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2025 Nostalgia Re-readathon | SVT #3: The Haunted House
Are the rumors true?
Everyone at Sweet Valley Middle School has always said the Mercandy mansion is haunted. Strange lights flicker in the windows at night, and no one ever sees the owners come and go. So when Nora Mercandy moves into the run-down house, rumors spread fast. Jessica Wakefield and her friends are convinced that Nora is a witch.
But Elizabeth, Jessica's identical twin, is certain that Nora is just an ordinary girl. She's determined to stick up for her new friend. She'll get to the bottom of the mystery of the Mercandy mansion - even if it might mean losing her sister's friendship!
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impy and I chose a banger to start this year's nostalgia re-readathon, and I'm going to take a page from her book and gush about this cover for a little bit. First of all, I just *love* these original SVT circle covers. They are really excellently done, with a nice cover image between the ribbons announcing the series and creator. I'm also a big fan of the original model(s) for the tweenage Wakefield twins - they always have great expressions! Here the twins look astonished by Nora, who basically looks like she could completely care less about their whispers/gossip/rumors because she KNOWS she's a total badass.Unfortunately, book Nora doesn't quite live up to cover Nora.
As the book opens, it's a crisp fall day and the twins are speeding home from the library. They promised their mom they'd be home by 4 pm, but they both got caught up in their social studies homework (yes, even Jessica) so they are already half an hour late. This urgent need to get home doesn't stop them from slowing down as they pass the creepy old Mercandy mansion and staring at it - or the girl who emerges from it, calling for what turns out to be a black cat. Jessica and Elizabeth have heard the rumors that are swirling around town about the reclusive old Mercandy couple - she is a witch and she keeps her husband locked up in the attic - and they wonder about this new girl. Has the witch kidnapped her? She returns inside with her hands full of cat, but Jessica's not so sure. After all, Unicorn club president Janet Howell lives next door and has it on expert opinion that the Mercandys are evil.
When the twins arrive home, they are babbling about "the witch" but neither their parents nor Steven pay them much attention. The Wakefield parents are off to dinner and Steven soon escapes to his room, so the girls have their own dinner and Jessica decides to swim some laps in the above-ground pool. Liz warns her that it's too cold, but Jessica doesn't care...and when Jess wakes up the next morning with a sore throat, she probably really doesn't care because she can stay home from school. She begs Liz to get the scoop on the new girl from Janet and Lila.
Elizabeth doesn't need to rely on the rumor mill, because the new girl shows up in her homeroom. Her name is Nora Mercandy, and she recently moved to the Valley from Pennsylvania. Already there are under-the-breath cracks from their classmates (Lila is sure the teacher means Transylvania), and nobody raises their hand when the teacher asks for someone to show Nora around the school. Liz rather reluctantly volunteers at last, and she finds Nora to be a quiet but nice girl. She knows that all the kids think Nora is a witch and that's why they are treating her so badly, but does she tell Nora that? Oh, no - or else this already slim novel would be even shorter LOL.
Nora has to sit out gym class because she doesn't have gym clothes, so Liz promises to bring her some the next day. Unfortunately, Liz catches Jessica's sore throat and is absent from school. Nora is perplexed as to why Elizabeth, who was so kind to her the day before, is pointedly ignoring her today and sitting with the girls who teased her - until afternoon gym rolls around and Jessica introduces herself. She forgot the gym clothes that Liz made her promise to bring, so it looks like Nora is sitting out again - until it turns out that there is an uneven number, and the teacher wants Nora to face Lila on the tennis court.
Lila is confident that she will cream the witch - she has a private tennis teacher who used to be a professional men's player, and of course she has her own tennis court - but Nora was the junior tennis champion back home, and even in street clothes, she humiliates Lila on the court. Lila goaded her into a bet before they started playing, and Nora doesn't want her boon until Lila forces it on her - an expensive cloisonne pen, a gift from Lila's mother in Paris.
Lila has an ulterior motive, of course. The next day, when Nora takes out the pen to use in class, Lila very loudly proclaims that it's her pen and Nora stole it. They are sent to the principal's office, and Lila is extremely self-satisfied when the principal believes her lies and gets on Nora's case about making bets on school grounds. It might have stopped there, but Nora makes the ultimate mistake of talking to handsome new boy Rick Hunter, a fantastic tennis player that Lila has a crush on, and even makes a date to play tennis with him. No way is the Mercandy witch going to take Lila's boy!
