2024 Nostalgia Re-readathon | SVU Thriller #11: Love and Murder

[luxken27]

The man of her nightmares...

When Lila Fowler meets mysterious, sexy Damon Price, the connection is too intense for words. Lila instantly feels as if she's known him for ages. And when she experiences the recklessly passionate thrill of his kisses, she knows he feels the same. But despite their deep romantic bond, Lila knows nothing about Damon's past.

Then the nightmares begin. Vivid, violent nightmares from another era in which she becomes Flora Grey, the wife of Theodore, an abusive man who looks exactly like Damon. Lila soon discovers that the Greys really existed...and Flora was murdered by her husband. The more Lila learns about the couple, the more Damon seems to adopt Theodore's wicked ways. Could Flora's tragic history be repeating itself?

I sail the good ship Bruce/Lila as an OTP for the Sweet Valley universe, so when this book opened with lots of references to Lila's deceased Italian count husband Tisiano, I knew I was in for a rough ride. Lila and Tisiano married right after SVH and lived for a while in his native Italy, before he was killed in a Jet Ski incident. Lila returned to Sweet Valley and started attending SVU with her lifelong friends. This is Super Thriller #11, set around the late-#30s of the SVU canon; if you didn't know any better, you'd think it was super early canon. Bruce/Lila is an established pairing, but this ghostie swipes it aside with ease, so less than a chapter into this, my back was already up. Things were only made worse when Jessica arrives in the plot and is the vain, spoiled, selfish early-SVH canon version of Jessica. The one who only ever thinks in terms of revenge. This is my least favorite Jessica, and after she was so awesome in ST #3, I was not looking forward to shenanigans here.

Lila is sitting in art history class one day, thinking back over her life with Tisiano, when suddenly a drop-dead gorgeous TA walks into her life. Said gorgeous TA will be taking over lectures for the aged old Professor no one likes, but Lila takes one look and fancies herself in love, before she even knows this guy's name. (This is not the Lila Fuckin' Fowler of my head-canon, TYVM.)

This guy is 23-year-old Damon Price, an art history grad student who is extremely into the early 20th century surrealist movement. He takes one look at Lila and basically falls right back in love with her, even when she makes a complete cake of herself in class in front of him.

Lila runs off to find her BFF Jessica, who is also in this class but of course skipped it, because working on her tan on the quad is a much better use of her time. Lila gushes about the gorgeous Damon to Jessica, who decides that she'll have a crack at him herself, and very pointedly reminds Lila that she has a steady boyfriend, who is so conveniently off studying abroad in Japan for the length of this book. Lila brushes her off and schemes with how to meet Damon outside of class, because she has this much hots for him.

Lila finally calls him at his office and apologizes for being weird in class, then enthuses that she was quite the art collector before returning to SVU, and basically sets up a date with him. The two go to the most expensive restaurant in town (for which Lila pays), then head back to his little grad student apartment, where they have some kissyface times and he tries to show her the artwork of his particularly favorite artist, only to accidently drop a book on her head. (Yes, this really happens, and it knocks her unconscious and everything.) Damon is terribly upset about what happened, but he avoids her because he's all up in his own confused feelings.

Meanwhile, Lila starts having dreams about herself and Damon, only they are a mid-1930s newlywed couple named Theodore and Flora. The first dream or two are okay, but they quickly become nightmares, where Theodore is angry with Flora, and becomes increasingly violent towards her. Lila is scared out of her wits, and every time she sees Damon, she sees Theodore. Things are only made worse when she realizes that Theodore Grey is the artist Damon idolizes, and one of the reasons why he's so drawn to Theo's paintings of Flora is because Lila is the spitting image of Flora.

Lila goes a bit crazy trying to convince Damon that she's reliving Theo/Flora's life together and that Theo killed Flora; he doesn't believe her and continues to try to push her away, even fleeing town. But Lila is still haunted by the nightmares, and by eerie phone calls she's receiving from a strange man whose voice sounds very much like Damon's. She can't decide if he's a crazy sick weirdo or what, especially when he shows up even after telling her he's leaving town, and starts acting strangely dark and cold around her.

Lila is now actively fearful for her life - she's thrown over her absent boyfriend for a strange man she now believes is going to kill her, because once upon a time Flora was murdered and Theo was accused of doing it. She sees Theo in her dreams and can't distinguish him from the Damon of her real life. She runs to her BFF Jessica for help, and from there things only get weirder.

After Jessica hears the whole crazy story and then witnesses Lila's nightmares, she accompanies her to the SVU library to learn more about Flora's life (because for some reason Lila stopped looking when she found Flora's obit and the accusation against Theo), and then takes her to some kook on the coastal highway calling herself a reincarnation therapist. Said reincarnation therapist confirms that Lila is basically re-living a past life, perhaps to finally bring justice to the killer, which will allow Flora's spirit to finally find rest in the afterlife.

As if this wasn't unhinged enough, somehow Damon finds Lila at said therapist and attacks her, which scares Lila and Jessica back to SVU, where they have a fight (of course) so Lila goes careening off to her apartment by herself - only there's the eerie-voiced Damon with wild hair, black eyes, and a couple of nasty scars on his face, waiting for her, ready to kill her.

Jessica is frantic to get to Lila's because the reincarnation therapist warned her to not leave Lila by herself, and she finally gets to Lila's apartment at the same time as Damon, whom she immediately attacks in order to keep him from getting to Lila. Only then they both hear Lila's bloodcurdling scream from inside.

Both? Yeah, the moment the ghostie started slipping in the "small scars" business, I knew we were in for some evil twin business, and thus it is. Damon has a long-lost evil twin brother who's broken out of the mental institution and come after Lila because he believes Damon stole everything from him when they were kids, so now he's going to take everything Damon cares about as some sort of revenge. It actually gets really violent and bloody. The two brothers tussle about in Lila's apartment, ruining it, until Jessica drops "a Cruisnart" on the bad!Damon's head, which knocks him out, right into a knife he's set up to kill Lila, so here's Jessica once again killing people, albeit not her own boyfriends for a change.

Everyone troops to the hospital, where Damon explains that yes, he has a violent twin who is also mentally ill, who was sent to an institution in California, which is why he was so happy to get the position at SVU. He doesn't seem terribly upset about his twin's death, and Jessica has nothing to say about evil twins whatsoever, which was incredibly bizarre since Jessica is a twin herself, but obviously we're in the final chapter now, so Jessica leaves quietly, repenting for being such a selfish, jealous bitch for her part in this plotline, while Lila tells Damon they could never be together, what with this past-life stuff and of course the murder, so she ever-so-gently dumps him and is grateful that she still has Bruce in her back pocket, and I'm basically sitting her going WTF did I just read??

There are so laugh out loud moments (caller ID machine! microfiche cataloged on CD-ROM! Jessica and Lila doing makeovers during their BFF Friday night "stay awake party," which included the 'Elizabeth Wakefield prom' look!), and the ghostie worked hard to redeem Damon, but yeah. The WTFery of it all is just too much for me. Constantly weepy Lila, surprise!evil twin deux es machina, Damon scoffing away the problem of TAs dating undergrads who are taking their classes - just, ugh. No thank you! This is not a book I will return to anytime soon.

I'm glad we're pivoting to another series for this week's entry in the re-readathon!