Checking in

Don't worry , I haven't abandoned the blog! (again). I have just been busy with the holidays and I will be doing my next glorious recap soon! The next recap is going to be Too much in love, which I have never read..so I look forward to reading about Bill and Dee Dee's relationship drama! I'm guessing that Elizabeth will intervene somehow, and Jessica will probably be in the B plot or making things worse for Bill and Dee Dee somehow. Psychic!

Special Christmas

It's almost Christmas, so I'm doing this book a little early (actually I just don't have the next book, Too Much in Love yet, and I'm bored. Shhh.).

Jessica appears to be doing some type of dance while squinting one eye, and the color of her shirt is a really icky shade of pink. Elizabeth has her standard barrettes, and both twins have these odd half-surprised, half stoned looks on their faces.
This is the first of many Christmas-times to come in SVH (and they're all in one junior year, in typical time-is-irrelevant SVH fashion). This Super Special takes place a few months after Todd has moved to Vermont (Say Goodbye ) and Todd is coming back to visit all of his friends and Liz for the holidays. For some reason, Elizabeth has to make herself a nervous wreck over "where she and Todd stand" and what to get him for Christmas. Gosh, even when we think Todd is gone, they find some way to include Liz and Todd drama.

But there's really no reason to even bother with the tired Elizabeth and Todd Saga, because the real excitement is the news that Alice and Ted drop on their kids before Christmas break starts...
Suzanne Devlin is spending vacation with them!

For those who don't know who Suzanne is, she is the gorgeous daughter of some random rich friends of Ned and Alice that live in New York. Last time she came for a visit, she falsely accused Mr. Collins of sexually assaulting her, stole Elizabeth's lavaliere necklace, and was just all-around super fake bitch in Too Good To Be True.

When they get the news that the she-devil is back, Steve, Jess and even doormat Liz are all against her coming, and loudly object. The only excuse Ned and Alice have is that "she insisted". But there seems to be something more about Suzanne's visit then they are letting on.

The three of them dub themselves the "terrible trio" (SO lame) and start thinking of ways to keep Suzanne from coming and ruining their vacation. As if they don't get enough vacations. First plan is to have Elizabeth call Suzanne and try to convince her not to go. Suzy absolutely insists on coming out there and making things right, and gushes about how sorry she is, so that plan's a big fail.

The "terrible trio" comes up with another plan, they'll run Suzy out of town! And how will they do this, you ask? Simple, act like assholes towards her and ignore her until she realizes how unwelcome she is and leaves. Liz wimps out pretty quickly when she notices that Suzy seems sick, and is civil to her.
Jessica enlists the help of Aaron Dallas and others to torment Suzanne with mean "presents", such as notes with the letters all cut out from newspapers saying "SUZY DEVLIN GO HOME". Geez, guess she really rubbed some people the wrong way.

Jessica was in New York visiting the Devlins (and trying to steal Suzanne's boyfriend at the time, with bad results) during Suzanne's visit and never met her, but heard everything that happened while she was gone. Never mind that in the end of Too Good To Be True, Liz tells Jess nothing about what happened. Guess someone told her, 'cause even though she's never met the girl, she already hates her and is ready to make her time in Sweet Valley hell.

There's a dumb little side-story with all of SVH doing this "secret Santa" thing.  I've never heard of an entire school doing this. Maybe a class, but the whole school? Anyway, this results in some pretty lame displays and gifts, such as Enid's secret Santa Bill Chase having the whole swim team, (including himself), serenade her at the Dairi Burger. Or one of Lila's gifts, an issue of vogue with a ribbon around it left on her doorstep.

Oh, and Jessica is super sure that her secret Santa is sexy exchange student Hans (who?) but it's Winston Eggbert. Haha. Turns out Lila got Hans. Hans is a one hit wonder, never to be seen at SVH again.

A not-so-interesting plot twist, turns out Suzanne and Todd met in Vermont ,(where Todd now lives), when she was on vacation and they hung out for a little while. Todd has asked Suzanne not to say anything to Liz, and he's been acting weird around Suzy since she got there.

Elizabeth can sense that she and Todd aren't the way they used to be, and is ready to accept the end of their relationship. I'm sure we're all ready for that. She confides in good old Enid, and Enid's response is:

"Boy, it's kind of hard to imagine you and Todd having problems. You always seemed like the dream couple to me."
Really, Enid? No, seriously? Is she blind?

