2024 Nostalgia Re-readathon | SVH #107: Jessica's Secret Love

[luxken27]

When Jessica Wakefield meets Jeremy Randall on the beach, she can't believe her eyes. He's everything she's always dreamed of and more. It's love at first sight for him, too, and they share an intimate kiss. Then Jeremy says he can't see her again, and Jessica doesn't know what to think. But soon she understands all too well. He's engaged to the Wakefields' houseguest!

Sue Gibbons, daughter of Alice Wakefield's college roommate, has come to Sweet Valley to get married. She and Jessica become instant best friends, and Jessica knows she's going to love Sue's fiancé. When she finally meets him and discovers it's Jeremy, she realizes how right she was! She does love Sue's fiancé, and she wants Jeremy Randall, engaged or not, for herself!

I am tickled at how much I liked this book, especially given how much I loathed the previous mini-arc about werewolves in London. But this was written by a ghostie with an actual sense of humor and more than passing familiarity with canon, which certainly helped things! I probably wasn't meant to find it as humorous as I did, but the meta-fan in me got a real kick out of this.

Book #107 picks up pretty much where #106 left off. The twins and their BFFs, Enid and Lila, are lolling about on a summer afternoon at the Sweet Valley beach. Liz is still traumatized by her experience in London and is deep in self-doubt because she fell in love with a literal crazy person. She's questioning everything about herself and how she forms relationships, and her answer is to go off the deep end into the female-empowerment-sisterhood-woman-hear-me-roar corner of the self-help world. She spends most of this book yapping about the two thick tomes she's reading: Real Women, Bad Men and Primal Woman. Mercifully, Todd is out of town visiting his extended family, so Liz has some room to breathe and think and get in touch with the primal woman within. She and Enid spend this book hosting little parties with their friends, each of whom brings a self-help book and they give each other the quizzes out of them. This is their idea of summer fun, and yes it cracks me up. Not that Liz is getting in touch with her feminist side, necessarily, so much as the way the 90s version of this is lampooned here. She also tries to give Jessica sound advice, but keeps reaching for her damn books to back up her therapy-speak and completely defeating the point of the exercise.

So while Liz and Enid are contemplating their inner selves, Jess and Lila are strolling on the beach and bemoaning their lack of steady boyfriends. Jessica is convinced that because she is single at this point in her life, she will be Forever Alone and will never find a husband or have children. (As a Forever Alone person, I just had to laugh, OMG!!) Jessica gets hit in the head with a frisbee, but takes one look at the guy rushing over to her and decides she can't be mad at such a gorgeous hunk of man. As it turns out, her blond Adonis was supposed to catch the frisbee; his friend, Robby Goodman, was the thrower and is more interested in chatting up Lila than anything else. The two of them go off for a soda, while Jessica and her mysterious stranger share a strong bolt of chemistry and a sizzling kiss. Their encounter lasts all of five minutes, and the guy jets without even telling Jessica his name, but no matter. Jessica is convinced she's met her soulmate - yes, someone she'd even dump Sam for, which she confirms later in the story.

All of her friends are skeptical, and for good reason. Jessica has a habit of falling in love every five minutes, and going through guys like tissue paper. But Jess insists this is it, this dude is The One, and she begs Lila to get any info out of Robby that she can.

Meanwhile, the daughter of one of Alice Wakefield's college friends comes to stay with the Wakefields. Sue Gibbons is an 18-year-old girl from New York who is seemingly lost at sea after the death of her mother. Everyone is excited for her to be getting married and thus having the chance to have a family of her own. Even super-feminist Liz is on board with this plan, and sees absolutely no irony in her position as a primal woman ready to stir up herstory and the giddy planning of a wedding so a fellow woman won't be - gasp! - alone in this world.

No one seems to mind that Sue is only 18, or that her fiancé is 23. They apparently met while working at Project Nature in New York and just sort of...drifted together. (Did I mention Sue was just an intern at the time?) Because of Sue's loss of her mother, Jeremy decided to propose to her, and voila! Here they are. Now Sue is getting ready to plan a big wedding and wants all of the Wakefield ladies to help her. Steven is conveniently at school, so Sue sets up in his bedroom and is thrilled with Alice, Liz, and Jessica offer to assist her. (Because how much wedding planning have *they* done??)

Almost immediately, there is something...off about Sue. For someone working for an environmental agency, she seemingly has no care for any of her 'ideals' when it comes to choosing sustainable sources of food, dress, or even her engagement ring. Everyone brushes this off because "she lost her mom" but I smell a rat. Sue is presenting herself as a poor little rich girl who is only too eager to please everyone, especially her darling fiancé.

Jessica by this time has learned her mystery man's name, but even she isn't ready when she opens the door to Sue's intended and discovers that he is her mystery man from the beach! Jeremy appears equally stunned, but they both manage to keep their mouths shut and their eyes off each other during their initial meeting/dinner with the Wakefields. Jessica tells Elizabeth that Jeremy is her soulmate, and Liz is appalled. She warns Jess to keep away from him. Jessica shoots back that she knows Jeremy is engaged, and he's obviously made his choice, so she's not going to interfere.

