In a Real L Word kind of way. Except better. Because there was no Whitney. Seriously, I was looking up some stuff on Wikipedia and found this gem:

An intense antagonism developed between Jessica and Melissa Fox after Jessica unknowingly kissed Melissa’s boyfriend, Will Simmons, in the first book of the series. Jessica was devastated when her friends Lila and Amy sided with Melissa, and became the target of vicious rumors spread by Melissa and her clique throughout the school. […] Jessica dated Will briefly before entering a serious relationship with Jeremy Aames. They broke up once after Jessica decided to date Will again, but soon got back together.

HOW GREAT IS THAT? Sweet Valley had all the hallmarks of great literature – earthquakes! Tragedy! Sexytimes! Backstabbing! Shopping for dildos! (I may be thinking of just a great lesbian show. Except, sadly, Sweet Valley had no gay characters. Sob.) Regardless. Sweet Valley and all of it’s characters gave me great literary pleasure when I was younger, and were welcome respites from Heart of Darkness or whatever else I was reading at the time (sorry, Conrad).

One of the book series was also made into a now-defunct TV show called Sweet Valley High, starring the awesome Brittany Daniel, which I totally missed out on but which must have been the greatest thing ever.

And EVEN BETTER THAN ANY OF THAT is the fact that SVH is now being made into a movie, to be written and directed by Diablo Cody. Holy shit you guys. I am so excited.

Anyway. What I guess I’m saying is that I loved Sweet Valley – it was definitely a seminal part of my formative years. And if you haven’t read it and can travel back in time to your fourteen-year-old self and tell her/him/them to read it, you should. Or just read it now. Or don’t. Whatever.

But you totally should.