Lovestruck #27

Ken looks like a 40-year-old porn star on this cover. He also has an ape-like quality to him in this picture, and appears to want to be anywhere but with Suzanne. Suzanne is super pretty, even though she has a soccer mom hair cut going on.

*Possible unpopular opinion*.......I liked Suzanne. She's supposed to be snobby and horrible, but you know what? She's a lot less snotty than the twins. She's elegant, poised and cultured. She speaks French, knows which utensils to use at a fancy dinner, and loves old movies and classical music. Suzanne is the woman I wish I could be. Yes, I am jealous of a fictional sixteen year old. God help me.

Ok, let me stop raving about Suzanne and begin the recap of this award-winning novel. Ken is an all-star football player, and has been a back ground character for much of the series. It turns out that he's actually a likeable guy (at least compared to many of the other SVH guys. Todd, Nicolas, I'm talkin' bout you).

As was mentioned at the end of my last recap, Ken is failing English and it might keep him from playing in the big game!!!!!!! Apparently the team has zero chance of winning without Ken, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Can one team member really carry the whole team like that? Seriously? I don't watch sports so I have no clue how this works. Guess the SVH football team kinda sucks, huh?

I'm freaking out you guys! The game comes right before Sweet Valley's Centennial celebration, and if they lose it'll put a big damper on everything! Personally, I'm more concerned about the fact that Jessica Wakefield is in charge of planning the party. Who put a irresponsible teen girl in charge of a town's hundred year anniversary party? Isn't this something that a group of adults should be doing? Me and my logic.

Jessica is left to plan the party completely by herself when Lila ditches her to go shopping in New York ( I would have done the same). But she seems to be doing okay. She even got Liz and Ken to man the kissing booths.

Wait..kissing booths? I had to stop and google "do kissing booths exist". Apparently they did about 30 years ago, but now people are too worried about catching herpes. Guess that makes sense.

But no one in Sweet Valley would have herpes (especially since no one has sex), so bring on the kissing booths!

We hear a lot about how Suzanne and Ken are just SOOOO wrong for each other. Ken pretends to be interested in Mozart and foreign films, so Suzanne draws the conclusion that he likes that stuff. Sounds pretty damn reasonable. It's also reasonable that Suzanne would think that Ken isn't really into football, since he never tells her how much it means to him. Yet Suzanne is made out to be the bad guy here, as if she's supposed to read his mind. Wtf? Alright, so they're not made for each other. The miscommunication is Ken's fault...he's the one pretending to be something he's not. Maybe Ken isn't so likeable.

But back to Ken's school problem. Creepy Mr. Collins (remember him?) is giving Ken one more chance to pull up his English grade. If Ken can write a good short story, than his grade will go up and he can play football. Town busybody Elizabeth generously offers to help him out (because she's such a talented writer) and even gives Ken one of her private short stories. She's "funny" about her stories and has never shown it to anyone else. Ken must feel so privileged. He tries in vain to write his own story, but keeps getting distracted by Suzanne (who has NO idea that he's failing English. Some relationship! He doesn't tell her anything).

In the midst of all this crap, Liz, Ken and Suzanne go to some poetry reading that Suzanne put together (I swear Suzanne is so classy and awesome. Totally fangirling over here!). Liz makes fun of the poets, thinking, " She knew how much the poem must have meant to the girl, but it just seemed silly". Yeah. But when Liz reads her ahhhhhmazing poem about her mom, the rooms goes silent and everyone is so impressed. I want to reach in the book and strangle her.

The big day rolls around, and the paper is due. Ken accepts an F and doesn't play in the big game. Life goes on.

LOL nah. Actually, Ken puts his name on Liz's short story and turns it in. The story is so great that Mr. Collins wants to print it in the Oracle for the big centennial issue. Of course Liz wrote the greatest story ever told. Bleh. Liz is proud of Ken...until she realizes that the story is hers. Oops.
Liz confronts Ken, and like the doormat she is, she doesn't tell anyone that the story is really hers. After confronting Ken, she feels sorry for him, and hopes that he'll turn himself in.

