luxken27: (SVH - Evil Elizabeth)

High stakes...

Sue Gibbons, Jessica Wakefield's biggest rival, has been kidnapped! Just weeks after gorgeous Jeremy Randall left her at the altar for Jessica, things have gone from bad to worse for the Wakefields' houseguest. Now Sue's captor is threatening to kill her if the Wakefields don't pay up.

Jeremy, Jessica's fiancé, insists he'll find the kidnapper, and Jessica and Elizabeth are determined to help. But when Jessica discovers Jeremy in the wrong place at the wrong time, she smells a rat. Will Jessica have to betray the man of her dreams in order to save Sue's fortune - and her life?


As I noted on Goodreads, this book is mind-blowingly awful and pretty much has to be read in one sitting, or you'd never pick it up again. The ridiculous starts right from the first page, and continues until the last.

The kind of filler that makes you almost immediately sick upon consuming )

The most frustrating thing about this book is that everyone has to be a complete idiot to make the plot even near the realm of plausibility. Jeremy is so certain that he can charm anyone into doing anything he likes that he's momentarily stunned that Mr Wakefield contacts a detective upon learning of Sue's disappearance. Like - really, dude? You thought you were that good? The fact that everyone acts very stupidly and allows him to make a clean getaway helps his cause, but surely someone (besides Sue and Jessica) know that he was behind it all? He was the only one who came and went from the Wakefield residence the entire time, so of course the leaks came from him! I wanted to throttle pretty much everyone.

The funniest bit was definitely learning that Bruce Patman won the costume contest at the Halloween party in the last book, and he came dressed as his own car, LMAO. I certainly hope that included the iconic 1BRUCE1 license plate!!

That, and the fact that Elizabeth's kidnapping from #13 Kidnapped! features in fairly heavy rotation during this stressful time, earns this book the single star I'm giving it.

Thank goodness we're near the end of this mess, even if we do have to go through a Thriller-length finale book to get there.
luxken27: (SVH - Evil Elizabeth)

Are wedding bells ringing for Jessica?

Jessica Wakefield is engaged! Now that she's put a stop to the wedding between Sue Gibbons and Jeremy Randall, Jessica has the love of her life all to herself. Or so she thinks. But when she catches Jeremy in a secret embrace with his ex-fiancee, Jessica gets suspicious...Is Jeremy as perfect as he seems?

Lila Fowler, the richest girl in Sweet Valley, has finally found the perfect guy. Robby Goodman is gorgeous, funny, and sophisticated. There's just one problem. He's poor. Will Lila's plan to make Robby into a millionaire save their love, or end in disaster?


Thus starts the second half of this miniseries - we've moved from Scandal to Deception. We're also onto another ghostie, and the suspicion that all five of these books may have been written simultaneously grows, because there are inconsistencies that just don't make sense.

Oh, Jessica, please believe him when he shows you his true self )

There's a lot going on here, very little of it good, and I just wanted to shake Jessica at the end and tell her to believe the man Jeremy is showing her that he is. Apparently it's going to take another whole book of nonsense for her to actually do this, and I don't know if I have the patience for it!
luxken27: (GH - Maxie fierce)

Jessica Wakefield is living a double life! At the same time she and her twin sister, Elizabeth, are helping their new friend, Sue Gibbons, plan her wedding, Jessica's meeting secret with Sue's fiance, Jeremy Randall. Elizabeth warns her to stay away, but Jessica can't help herself - she's never been so much in love!

When Jeremy tells her he can't go through with marrying Sue, Jessica is ecstatic. But tragedy intervenes when Sue is stricken by a deadly disease, and torn by guilt, Jeremy decides he must walk down the aisle.

Will Jessica stand by and let Jeremy say "I do"?


Well, I suppose it was inevitable that a great book (by SV standards) is followed by a complete dud. This was poorly written, the characters reduced to crude personality traits, and pushed around the chess board in service of the plot. Anything approaching reality was thrown out the window. It was completely devoid of any nuance or callback to previous canon (or even the previous book!). What a letdown.

I never knew it was too much to ask for two consecutive books to be written by the same ghostwriter )

I can only just shake my head at this nonsense. Perhaps most amusing of all, the little teaser blurb calls the next three-part series Sweet Valley Scandal, when in fact this two-parter was actually labeled that and the rest of the series was called something else. It's sloppy right to the final word, which is only fitting IMO.
luxken27: (Kids Inc - beautiful dreamer)

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.

On soulmates, sisterhood, and oblivious teenagers )

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!
luxken27: (SVH - Evil Elizabeth)

Its officially October, and that means it's time for [personal profile] impy & my annual nostalgia re-readathon. We usually dip into Sweet Valley series for this, and the last couple of years we've also been reading one book from Christopher Pike's The Last Vampire miniseries. This year we're adding the Baby-sitters Club to the mix.

I'm super stoked and can't wait to start!! As I have for the last couple of years, I will be posting my reviews of the books here, along with the covers and back summaries.

Here's the schedule:

Week of 10/06/24: SVU Super Thriller #3 Kiss of the Vampire
Week of 10/13/24: SVU Super Thriller #11 Love & Murder
Week of 10/20/24: BSC Super Mystery #1 Baby-sitters' Haunted House
Week of 10/27/24: The Last Vampire #4 Phantom

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