Most Hackneyed Event Involving Alcohol
EVERY time someone is involved in a car accident—Liz and Todd on the motorcycle, Bill Chase’s dead girlfriend, Cousin Rexy, Ken Matthews, Mr. Martin—the cause is almost ALWAYS a drunk driver, male, white, 20ish-40ish years of age. Because I guess women don’t drink in Sweet Valley. And we already know there aren’t any minorities there. Sheesh.

Most Unrealistic Event Involving Alcohol
Okay, at the Jungle Prom (*snerk*), Jessica tries to sabotage Elizabeth so she, Jess, will win Prom Queen. So she spikes Liz’s drink. With about a half a paper cup full of vodka. And then Liz SHARES the spiked drink—one cup of punch, mind—with Jessica’s boyfriend Sam, and… BOTH of them end up so absolutely shit-faced wasted from A SHARED CUP OF PUNCH that they get wild all over the school gym and are slurring their words and stumbling and weaving, and then drive off and Elizabeth crashes the Jeep and is too drunk to remember anything that happened—FROM ONE SHARED CUP OF SPIKED PUNCH?! C’mon….

I wish this were a joke.

The All-Time Low
The Sweet Valley Terror Trilogy (104, 105, 106). Dear God. Liz and Jess spend a summer in London working as interns on the London Journal. And (can I even manage this with a straight face?) … um… they encounter a werewolf.

This whole plotline is the most dreadful, most unrealistic, most stupid-

Okay, first there’re the atrocious London/England stereotypes. Everyone takes tea every afternoon. There’s the stupidity of “Watch out! You’re driving on the wrong side of the street!” Does ANYONE over the age of 10 not know that in England they drive on the other side of the street? No one knows that biscuits = cookies. And it’s ALWAYS foggy/rainy. And there’re all these stereotypical London characters with trite post-Dickensian names:  Lady Wimpole who is obsessively attached to her little Yorkie named “Poo-Poo”; Sergeant Bumpo, the bumbling Scotland Yard detective who messes up every case he gets near; Lucy Friday, the crisp, no-nonsense newspaper editor; Luke Shepherd, the sensitive reporter/poet (with a father who he mistakenly identifies as a “pharmacist”… in England, it’d be a chemist, O Fact Checker!); Portia the thespian; Mrs. Bates, the strict hostel housemother; Lord Robert Pembroke, the nobleman that Jessica manages to instantly snag, who of course has all the trappings of a blueblood (like going to Eaton [sic])—but never had love.…. And the royal family. Oh, yes. The FAKE royal family… like Princess Eliana, who has run away and is now pretending to be Lina, poor girl from Liverpool, who works with the homeless and falls for a poor commoner. And yeah, “Eliana” is a name that the British upper-crust would use. Onerous.

And then there’s the reappearance of Rene Glize, the dreamy French boy from the Spring Break book that was published, like, ten years earlier, who is by amazing coincidence working in London and staying at the very same hostel as the Wakefields. Why? He does nothing … except provide Elizabeth with a back-up Summer Boyfriend at the end of the trilogy when her London Fling with Luke the Sensitive Reporter-Poet Boy goes horribly awry. No matter that faithful Todd is still back home waiting for her… Liz needs a summer boy in London.

And there’s the whole werewolf thing. It turns out that the Fellow Reporter Boy Liz is dating is nuts and thinks he’s a werewolf (I repeat, he THINKS HE’S A WEREWOLF!) and has these blank spells in which he runs around London in a wolf mask tearing the throats of people he has a grudge against (like the owner of the London Journal… a nobleman who ends up being his Real Father). Ahhh. Ummm. (How can he tear bloody wounds in peoples' throats in a rubber werewolf mask?) And it turns out the Real Father/London Journal Owner is the father of Jessica’s new boyfriend Lord Robert and Luke the Werewolf Boy Reporter is unconsciously trying to set up his legitimate half-brother for the crimes because Luke is jealous and upset that his real father has never acknowledged him. And thanks to Liz and Jess, Luke the Werewolf Boy gets to go to Pembroke Manor for a weekend and meet – unbeknownst to everyone else involved—his Real Father, which is sooooo deeply disturbing to him that he goes off the deep end and- Oh, but wait… he’s already been committing Werewolf Murders, including the dastardly murder of little Poo-Poo (because...?), so what was the catalyst? Um. Uh.

Not only is the A-plot preposterous with all the holes in it, but also there’s the sub-plot of Jessica and Robert’s hot romance. Because yeah, a nobleman would just pick up a 16-year-old American intern from Daddy’s workplace like *that * and be all infatuated with her. And Jessica, who was just all shattered by Sam’s death, is “in love” with a rich, handsome British socialite who takes her to all the best restaurants and clubs in London? How convenient.

And on top of all that, there’s all of that wretched “sleuthing” bullcrap, especially with Elizabeth running around with her “little notebook” with all sorts of painfully-obvious and legible information like “Keep an eye on the elder Pembroke!” because surely she had to WRITE DOWN that in order to REMEMBER IT or something.

Not to mention the fact that two books earlier, Jessica was back in Sweet Valley moaning about missing her best friend Cara who’d moved to London.... But I guess she was too busy with her nobleman to even think about looking Cara up during the whole summer, because no one mentions her…. Hmmmm.

And there’re secret diaries and hidden rooms and big breaking news stories and insanity and unconscious motives and Liz and Jess playing matchmaker to two of their reporter bosses (because nothin’ says romance like werewolf murders) and-

Oh, for-

Anyway.

I leave you with, at Kel's suggestion, some words of wisdom from Moe the Bartender to Homer J. Simpson:

"That is the stupidest story I ever heard, and I've read the entire Sweet Valley High series."

Of course, this can only scratch the surface of the dreadfulness that is Sweet Valley…so feel free to write in to Dwanollah and tell her what YOU think! Got some groovy categories of your own? New nominations? “Crystal Ball” nominations? Heck, just wanna confess that you, too, have read this vile series? Drop Dwanollah an e-mail and you might—just MIGHT—find yourself featured here at Dwanollah.com!

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