Rigggght.

In real life, Ken would never turn himself in. But this is Sweet Valley...so he does. Ken writes a story about how he stole Liz's story and tells Liz to put that in the Oracle. It's basically a public confession to the whole school. He gets called into the principle's office, and admits that he stole Liz's story and blah blah blah. He should get in HUGE trouble because plagiarism is a really big deal.

Well he should, but he doesn't. Surprised? Didn't think so. Principle Cooper and super creep Collins are so impressed by Ken's "bravery", that they agree to give him a C for his story and ignore the whole cheating thing. Amazing. I should have been an all-star football player. Actually, I should have gone to Sweet Valley High.

Suzanne still has some common sense left and breaks up with him. She's the only one who calls him what he is, a thief! I'm liking her more and more.
This knocks Ken into reality, and he wonders how the football team is gonna feel about him now.
The football team congratulates him on his amazing bravery, and fellow player Scott Trost calls him a "special person". Gag. Like a group of teenage boys would really act like that? Don't mind me, I'm just bitter.

Suzanne tries to get Ken back after he wins the big game, and he calls her a "bore". Ooooh snap. 
The big centennial party is a huge hit, despite the fact that Jessica serves everyone sandwiches and chips. They raise a ton of money for some charity or something and everyone's happy.

From what I remember, Suzanne doesn't appear much in the series after this. 'Sobs'. But I won't be sad for too long, because the next book is one of my FAVORITES!! It's all about outcast Lynne Henry and it's one of the best SVH books out there. That's not an opinion, it's a fact.

Soooo what's the moral? Don't pretend to be someone else for a girlfriend/boyfriend. Don't steal someone else's story (unless you're a football player). And if someone steals your story, just sit back and wait for them to turn themselves in. I can't wait to apply these lessons to my own life!

Crash Landing! #20

We already know this is going to be a super dramatic one because of the exclamation point in the title. Oh, and the cover with Enid lying half-dead in Elizabeth's arms might be a giveaway too.

So as we learned in the last SVH adventure (you DID read my re-cap, right? ) George has been cheating on Enid with Robin Wilson. They met in their flying class, and Robin has already dumped her ex Allen Walters for George. George is planning to drop Enid as well. But before he breaks her heart, he's going to take her on his first flight as a licensed pilot since he promised her he would.

Oh, and did I mention Liz knows about all this cheating? And never tells her "best friend" Enid? I won't even begin to go into how annoyed that makes me, because then I'll be ranting for six pages. Elizabeth really gets me pissed sometimes.

George and Enid go on their flight, and yup, it ends in a Crash Landing! They land in Secca Lake, and Enid risks her life to save cheatin' George who is passed out underwater. Enid ends up temporarily paralyzed, and George walks away with barely a scratch.

Now George feels guilty, and goes to break things off with Robin, at least until Enid recovers. Jessica and Lila see George in front of Robin's house when he's breaking up with her, and Jessica suddenly acts like she cares about Enid and is all like "George is such cheating scum!". Never mind that Jessica herself is quite the little cheater.

Jessica tells Liz who pretends like she didn't already know, and Liz makes Jessica promise no to tell anyone. Jessica doesn't keep this promise, (DUH), and once she tells her friends they all decide to start ignoring Robin. I guess since Enid is seriously injured, they're on her side. I love how all of them suddenly are SO against cheating, when most of them cheat and steal boyfriends all the time! I mean, that's pretty much the plot in 90% of these books.

Robin isn't aware of the cold war being waged on her, and when she goes to sit with her friends at lunch, they all get up leaving her sad, and "looking hungrily at Cara's uneaten ice cream". Haha.
She starts to gain some weight, and thinks, "It took too long too get myself thin. I'm not going to let my figure go". Huh??? Last I checked, Robin dropped that weight in about two weeks

Probably one of the best parts of this so-so SVH book is when Enid shows up at the dance with George and Lila exclaims: "who goes to a dance in a wheelchair? One of the reasons I love Lila. She is both hilarious and awful.

