runaway #21

first up, hola!! the bag jess is schlepping in this cover art is awesome. except there is no way jess would ever get all the stuff she wanted to take away from her house in sweet valley forever in there. and does she need some toner?

i read this book ages ago, and it's only because i just read another one that i realised i hadn't done my blog post about it yet. i'm so terrible at blogging. no wonder only one person follows my blog. i know for a FACT that at least five people read it though. i'm totally sure though there's like at least one or two others who read it but will never admit it.

right, so, from what i remember of this book it's that JESS is running away! ps - can we just take a moment to talk about how awesome it is that all the titles of these books basically tell you EXACTLY WHAT THE F-WORD IS GOING TO HAPPEN! it's amazing. so clever.

so jess is pissed because, as USUAL she is the butt of everyone's jokes at home and no one gives a crap, they are still going on about the seafood salad that poisoned everyone, still giving her heaps about her room being a total pig sty and when she pretends to be interested in mr wakefield's proper lawyer things everyone laughs at her and is like - why don't you go to the MALL jess and leave the smart stuff to LIZ! ho ho ho!

well, seriously, i know jess is a total nutjob, but imagine how YOU would feel if goody-goody do-no-wrong LIZ was your sister?! it's all fun and games when you are out at parties and boys are all into you and NOT liz because even though you look EXACTLY THE SAME apart from a birthmark on your sister's right (left??) shoulder she is basically as interesting as watching paint dry. BUT your parents don't even take anything you do seriously and constantly nag at you for being a total walking disaster while LIZ gets treated like she just won a nobel peace prize on a daily basis - NO WONDER JESS RUNS AWAY!

she meets this hot and scruffy guy called nicky who is actually kind of cool but a super bad influence because i think he drinks a beer in one chapter. nicky thinks life sucks in sweet valley (BLASPHEMY!) and so he moves to san francisco, asking jess to come with!

jess gets on a bus but as soon as she does she is like - oh, this is too hard, living with my parents who are jerks to me and my sister who is a total suck up is better than having to get a bus ANYWHERE!

so she doesn't runaway after all! even though the book is called RUNAWAY! TRICKSIE francine pascal (kate william)!

four stars, disappointed in jess's lack of ability to live in san franciso, because like, as if you wouldn't do that if you could.

power play #4

robin wilson is "chubby". francine pascal's word, not mine, and by "francine pascal" i mean kate william. weighty issues abound in this book which is laced with really unhealthy messages about weight vs popularity. unlike the last SVH i read, "don't go home with john", which dealt with teen issues in a really classy (well, for SVH) and subtle (well, for SVH) way, this book just didn't ice my proverbial cake.

robin wants to get into pi beta alpha, the hottest sorority on campus, the one that jessica wakefield is president of and the one that liz casually turns up to when something important is going on like voting to get a "chubby" chic membership, because liz is cool like that.

robin basically worships these popular kids, she thinks her whole life is going to be amazing if she can just get popular and get into their club. she follows jess around like a lapdog, picking up her dry-cleaning and doing random chores for her while she's out doing other fun stuff with lila. when liz puts robin forward to be part of the PBA that bunch of skinny bitches go totally power crazy and make robin do like a gazillion embarrassing things from having to spend a day on the beach in a far too small bikini playing beach volleyball to asking bruce patman on a date and they even make her wear short shorts and run around the track every day while people yell out mean things about her size from the sidelines. 

robin gets blackballed (whatever that is) and even though she did EVERY SINGLE THING the PBA told her to do she still didn't get in because, well, she's chubby. 

seriously, i actually wanted to punch jess in the face, what a bitch. so not cool jess, and even liz doesn't really do much, she just tries to get robin into the sorority and it's like - WHY DO YOU EVEN WANT TO HANG OUT WITH THOSE SKINNY BITCHES WHO ARE TOTALLY MEAN?????

so robin goes like totally depressed but she keeps running round the track and starts eating lettuce leaves (like she ACTUALLY eats just lettuce leaves for lunch)... and after a couple weeks she is suddenly SKINNY and HOT and she got some designer jeans and even bruce patman is like - WHO'S THAT GIRL in those designer jeans? and he almost walks into a wall.

and then the next day she wins the miss sweet valley high beauty contest, or whatever the hell contest it is.

like WHAT????????!!!!!! seriously, what message is this trying to get across to teens? even i was like - OMG i should go running and eat lettuces! then i remembered my bad knees and that i didn't want to be in a sorority so i ate a biscuit.

SORORITIES ARE BAD MMMK? just because you have a few extra kilos doesn't mean you should live off a lettuce leaf. don't get me wrong kids, i'm all for healthy lifestyle and fitness and stuff, but eating a lettuce and working out for like hours every day when you never did a sit up before all because you want to be skinny so that bruce patman walks into a wall is like kind of whack. 