Lila is a complete asshole in this book. She treats Nora horribly and ropes the rest of the Unicorns into bullying her, too. Even when Nora tries to make amends by introducing the school kids to her grandparents, it backfires when her grandfather makes an unexpected appearance and scares them all off because he walks stiffly and only seems able to say "Nor" over and over again. Lila leads the brigade of kids who believe Nora deliberately tried to scare them, and the Unicorns basically treat Nora as their own personal slave. Nora goes along because of the incident with the principal (why would grownups believe her, the new girl, against a known quantity like Lila?), and because Elizabeth and Amy seem to disappear off the face of the earth. Liz and Amy are working on a special Halloween edition of the Sixers, which apparently takes up all their free time, leaving Nora to the wolves.
Then Lila and the Unicorns promptly make an about-face, apologize for their horrid behavior, and start fawning over Nora. Elizabeth is suspicious, and Nora is wary, but none of them say anything because at least they aren't being bitches to Nora anymore. Lila is hyping everyone up for her big blowout Halloween bash, and she encourages Nora to attend as a witch. Nora still doesn't know that her classmates think she really is a witch, so she has no idea just how good her costume is when she turns up as such on Halloween at school, and then attends Lila's party.
Jessica, Lila, and Ellen Riteman are dressed as hula girls (and win the prize for prettiest costumes in their class), while Liz and Amy dress up as clowns because they are complete dorks. Everyone attends Lila's party, and Liz overhears Bruce Patman making plans with is goon friends to vandalize the Mercandy property with TP, rotten eggs, shaving cream, etc. Liz warns Nora, who runs off in a huff. Liz runs after her, Jessica runs after Liz, and eventually all 40 kids at the party follow them "a couple of blocks" from Fowler Crest to the Mercandy house. (Apparently Lila and Bruce are not yet living in the hills above the Valley, LOL.)
Nora hurls the rotten goodies at Bruce when she arrives home and disappears inside the mansion. Liz continues to chase her, and Jessica decides to chance stepping inside the forbidden house for fear of her sister's life. Again, all of the kids eventually follow them, climbing three flights of stairs to the attic, where they find Nora in tears and Liz trying to comfort her.
The boys start looking around the attic and recognize the posters of Marvelous Marvin, a world-famous magician who was taught the tricks of the trade by Houdini. Everyone is duly impressed, and Nora tells them that Marvin is her grandfather. He had a stroke ten years ago and requires around-the-clock care, which is why her grandmother never leaves the house. Nora lives with her grandparents now because her own parents have died as well. She offers to show them some of the tricks that Marvin has been teaching her (hence the lights flickering in the attic at night), and convinces Liz to give quite a performance when she saws her in half. Everyone is duly impressed, the grandparents arrive to see what's going on, and they basically end up having a party in the Mercandy attic. All's well that ends well!
Nora is a great character (especially once she's FINALLY clued in on all the rumors), and it's a shame that she's relegated to the background after this book. She's definitely more a friend of Liz's than Jessica's, and even ends up talking with Rick Hunter again at the party, so she even got the guy in the end.
Lila is absolutely terrible in this book, albeit in a very 1980s way instead of the upgraded awfulness in the graphic novel version. It's so early in the canon that, along with not living in the hills, she's also apparently in regular touch with her mother, and actually loves that her father is never around. The pathological lying is unfortunately a characteristic trait, but here she's treated as much more of a leader than Jessica, and even as if Jessica is in thrall of her and wants badly to impress her. Lila is Janet Howell's cousin, which is apparently where the power comes from, although Janet is completely useless now and in the rest of the series.
Also odd - apparently Bruce takes the Unicorns very seriously and is impressed by their club, which just seems wrong on all kinds of levels to me. He's a classic bully himself, so why he doesn't tease these girls instead is beyond me, but whatever. His falling in with Lila when it comes to playing mean tricks on Nora is definitely par for the course.
Nevertheless, early SV canon is a lot of fun, so I'm glad we chose this book as the opener for our 2025 re-readathon.
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I do love the graphic novel's take on Liz and Amy's clown costumes (so cute!) but for most everything else, I'm happy to stick with the original. If not for SV Kids retconning Lila and Jess being friends even then, I'd truly love the idea of Jessica basically kissing Lila's arse because it's the way to popularity, but why, oh why, we have to suffer Janet the not even real cousin to get there is just beyond me. (No, I get it, Janet's the queen to Lila's princess but we both know Janet suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.)
Huzzah for the pen visual! And original SVT twins are stupidly pretty.
Nora!
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Well, if ever there was an incoherent mob running through the streets on Halloween, it being of 12-year-olds certainly makes the most sense. Either they were out really late, or the parents of Sweet Valley are ardent in their belief of trick-or-treating *before* dark.
I do love the graphic novel's take on Liz and Amy's clown costumes (so cute!) but for most everything else, I'm happy to stick with the original.
I remember being SO disappointed with the graphic novel version - the new artist was the height of "meh," and the bullying was really brutal, much worse than I thought I remembered from the original (and so it was). Nora deserved better for her star turn in the graphic novels!