Problems start right away, when it becomes painfully obvious that Robin and George are into each other. Especially when he dances a song with Robin at Enid's insistence, and they totally have a "romantic moment", making it really obvious to everyone that something is going on. Enid dismisses the whole thing the next day, acting like everything is fine.

Enid had a surgery earlier that was supposed to get her walking again, but she doesn't seem to have a will to walk. She knows that George won't leave her as long as she's in a wheelchair,so she's resigned to never walking again. At this point, George can't even hide his disinterest in Enid, making their dates very strained and awkward. Between Enid's desperate cheerfulness and George's indifference, it's almost painful to read about.

Elizabeth must step in and save the day, and of course the first step is to consult Mr.To-Catch-A-Predator (Aka Mr. Collins). She tells him about the whole Enid issue, and he praises her for her "keen understanding of human behavior"". She blushed, and I cringed a little.

After this inspirational chat, Elizabeth thinks up a plan to get Enid back to her usual boring, walking, self, involving Mr. Collins' son Teddy.
Elizabeth invites Enid over while Teddy is at her house swimming in the pool, and leaves Enid in charge of Teddy while she goes inside for a few minutes.

Teddy pretends to drown, and Enid freaks out and jumps out of the chair and into the pool to save him. OMG she can walk!! Elizabeth's little plan is revealed, and within 5 seconds Enid decides that she'll be fine without George, and that he should be with Robin. That was a quick recovery.

They celebrate Elizabeth's successful (and child-endangering) plan with champagne and wine. I thought drinking was only for high school drop outs and school tramps?

The sub-plot is (get ready to be shocked...) Jessica chasing after a guy! Oooh. Jessica's latest prey is the teacher of the cooking class she and Lila apparently signed up for in Showdown, (don't remember that), and he actually sounds pretty hot.
"he was well over six feet tall, his broad shoulders tapering to a slender waist. He had jet-black hair, and chiseled features."

Did I mention he's french and twenty six? Sign me up.

Of course Jessica is absolutely sure that he won't be able to resist her jailbait charms, and works extra hard in the cooking class to earn his admiration. She even plans to ask him to the school dance (since when were 26 year old men allowed to go as dates to high school dances????). Buuut turns out he's got a hot girlfriend already. And she can't even cook! Ouch.

Jessica actually had another motivation to become a great cook besides hot guys, believe it or not. She wants to show her family that she can cook dinner just as well as Miss perfect Elizabeth, and attempts to cook mussels for them. She doesn't cook them right, causing some major food poisoning that sends Ned, Alice, and Elizabeth running to the bathroom. Coincidentally, Jessica didn't eat the mussels, so she was spared. It's one of the only times you ever hear about a Wakefield going to the bathroom, by the way.

Ned and Alice's wedding anniversary is coming up soon, and Jessica is determined to show up Elizabeth, and get her parents the best gift ever, especially after the whole mussels incident. For some reason she thinks making them a gourmet dinner is a good idea. You think that she would lay off cooking for them, since she like, just made them sick with her cooking a day ago.

But Elizabeth ruins everything as usual by giving her parents tickets to a dinner-theater show on the day Jessica was planning to make their dinner. When she tells them about her present, they make some rude jokes about her crappy cooking and tell her maybe she can cook the next day or something. Then they go back to gushing over Liz for the rest of the book, making Jessica contemplate doing something drastic..like Runaway!

Moral of Crash Landing: don't pretend to be paralyzed to hang on to a man, especially if he's cheating on you. Well, there goes my plan to get and keep a boyfriend!

Showdown #19

Lila is way cute on this cover, even though she's wearing a very blah-looking gray sweater.  I wouldn't think a stuck-up rich girl like her would be caught dead in that sweater. Jessica looks kinda worn-out, and for some reason my first thoughts were "crack head" and "cougar" when I saw her.

We're picking up from the last book, where Lila met the mysterious construction worker Jack. She brags to everyone about him, and plans the mandatory Lila-pool-party to show off her new man. Jessica automatically wants him, (because why on earth should she let her best friend have a decent guy? Thats what friends are for.), and starts trying to get her claws into him immediately.

