I finished Sweet Valley Confidential last night. And it was so bad that it was good. This may have been the most poorly written book that I've ever read, but it was a nice break from the other books I've been reading. And it was mindless, juicy, extremely pointless, and a fun flashback.
Quick Plot Download: Elizabeth and Todd Wilkens are engaged (remember her boyfriend from high school?) Well, Todd and Jessica start to have an affair and Elizabeth finds out. She gets pissed (understandably) and jets off to New York. The story picks up 8 months after Elizabeth find out about the affair...we learn more about the back story through a series of flashbacks.
The Good:
- It was really fun to reconnect with the Wakefield twins. They're 27 yrs old and a lot more risque now...cussing, having sex, drinking, etc. The girls have really grown up (tear runs down face).
- We revisit all their old friends: Enid Rollins (Elizabeth's BFF), Lila Fowler (Jessica's BFF), Winston Egbert (the dork), Bruce Patman (the jerk), Steven Wakefield (the brother). Each has their own little back-story that updates on their current status.
- Extreme flashback. I kinda want to go back and re-read the books and relive it all.
The Really Bad:
- No exaggeration that this was the most poorly written book I've ever read. I feel like this was the first draft that was written and they just decided to publish it as is. My Kindle version had a couple spelling errors (which is a large pet peeve of mine). Also, there were a lot of character perspective shifts without warning: one minute we were hearing what Elizabeth was doing and then it would switch to Elizabeth narrating. Similarly, the book would jump from one character to the next without warning. There were a lot of times I had to re-read a section to figure out what was going on.
- It was a little creepy how Jessica and Elizabeth described their relationship. Maybe it was like this in the old books, but at times the way that their relationship was described felt like they were lovers....lots of comments about feeling disconnection without each other, feeling a rush of happiness when they see each other, craving to see each other, etc.
- Some of the characters that were introduced I had ZERO idea who they were. This is likely because they were from the old books, but I almost felt like we got too much detail about these minor characters that don't do much for the story.
Overall, it was a fun, flashback read...I would only recommend to die-hard Sweet Valley fans.
Rank: C- / D+
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