*sigh*

2 stars for irresponsible ghost writing.

don't go home with john #90

TRIGGER WARNING - date rape. 

this is such a hot topic right now! everyone all over the interweb is blogging on about that american prick and his definition of "legitimate rape" and sparking a bit of a feminist uprising. well here's a little story from first published in 1991 which is so scarily relevant TODAY it makes me wonder if nothing in the last 20 years has even changed?!  

kate williams wrote this one, and tells ya what, it's AMAZEBALLS with a capital AMAZEBALLS! it's just so gosh darn good. sweet valley gold kids!! it's one of the proper svhs which TEACHES A REALLY IMPORTANT LESSON, a SERIOUSLY important and amazing good lesson in this one you guys.

DID I MENTION I REALLY LIKED IT?!

so lila is having a crush on john pfeifer, semi-cute sports editor for the svh paper and general nobody until he gets an internship with a real newspaper and lila decides he's suddenly actually kind of somebody, but let's face it - she's scraping the barrel with this one... and BOY does she scrape it! 

lila finally gets a date with john, and because he's a really nice guy and she totes fancies him she suggests driving up to the lookout after dinner and dancing for a bit of macking out, because, that's just what they do in sweet valley (only easy annie goes all the way!). BUT when a girl says NO, john, it means NO!!! even if she's wearing a lyrca mini-dress and kissed you back when you kissed her first when she says "stop it, take me home" what she REALLY MEANS is "stop it, take me home".  

NO MEANS NO!!! 

so mr nice guy sports editor john actually then tries to rape her. it's a bit full on, i was reading it on the bus to work and it made me a little uncomfortable, really. he like actually tries to get his pants off and everything, it's quite graphic... well you know, for sweet valley, it's not all that much compared to PUSH by sapphire. 

the worst isn't over though. lila spends a week walking around school in silence without make up on and wears only sweat pants because she doesn't want to be beautiful any more. she doesn't want boys to look at her or talk to her at all. she thinks the whole thing was her fault and she brought it upon herself even though she said no. she's totally ashamed. sadface.

when john then has the guts to turn up at lila's masquerade party AT HER HOUSE the next weekend, right when she was starting to feel a tiny bit better, AND with a sophomore dressed as a RABBIT no less, she fully goes nuts and yells at him and calls him a rapist in front of, like, the WHOLE SCHOOL (well, those cool enough to be invited to a fowler mansion party)! everyone is pretty shocked but then you know what they do?? they tell her she asked for it, had it coming, all that CRAP that people say. it's only when another girl he tried to rape comes forward and the two girls confront him at the dairi burger that people start to believe lila and they send john to counselling.

seriously, john needs more than counselling. so not cool john. 

who would've thought something like this could happen in sweet valley? who would've thought something like this could happen to lila?? who would've thought something like this could be done by john pfeifer?? i mean, john is such a good guy, even ELIZABETH doesn't believe it at first. well guess what girls (and boys), you just don't know do you? anyone can be a creep when you get them alone at miller's point, even john pfeifer. anyone can get date raped, even perfect rich important lila fowler. and if sweet valley isn't safe from rapists, where is?

i seriously think all high school aged girls need to read this book. it's like date rape for dummies sweet valley style. 

FIVE MILLION STARS!!!!!!! ************************************


DISCLAIMER: if this in any way sounds as if i am not taking this issue seriously i apologise. i think rape is an horrendous crime and the reason i love this book so much is that it is super educational and deals with this issue with loads of integrity and girl smarts. 

crash landing #20

omg, ok so like i KNOW i haven't been reading or blogging SVH and i'm pretty sure every single one of the approximately three awesome people who read this have been pretty freaking sad about it. sorry you guys.

you know what? i read crash landing AGES ago, like MONTHS ago... i somehow managed to convince my book club which has a penchant for lesbian fiction to read a sweet valley high book because, let's face it, everyone has a girl crush on jess. a couple of the ladies were heaps keen and i was heaps keen and then i went home and read the book THAT NIGHT (not really, i was already half way through it, that's why i suggested that one and it probably took me a week because i only read it on the bus) because i was so excited to have people to talk to about SVH!!

so of course i didn't want to do my blog straight away and ruin the book for people because you know i always put in so many SPOILERS but then i never ended up going to book club that week anyway so it didn't even matter in the end! darn it! and here i am MONTHS later trying to write an awesomely articulate, clever, hilarious, witty and like, really good blog and like totally STRUGGLING! (clearly).

BUT i think i'm getting back my SVH mojo and inspiration to read ALL OF THEM because this week i went to a tiny little town on an island and found a second hand book store that was totally amazing. it was like some really old big house that was just crammed full of old books. it took me about half an hour to find the kids/teen section but when i did find it i also found ELEVEN SVH books i haven't read! :-O WOWZERS! so exciting. that like never happens. actually, it happened once before. i had read a few of the ones they had though, so i left them at the front of all the shelves for someone else to joyfully discover!

