For a lot of people my age, Sweet Valley was an indelible companion though adolescence. They were first published in 1983, and ran for more than 175 books over two decades – most of which are in Kindle Unlimited. (Sorry to your to-do list.)
Off the top of my head I can think of so many traits, phrases, and absolutely bizarro details from the “strange and terrifying world of Sweet Valley,” to quote Double Love, one of my favorite podcasts re-examining the SVH world.
I challenged myself to set a timer for 1 minute and write as many as I could remember.
Hooboy.
- Jessica (the Id) and Elizabeth (the SuperEgo) Wakefield
- 1Bruce1, the Patman porsche
- Lavaliere necklaces
- Elizabeth gets kidnapped in like book 4 or something (I looked it up – it was #13)
- red Fiat spider
- Ken, the original Himbo
- the Droids, the high school band with cassette releases
- maillot bathing suits – for years I had no idea what that was
- string bikinis. Bikinis everywhere.
- “perfect size 6” (fuck offfffffff, says current me on behalf of 13 year old me)
- Spanish tile?
- Constant pool parties
- Never growing out of junior year of high school despite having two spring breaks, two summer vacations, two winter whatever it was, and every single month there was some kind of dance that not having a date for was inconceivable?
- Blonde!
- Pacific blue eyes
- The refrigerator fell on Olivia and killed her (sorry, spoilers)
- Lila Fowler was a shoplifting menace
- I never tried cocaine because of Regina Morrow.
That’s kind of a lot of things given that I barely remember what day it is, and have no idea where my keys are. All these Sweet Valley factoids just floating around in my brain, soaking in the nostalgia department like they built that wing of my memory – probably because they did.
Francine Pascal “created” the series concepts and if I remember correctly wrote outlines for most of the books, which were then penned by a ghostwriter under the name ‘Kate Williams.’ I think I’ve met one of the Kates Williams.
To say my young self was obsessed with the series is not an understatement. I still wonder why this series had such a hold on me then, and now. The first Sweet Valley I read was Winter Carnival, which is incredibly bonkers in the best way. There’s a nightmare sequence and spangly silver ski suits, and so much drama over a ski trip. Everything was dramatic in Sweet Valley. And very, very White.
My discovery of romance echoes my discovery of Sweet Valley: I learned about romance fiction in the public library from another student in my high school who had read almost every historical romance in the spinny rack (this was 1991-1993 so the books were extremely fuchsia and very chonky). She’d dog-eared every dubious consent-laden sex scene so that readers could skip them if they didn’t want to read them – a true public service.
With Sweet Valley High, one of my very good friends in church youth group had Winter Carnival, and I started reading it out of curiosity. I was and am a pretty fast reader, and I was devastated, and I mean devastated when she took it HOME with her and wouldn’t let me BORROW it because she was in the middle of READING IT, can you BELIEVE THAT. (Pearl, wherever you are, sorry I was a little, ok, a lot over the top about that. You were right.)
I wasn’t sure I could convince my parents to buy them for me, and I don’t remember seeing them in my library at the time. I was desperate to finish this book, and imagine my little face when I saw in the B. Dalton’s how many there were to read at that point. Endless shelves with slim white spines and red block letters! I was unstoppable.
They weren’t durable, even though they are enduring. Even now, the ones I spot in used bookstores are delicate, with crispy, brittle pages and torn covers. They were produced with what seems like minimal longevity in mind, but wow, did that series have legs: spinoffs about the Wakefield twins when they were little, when they were older, mystery series, tv series.
There is a lot to unpack in the world of Sweet Valley. The Whiteness, as I mentioned. The constant emphasis on slimness as “perfection.” Even in the ill-received updates to the series, and the book with the twins as adults, the issue of what size they were was fraught. Then there’s the wealth fantasy, the emphasis on heteronormativity, the idea that high school was the pinnacle of your life as a young person.
Would we have 90210 without Sweet Valley? I don’t think so.
Much like my discovery of Sweet Valley matches my discovery of romance (attempted petty larceny), Sweet Valley also led me to romance. When the series grew stale, or I outgrew it, I moved on to Sweet Dreams romances, which were slightly more adventurous, but just as chaste. I recapped a bunch of the Sweet Dreams romances for the podcast, in fact, because there were a few from that never-ending series that had a hold on my memory as much as Jessica and Elizabeth did. Sweet Valley and Sweet Dreams led me to series romances – some of which had SEX in them, which blew my young mind, because they looked just like Sweet Valley and Sweet Dreams in size, weight, page numbers, and the fact that they had images of individual women on the covers. But the Harlequin ones had sexytimes?!
And for many readers, the Sweet Valley trajectory included VC Andrews in the realm of “books we passed around in school, sometimes secretly.” Talk about mind blowing!
The novels also influenced the trajectory of my life in ways I recognized recently. I researched studying abroad in high school after reading Leaving Home, where Elizabeth wants to spend a semester abroad in Switzerland, and I was so excited for her but everyone convinced her not to go. I was so enchanted with the idea (and possibly pissed off at the story I didn’t get to read) that I did in fact study abroad, in Zaragoza, Spain, in fall 1990. I was the youngest in my cohort of student travelers; my birthday was two days before the age cutoff. I don’t know if I would have discovered the idea of study abroad without having read about it first.
It’s overwhelming, almost, when I line up all the ways Francine Pascal’s work influenced where I am, what I do, and what I love. When I read Papaerback Crush by Gabrielle Moss, and found other people writing and podcasting and talking about the book series that were so formative to my life, I feel a little less alone and weird. So many of us were influenced by these books in ways we don’t see until years later.
I’ve written and talked about Sweet Valley a lot over the years, too. I reviewed Dear Sister, the one where Elizabeth is in a coma and wakes up thinking she’s Jessica and acts accordingly, back in 2007:
…I’m not here to judge the sexism, racism, and fatism inherent in the Sweet Valley series, nor am I here to opine at the larger effect the series had on young women of my generation. No, no! I am here to tell you how bad this book was.
Was it bad? OMG. Please. It was fucking awful. And yet, I read it. [in 42 minutes!]
This is famously the one where Bruce Patman gets to second base with Elizabeth-who-thinks-she’s-Jessica and I was scandalized at reading the word “breast.” Dear Sister was originally published in 1984, so I probably read it a few years later, closer to when I was 13 or 14. Little of it makes sense, but boy howdy doo, is it compelling.
I also interviewed the hosts of the podcast Double Love, Karyn Moynihan and Anna Carey, back in 2019 in Episode 335, where we spent a lot of time discussing how the books were “a mix of nostalgia and camp” and how many people have “some familiarity, if not fluency, in Sweet Valley lore,” even if that lore is rather alarming from current perspectives:
Sarah: …what are some of the things you notice about messages that they have about dating and sexuality and masculinity?
Anna: Oh God.
Sarah: Nothing good, right?
Anna: No!
Karyn: No!
Anna: Completely.
[Laughter]
Anna: I think one of the things that’s really struck us is that they need a date to go to everything.
Karyn: To go anywhere! To their friends’ parties.
Anna: Yeah!
The “compellingly ridiculous,” as I called them in that episode, world of Sweet Valley influenced me in ways I’ll probably keep discovering as I look back at my reading history and the genres I love. I often joke about moments when my inner 13 year old is NOT CHILL, and Sweet Valley was what my 13 year old self was reading as fast as she could. They formed a piece of the foundation of my adult self, which is no small feat.
Farewell to Francine Pascal, and thanks for the campy memories.
Did you read Sweet Valley High books? What strange details do you remember from them?