Sweet Valley Series

[highhorse]

Is there any mention of Tom Hanks and what happened to him, or any of the other characters from the SVU series (Denise, Isabella, Billie etc)?

[MandySpark]

Apr 7, 2011 23:54:50 GMT -4 @highhorse said:

Is there any mention of Tom Hanks and what happened to him, or any of the other characters from the SVU series (Denise, Isabella, Billie etc)?

I think you mean Tom Watts, not Tom Hanks.

[highhorse]

Whoops! My mistake. I should be ashamed of myself, given how much time I used to spend reading that series...

[chonies]

Holy crap. I just finished this last night--the first 50 or so pages were tough to get through, but after that it

SPOILER: Click to show

was just one unending WTF?! after WTF!??!! NOT what I was expecting all these years, and I thought it was poorly written. It seemed to be much more in keeping with SVU and SVH:SY than original SVH. I was pretty disappointed, not to mention all the weird and dark ways people ended up. I didn't like the texture of it, and I was horrified how few people made it out of Sweet Valley. Also, no Olivia? No Jade Wu or Maria Santelli or Susan Stewart? WTH.

So, anyway.

[twopfan]

Chonies, I was really disappointed in the book as well. It was poorly written and I felt like the characters were just outlines, there was no insight to why people had made the choices they did and how things had happened. It was all plot, but even the plots were poorly thought out and executed. There are so many details that were missed and should have been mentioned. The seemed to pull some backstory from SVH and some from SVU and some from SV-SY and it was really hard to figure out which timeline they were referring to. And Lila has NO story. That was bull. And no Margo reference, either.

I've been re-reading all my SVH and it makes me even more disappointed with the new book. I do love the old SVH/SVU though. Especially what a sociopath Jess is and how Liz gets hers once in a while. And Lila! I'm team Lila forever.

[dwanollah]

The Lack of Lila is one of my biggest problems with the book. That and the Insta-Gay character. *sigh* Like I said, it might've been a very entertaining book if it wasn't about the freakin' Wakefield twins!

[chonies]

How much better would it have been to have a fabulously crass Lila inserted into the ¡InstaGay! plotline?

Another thing that jarred me was at the very end, when Enid was described as a gynecologist who became "very right wing." Wuh? Since when is Sweet Valley political? And, ew.

[twopfan]

Yeah, there was a lot of politics inserted into Sweet Valley that were never there before. I also found Elizabeth's drinking to be an interesting way of trying to show her as an adult.

[Deleted]

I think Francine must live a pretty awesome life, splitting time between NYC and France. But the whole thing definitely seemed to me like it was from the perspective of a 73-year-old woman who splits time between NYC and the south of France, which was kind of disconcerting since she spent most of her time writing about twentysomethings in southern California. The voices just didn't ring true to me at all.

Honestly, I'd much rather have read a book set among her peers. She must have some pretty bad-ass friends.

[bloodredcherries]

New information about the Sweet Valley High movie.

I don't think she should create a whole new character when there are so many minor ones that could be used.