Our darling schemer Jess comes up with another plan, this time involving Aaron Dallas. Suzanne had left Aaron a message earlier, saying she wanted to take him out for lunch and apologize for her past behavior. Jessica gets Aaron to call her back and invite her to a fake party at an abandoned address in the middle of nowhere. Jess is sure this will send Suzanne running home. Liz has the standard Elizabeth Wakefield heart-to-heart with Suzanne, decides that old Suzy isn't so bad, and convinces Jess to back off.

 Butttt just as Jessica is about to cancel the Aaron Dallas scheme, she hears Suzanne and Todd chatting on the phone. She decides that Suzy only came out there because she knew Todd would be there, and she's planning to steal him from Liz! Jess is furious, because only she is allowed to steal men from her twin.

So the plan is back on!

Suzy drinks some champagne (!) with Todd and the "terrible trio". She then gets a call from Aaron telling her that she has to drive down to meet him. Suzy hesitates, but ends up taking the Fiat down to what she thinks is a party (or dance, or something? I wasn't paying attention). One minor detail here, Suzanne just happened to start taking a new medication that night. Since her doctor didn't answer her call, she assumes one drink with it is fine. But dun dun dunnn...it's not!

There's a call from the doc and all hell breaks loose. Suzanne can't even have one drink on this new medication or she might DIE! OMG. (side note-is that possible? To die from one drink mixed with a medication? I'm genuinely curious.) The Wakefields rush off to find her, and of course Jess moans about how guilty she feels. Sound familiar? Along the way we learn that Suzanne has Multiple Sclerosis and didn't want anyone to know because then they would feel obligated to forgive her.

We end up at the hospital, where Suzanne is recovering from a car crash brought on by the med and alcohol mixing. Suzy is mostly fine and she gets apologies from the twins and everyone else. Then something big happens-Suzanne doesn't have MS! She actually has some kind of central nerve infection that they mistook for MS. The Sweet Valley swim team sings 'Silent Night' and all is well. I cry tears of joy.

Oh and Todd Like Likes Suzy. And she Like Likes him back! Liz is totally cool with all of this, and everyone's happy. I don't think Todd and Suzanne's romance, (or Suzanne, period) ,are ever mentioned again.

There's also some kind of sorta-B story that ends with Jessica tricking Lila into passing out candy to kids dressed as an Elf (wearing a green trash bag, no less). I can't think of a worse punishment....Jessica is a truly evil person. Oh, the humanity!

Moral of Special Christmas? Christmas comes approximately 25 times a year if you live in Sweet Valley! Also, Christmas is the ideal time to apologize to all of the people you accused of sexual assault, stole from and lied to. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks, SVH!

Sweet Valley board game

So this is probably one of the most...inappropriate board games I've ever played. Yeah inappropriate, that's the word. Also pretty confusing. The point of the game, (I think?), is to get all of your "items". These "items" which are cards on the classroom spaces that have pictures of random stuff like a bicycle or dress on them. Every player has one big card that has a pic of the boyfriend and four pictures of the card items you're supposed to collect. There are up to four players, and you can be Elizabeth, Jessica, Lila, or Enid (yawn.). My friend picked Jessica and I went with Lila.

Confused yet? Yeah. Basically you just roll the dice and travel around and around the board in circles, picking up playing cards and item cards. The playing cards say fun things such as, "You let the maid have the day off." "Trade boyfriends with whoever you want" .

Me and my friend literally "switched boyfriends" about 50 times, because it seems like every card we picked up involved that. So much for variety. The boyfriends are Ken Matthews, Todd Wilkins, Bruce Patman and Winston Eggbert (wtf?).

Todd is of course on Liz's card, Bruce on Jessica's, Ken on Lila's, and Winston on Enid's. Clearly whoever designed this game didn't read the books, since Winston and Enid hardly even talked, let alone dated. Lila and Ken were never together as an actual couple, they just went to dances together once in awhile. (correct me if I'm wrong, my memory sucks sometimes)

But I guess it doesn't matter what guy's pic is on your big card, all that really matters is that you have a boyfriend card, (great lesson for young girls), and all of your item cards to win. I collected all of my item cards and won, probably because a few of the item cards were missing, and they happened to be the Jessica cards my friend would've needed. to win. But what matters is, I WON, dammit.

So the moral lesson in this game is that you NEED a boyfriend (doesn't really matter who!), to win at life I guess? And that people like me will blow money on anything SVH related, no matter how much it sucks.

Runaway #21

Yup the pic was taken on a pack of canned peas. I love my peas. Oh it feels so good to be back! I already started this re cap quite awhile ago, and now I'm gonna finish it. I'm even re-reading the book for accuracy. This is serious stuff, people.

