Series Sunday Review (1): Sweet Valley Confidential

Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later by Francine Pascal

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Series Sunday is a meme hosted by Literary Marie of Precision Reviews.

*Read an installment of a series.
*Post a review/recommendation on your blog, FB, Twitter, Goodreads, or Shelfari pages.
*Share your review/recommendation by posting the link in the comments section below.
*Include the title, author, and name of the series so that other Series Sunday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists.

My first contribution to Series Sunday is Sweet Valley Confidential, which is part of the Sweet Valley series. My teenage years were consumed with Baby-sitters Club and Sweet Valley books, and I grew to love many of the Sweet Valley characters, so I was very excited to see this "where are they now" book that picks up 10 years after the SVH books.

I had read a few subpar reviews before I read this myself, so thankfully I wasn't expecting too much. However, I was disappointed anyway. These characters in this book were not the same characters I loved in the SVT, SVH, and most of the SVU series. Most of the plotlines were unimaginative or just plain WTF (Steven Wakefield and Aaron Dallas, anyone?). The way Elizabeth finds out about Jessica/Todd is stupid. The resolution to Jessica and Elizabeth's fight is stupid. I feel as though I just spent $10 to read a piece of fanfiction posted on fanfic.net.

It wasn't totally terrible, however. I did kind of like the parts about the friendship/relationship between Elizabeth and the playwright. And I liked how in the final catch up chapter, they mentioned Easy Annie and Nicky Shepard, two of my favorite characters from two of my favorite SVH books. But yeah, that's about it. If this was the best Francine Pascal could do, she could've kept it.




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Challenges: 100 Books in a Year, E-Book Challenge
Source: purchased at BN.com