And, for once, she doesn't. At least, she doesn't overtly try to break the two of them up. She calculates to spend alone time with Jeremy, hoping he will come to his senses on his own, but there is no patented Jessica scheme at work here. I actually found this quite refreshing; she's trying to be rather mature about it, for the most part.

That's not to say that there aren't any shenanigans. Jessica has a vain hope that if she can delay Jeremy giving Sue her engagement ring, that he will ultimately dump her. So she contrives to send the two of them to her favorite restaurant for the big occasion, and then scrambles around to find a date herself. She calls Aaron Dallas, AJ Morgan (!!), Winston Egbert, and finally Bruce Patman to beg for a date. I was SHOCKED at the tiny (albeit phone-convo) cameo by AJ, considering his erasure earlier in the book from her list of steady boyfriends. Bruce reminds Jessica that he almost lost his girlfriend, Pamela, after his entanglement with Liz during the first post-#100 mini-arc, when the three of them discovered that Henry Patman and Alice Wakefield were engaged at one time and they were all convinced the two parents were trying to reconcile, which none of them wanted. Jessica tells him to tell Pamela the truth about what's going on, and even agrees to buy Bruce's meal if he will accompany her.

Their date at the restaurant was HILARIOUS. Jessica is trying to keep an eye on Jeremy and Sue, trying to arouse Jeremy's jealousy, while also pretending to be besotted with Bruce. There is some truly excellent sniping during these scenes, with references not only to the recent past, but also a throwback way back to book #3 when Jessica and Bruce first dated, For Real. I absolutely LOVED this scene and thought it was pitch perfect. Jessica succeeds in keeping Jeremy from giving Sue the ring that night, but does not manage to break them up. Sue shows up the next day with her chosen gaudy diamond ring and waves it at everyone, and then has the temerity to request that Liz and Jess be her bridesmaids at her wedding!

Liz can see how upset Jessica is at this, and her idea of cheering her up is to take her to a Primal Woman seminar, where everyone sits around giving themselves ~spiritual names~ and screaming their primitive anger. Again, this scene was laugh-out-loud funny and written perfectly, mostly from Jessica's POV. As someone who doesn't want to be there and doesn't buy the guano on display, she can't believe what she's seeing - or hearing, as Liz lets out a pretty primal roar of her own!

Jessica keeps moaning about being Forever Alone and wishing Jeremy would pick her; she fails to come up with a Grand Gesture that will work so mopes around in the meanwhile; Sue continues to be oblivious and shallow; Jeremy continues to be a complete creep to everyone, though no one seems to notice. I mean, seriously, what 23-year-old man is not only engaged to a teenager, but actively grooming an even younger one? So gross, ugh. I just wanted to reach through the book at shake Jessica and tell her that he was sooooo not worth the energy she was expending on him.

Jessica makes one last ditch effort to propel Jeremy into confessing his love for her. He shows up when she's at home alone and has his wedding tux with him, so Jessica goes upstairs, puts on Sue's wedding dress, and descends to meet him. They have an obligatory stare in the mirror at each other, and Jeremy finally tells her that yes, he does indeed love her, but that he's not going to abandon Sue in this her hour of need because she is alone in the world and needs him. He doesn't love her, not like he loves Jess, but his poor tortured soul can't stand the idea of hurting someone as nice as Sue. This scene was also hilarious, as well as completely disgusting. Again, here's a grown-ass adult man creeping on multiple teenagers. There's also some stuff that's 'off' about him, but its not as obvious as what's off about Sue. I'm sure that will develop as this lil miniseries moves along.

In the third subplot, Lila is over the moon about Robby, a brilliant art student who also happens to be fabulously wealthy. She's SO HAPPY to finally find someone who is not intimidated by her wealth, who understands exactly what it means to be so rich and thus, so far above everyone around her, socially. Only - dun dun dun - it turns out Robby is actually poor, and merely housesitting for the fabulously wealthy executive that his father serves as an EA for. Lila is devastated. Apparently she now demands that her man be in the same wealth bracket as herself (and Bruce is....right there, OMG). Jessica is the one who tells her that money shouldn't matter (!!!) and true love should reign no matter what. At Sue and Jeremy's engagement party, she pushes Lila and Robby back together.

The engagement party is being thrown by and hosted at the Wakefields', and Jeremy requests to dance with Jessica. As the book closes, they have wandered off into the hedges to steal kisses, even as the Wakefield parents are calling for him to propose a toast to his upcoming wedding.

This was absolutely ridiculous, but the best part of it is that everyone involved seemed aware of at least some of the ridiculousness, even if it wasn't the part that they were actively engaged in. This ghostie really knocked this one out of the park, and I'm actually looking forward to reading the next book!