According to this cover, "Jessica has had enough!". Yes, clearly Jessica has had enough of nice clean clothes. Just look at what she's wearing! That grey sweater just screams dirty! And this is the stylish twin? Other then that, Jess doesn't look half bad on this cover (she looks a lot younger then some covers where they have her looking 35).

So what Jessica has reallly had enough of is her twin Elizabeth's never-ending perfection. Fair enough, I think anyone reading these books either hates Liz, or strongly dislikes her most of the time. This plot actually started in the last book (Crash Landing!), when Liz got their parents a better anniversary gift then Jess, and just generally showed her up throughout the book.

Steve (borrrrring) is taking a break from school due to his depression over Tricia's death, and Elizabeth thinks that the best way to cheer him up would be to drag him to Cara's party. Who knows why, since he doesn't even like Cara. In another dumb move, Elizabeth insists that Jessica be the one to invite him..even though he's already annoyed at Jess for trying to set him up with Cara before.

Predictably, Steve gets his panties all in a bunch and basically accuses Jessica of being insensitive. Elizabeth has to come a smooth things over and convince Steve to go. Steve goes as Jessica's date (seems fitting after reading the semi-creepy exchange between them in this book), and neither of them are thrilled to be at this party.

BTW, There's a random moment (before the party), at the Dairi Burger with Cara and Jessica (I guess Jess is trying to convince Cara that Steve is cool or something...I don't care.). And in walks Nicky Shepard with his "gang". They're bad. They're real bad. They hang out at the Shady Lady bar across the street! There's drug rumors! Nicky drives a fast car and he has "rugged good looks". You know he's a rebel. He approaches their table, (who could resist a Wakefield??!), and charms Jess. Not hard, all he had to do was tell her that she was cooler then Liz.

Why is this important? Because Nicky shows up at Cara's party. Jess is being mopey because everyone isn't feeding her narcissism for once, and Nicky charms her once again. This time, they sneak off to be alone. Then they start hooking up, and one thing leads to another...ha! Kidding, kidding. This is Sweet Valley, folks. What they actually do is have a "deep" conversation. Nicky even says he "likes being sad". Deep.

Liz continues to be annoying and make Jess look bad by being..well herself. When Nicky and Jess dance, (the whole party is aghast by this display of rebellion), and leave together, Liz and Steve get parental. Geez they're so annoying. I mean Liz even discusses Jess's "behavior" with Mom and Pop Wakefield. I'd run away too, Jess. Oops, gave away the surprise ending!

The family continues to crap all over Jess, making fun of her when she tries to make dinner and treating her like an annoying child. Though to be fair, she is pretty damn childish. Also, there's a back story involving a custody battle and Ricky Capaldo (remember him?), I can't bring myself to care, and I refuse to torture readers with it. You're welcome.

So fast forward through all this crap, and we get to Nicky reaching his breaking point. His parents don't seem to like him much and he's got friends "in business" in San Francisco. He finallllllly Runs Away. About damn time. Surprisingly, Jess decides to follow suite. Did you see that coming? I'm shocked, I tell you. And you know Jess couldn't leave for the Run Away Express, (my snazzy name for the bus), without leaving a melodramatic note. Oh, and stealing some of Liz's clothes. For someone who says Liz isn't stylish, she sure seems to steal her clothes a lot.

So blah blah blah blah, Jess regrets it the second she boards the Run Away Express. Because who could live away from Sweet Valley and be happy? I know not living in SV is the main cause of my troubles. Liz and Steve track her down, and they reunite. Promises are made to treat each other better, and there's a sappy "home is where the heart is " type message. I'm touched. Jess writes a letter to Nicky, and promptly forgets all about him.

 We end with Miss Nosy, (Liz, if you didn't guess), speculating about Dee Dee and Bill's relationship. OMG are they gonna be okay?!?!?!? We find out in our next story, Too Much In Love

Morals. Don't one-up your twin sister. Don't hang out with bad boys, even if they are "ruggedly handsome". Umm...stay in school? Don't ignore your SVH blog for nearly two years?

If you stuck with me through that, thanks for reading and leave a comment. Your opinions on these issues matter!

Back from the dead!

Yes the Wide World of Sweet Valley is back! I am determined to finish this important series now that I have the time, because what could be a better use of my free time? Bring on the awful plots, the one-dimensional characters and everything else that embodies Sweet Valley!

All sarcasm aside, I'm genuinely excited to re-start this blog. I truly enjoy the Sweet Valley series and if readers like my re caps, then I'll do ALL of the various spin-offs (yes, that even includes the terrible Senior Year series. I'm a masochist.)