BUT THIS POST WAS MEANT TO BE ABOUT CRASH LANDING!!! i hear you guys say (shout). SORRY! i totally forgot what happened in it!

i'm pretty sure it was something about enid and george going for a joy flight in a plane and it crashed and she nearly died and couldn't walk any more and then george felt bad because he was already secretly dating someone else but couldn't break up with enid because she couldn't get off the couch. the wakefields went out for mexican and ate enchiladas because the night before jess accidently gave everyone food poisoning. that was pretty much it i think. epic.

showdown #19

so basically what happens is that lila falls in love with a CONSTRUCTION WORKER! it's like the worst thing that's ever happened to her. jess is jels of the drama so SHE falls in love with THE SAME CONSTRUCTION WORKER!

the construction worker is a dude called jack, and like he's WAY TOO hot and awesome to actually just be a construction worker so jess and lila start digging to find out about his mystery past. he keeps talking about "holidays" and mentions that he once lived in a "house" so that totally MUST mean he's practically a PRINCE or something. jack goes along with it all, because, like why wouldn't you? he starts dating both lila AND jess, because like, they are best friends and they would never ever in a billion years be able to work out that they are both dating the same guy. no seriously, they actually DO NOT work out they are dating the same guy. lolwut?!

this goes on and on for quite some time. lila thinks she is going to marry him and jess just wants to get into his pants pretty much.

things get exciting when jess's popcorn money goes missing out on a date with the j-wreck to the movies. omg this awesome, she's in the cinema and is like "jack is probably the sort of guy who would think a girl paying for stuff is cool" so she offers to buy popcorn, but she CAN'T because jack has stolen her purse (we've all been there).

SO it all comes to a head when nicholas (regina's brother) suddenly remembers where he's seen jack before and that - JACK IS A PSYCHOPATH!!

his game is like stealing popcorn money, doing drugs, holding up chics at knife-point for popcorn money and STEALING PHOTOGRAPHS OF UNDERWATER CREATURES! oh MY!

jess finds all this out for herself when she goes snooping in his MEDICINE CABINET (we've all been there) and finds a box full of ALL SORTS of drugs! not just panadol either! when she comes back out with the box - because, we all know that's the way to deal with these things; bring to the attention of a PSYCHOPATH that you went through his stuff and found his stash. he ATTACKS her, and is about to carve her with a kitchen knife except that suddenly NICHOLAS MORROW is beating down the front door and saving her LIFE!!!

10 points for nicholas morrow for beating down a door.

1 point for jessica for living through another psychopathic kidnapping (how many are we up to??)

0 points for liz because she wasn't really in it.

4 stars (not enough drama). 

head over heels #18

head over heels is right indeedy! if you're talking about the way i feel about (SWOON!) bruce patman that is! the love of my sweet valley life falls in love for the first time and if it was with anyone but regina morrow i would be seriously annoyed, kind of like how i felt during sweet valley confidential about EVERYTHING!

i digress.

so bruce (SWOON!) falls in love with regina and everyone is like - what? regina?! but she's like DEAF! well hells yeah she's deaf, but you totally CANNOT tell because she learnt to lip read real good in special schools and because she can hear "tones" she can talk totally normally! most peeps down at the SVH campus think the whole thing is whack and that bruce is just an asshole in a nice shirt with a cute deaf girl on his arm and that's all it'll ever be, but GUESS WHAT you guys, bruce (SWO... ah you get my point!) proves you (not me, because i like totally get him) all wrong by giving up dinners in the mansion with regina so that she can go live in SWITZERLAND for a year and be cured of her deafness! because, kids, in sweet valley there 'aint nothin' a dude called dr. friederich can't fix if you got the right kind of cashola.

who's wondering what jess has been up to this whole time? she's out busy trying to sabotage bruce & regina's relationship because if she does then lila will TOTALLY write her term paper. super idea jess, except that everyone knows LILA CAN'T EVEN READ GOOD let alone write a passable history term paper and then when you get a D on your paper you will be like - GAH! got to make plans to steal lila's construction worker boyfriend! OMG SERIOUSLY? jess is also to be found during this book out in the fiat convertible crushing on boys who used to be deaf before they met dr. friederich which is pretty cool and really open minded of her really. probably this could be the most open minded we've seen jess, she should get some props here...

actually maybe not, only because of the bit where jess calls regina's house later and is like - "can i talk to regina please" and her mum is like "dude, regina is deaf y'all!" and jess is like "oh yeah! lolz!" whoops!

liz is so boringly annoying in this one she doesn't even make it into the blog.

1BRUCE1 forevs!

five stars.