The second Lila leaves them alone for two minutes, Jessica practically forces her phone number down Jack's throat and tells him to call her. Being the faithful type, he calls Jessica up for a date not long after the party. He also schedules a date on a different day with Lila. What a winner! Jess knows he's taking Lila out, but doesn't care once she gets her date with him.

After one date and a bunch of sappy making-out, (he even names a star after her! Omg romantic!), Jessica is in LOVE. And she just knows that he'll get rid of that pest Lila soon and be all hers. And we just know this isn't going to be nearly that simple.

Jess seems to think that because he's charming and went to a prep school on the East Coast, he must be some kind of royalty. She pictures herself being by his side in some stupid royal castle 12 year-old fantasy.

Jack even tells Lila he wants to marry her, and to keep the "engagement" a secret, because "they'd jump on the story in a second". Who "they" is, no one, including Lila, knows. But naturally she assumes that, wow, he must be really important!! She's totally thrilled to be engaged to this sexy mystery man she barely knows. Ah to be sixteen again.

Oh, and money and valuable items keeps disappearing around Jack, he acts strangely when his past is brought up, and sometimes behaves as if he's on drugs. Tons of obvious signs that everyone misses, and as usual Liz notices something isn't right, but doesn't want to think the worst of someone. 'Sigh'
Basically much of the book is just Jack dating both girls, Lila on the weekdays and Jess on the weekends.

Here's the rundown:

Jessica and Lila "OMG Jack I love you!!! You're so amazing, perfect man, together forever lalalala, he must be royalty since he's sooo mysterious!"

Jack (to both of them) "I love you and I named a star after you! We'll never be apart, just don't ask about my past or I'll get all irritated. But don't worry, I've got nothin' bad to hide..."


Jessica " He's gonna dump Lila any second now! Annnny second...."


Elizabeth "Hmmm this guy sounds suspicious, but I'm going to keep out of this until someone is in danger because for once I'm minding my own business."

And you know someone is about to be in danger. And who else but Jessica? She goes out on another date with Jack, and they go back to his apartment (side note- PARENTS? Hellllllo??? You're just fine with your sixteen-year-old in some adult man's apartment? And yes they met and approved of this older man for their teen daughter. Ugggh) Jess finds all kinds of drugs in Jack's bathroom. Weed, "white powder" and pills of all kinds. Sounds like my kinda guy.

Then when she goes to confront him, she finds him digging in her purse. Yes, instead of making some excuse to leave safely, she confronts an unpredictable drug-user in his apartment. Mmmm smart. Jack drops his nice-guy B.S after she calls him a "phony" (the idea!), and things get violent when he starts trying to choke Jessica out.

Of course Liz has already figured out that Jack is a fake, because Nicholas and his friend David know Jack. They tell her the real story about him. His whole family died in a boating accident, and he started doing drugs and making up crazy stories about his life. They all rush to get Jessica (somehow, they know she's at his apartment), after Elizabeth makes a call to Lila and gets his address. Lila seems more annoyed about Jess trying to sneak behind her back with Jack then anything else.

You know the rest, Elizabeth and friends get there just in the nick of time to save Jessica, and give her most of the credit for saving herself, even calling her a "heroine". Um, ok. Jack goes to jail, and the worst parents ever, (Ned and Alice), wax on about how they think a "troubled boy like that" needs counseling, not jail. How about you two just don't give advice?

Sub-plot is Elizabeth catching Enid's boyfriend George in an embrace with former fatso Robin Wilson. Turns out they fell in love during flying school, and they have this whole sob story for Liz about how they didn't mean to fall in love and cheat on their respective significant others, it just happened! Liz is a terrible friend, so she agrees to say nothing to Enid until George is ready to tell her. What!?! If I found something like that out, I would tell my best friend right away!

See how all of this goes down in the next book, Crash Landing!

Moral of this lovely story? If a guy is super mysterious, he's probably a drug addict with major issues. What would I do without the dating advice I've gotten from SVH? (Possibly I'd actually get dates, and not sit around recapping SVH books....)