Memories of Sweet Valley (so help me god)

I cannot help but look up this new Sweet Valley series called Sweet Valley Confidential which follows the lives of them Sweet Valley folks in their late 20s. Yeah, yeah... there's Jessica and Liz, Todd and Bruce and Lila and Enid and all those people who would make you gasp whilst reading their So-Cal teen-age adventures at the tender age of twelve. I mean, Jessica's wearing a hot red bikini at sixteen and she took off her bikini top while swimming on the lake...?!!

To be honest, I was a bigger fan of the Sweet Valley Twins series, with that oh-so innocent setting of the middle school. I loved the idea of the Unicorns with their purple addiction, and one of my favorite "episodes" is the one where Winston Egbert tries for the cheering squad Boosters. I also remember the one where Jessica ties herself to a tree to save the trees behind the school, the one called Psychic Sisters, and the one where they sell love potions and everyone believes that it works.

Oh my, why do I still remember these things?!!!

I guess it cannot be helped that these memories are forever present in my consciousness, just merely buried by newer ones. When I read this article on Yahoo about the "current" lives of our favorite young adult characters from more than a decade ago, I made comments on how I remembered them. Seriously... when I read out that Steven Wakefield has come out of the closet and is now with Aaron Dallas, I went, "Wasn't Aaron Dallas a jock and Jessica's boyfriend at some point?" Ding-ding-ding-ding-diiiinnnngggg!!!

Oh to be young.

I had my share reading Sweet Valley High, of course, and I still remember those special series like The Evil Twin, which I found to be a pretty good old-school thriller. I did finally stop when I started finding the series tiring, with no resolution in sight. I mean, I know that The Simpsons has been around for more than twenty years, but there is still the point, you see? Besides, back in high school I was collecting other YA stuff, mostly the mystery thriller kind: Christopher Pike, R.L. Stine, Caroline B. Cooney and even some Lois Duncan after I fell in-love with Joan Lowery Nixon's Secret, Silent Screams. Oh, and I have this memory reading The Color Purple, Return to Peyton Place and Let's Go Play at the Adams' during those years. Take that Jessica and your string bikinis!

On a special note, I did remember feeling terribly disturbed while reading Mendal Johnson's Let's Go Play at the Adams', especially that ending that I remember to this day. Of course, I Googled the book and was not surprised that the book was generally considered "horrifying" and "disturbing". I think I read this when I was thirteen. Thirteen.

Now that I think about it, age is everything. There is that corresponding stage of understanding and exposure to a certain version of life that makes every era memorable. It compartmentalizes one's perception of reality and this parallel universe that reaches out to you to make you feel and know things. Wisdom is acquired by phases though sometimes you get walloped by it in the form of an interesting title, a cover art that catches your eye.

In that case, is Sweet Valley Confidential an adult book? I don't know. I think it's a book for Sweet Valley fans, to those who wonder whatever happened to the Wakefields and their minions. The reality of these Sweet Valley people has evolved into the realities of adulthood even though Jessica remains to be that selfish, lucky biatch whereas Elizabeth becomes more of an obvious pathetic yet manipulative biatch. But we loved them. Will we still love them now that they are adults who are still, in core, those little sociopaths who seemed to have everything? Does Jessica still have that red bikini and has Elizabeth's beauty mark faded? And why the hell did Francine Pascal kill off Winston Egbert by having him fall off a high-story balcony, of all characters, of all manners of fictional death?

Not that I am going to buy the books. And that I still care. Huh. *whoknows*