Sweet Valley High #1: Double Love

Front Cover: Share the continuing story of the Wakefield twins and their friends - their laughter, heartaches, and dreams.

Back Cover: Will Jessica steal Todd from Elizabeth...

Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield are identical twins at Sweet Valley High. They're both popular, smart, and gorgeous but that' where the similarity ends. Elizabeth is friendly, outgoing, and sincere - nothing like her twin. Snobbish and conniving, Jessica thinks the whole world revolves around her. Trouble is, most of the time it does. Jessica always gets what she wants - at school, with friends, and especially with boys.

This time, Jessica has set her sights on Todd Wilkins, the handsome star of the basketball team - the one boy Elizabeth really likes. Now it's a game of double love, with Todd as first prize. Elizabeth doesn't want to lose him, but what Jessica wants, Jessica usually gets... even if it ends up hurting her sister.

Meet the Wakefield twins, their guys, and the rest of the gang at Sweet Valley High...

I actually read Sweet Valley Twins and even Sweet Valley Kids more when I was growing up. I didn't start getting into Sweet Valley High until later, and my memories of it are spotty at best. Most of my head-canon comes from my memories of Twins. In Twins, Elizabeth is already pretty damn close to Todd, which is why it was weird for me to read this one and see that they don't even seem to know each other. I know that this series is the original, that Twins, then Kids, came later, but yeah. Weird.

I was PRETTY SURE I had read "Double Love" before, but I've read so many of these books over the years, and definitely not all of them, that it all blurs together. By the time I got to the end though, I was sure that I had read it before. I distinctly remember Jessica wearing green eyeliner and the swapping of the outfits and the tuxedo outfit.

Man, reading how perfect their family is in appearance is going to get old haha these guys were the original Mary Sues! I feel like it might not have been so bad in the 1980s when this was originally published, but now that we live in a world of fanfiction, we're over-saturated in bad bad Mary Sue descriptions haha

Maybe it's just the nostalgia talking, but I feel like these books definitely feel distinctly '80s, and I love it!

I love how trashy these are! So much drama! It's like a soap opera in book form. But not nearly as trashy or embarrassing as harlequinn romance novels haha

Jessica is a bitch. I hate her. I've always hated her. In Twins and Kids, she's just an immature disorganized brat, with a bit of a conceited snobby streak. In here, she's full-blown bitch. She does what she wants, gets what she wants, and doesn't care if anyone is standing in her way, even her own sister.

The two things she did in this book that I found particularly heinous was all the lying: the fact that she let everyone think it was Elizabeth who'd been in that bar and the fact that she straight-up told Elizabeth that Todd had assaulted her. The original incident of the mistaken identity is understandable; it all happened so quickly that I don't blame Jessica for freezing and not setting the record straight with the cop. But her actions afterwards really pissed me off.

I remember always being pissed off at Elizabeth for letting Jessica get away with all the bullshit she pulls. But I suppose that if Elizabeth were to get angry and vindictive, that would make her just as bad as Jessica, and we wouldn't root for her as much.

There's also a subplot about how their father might be having an affair, and how their brother might be dating a bad girl. I love the relationship between Elizabeth and Steven. Again, why do they put up with Jessica?? I knew that Ned wasn't having an affair, and I don't blame the girls for suspecting him of it, but when we got to the part where they were having a big family dinner, and their parents were both beaming about a "big surprise announcement", I really wanted to hit at least Elizabeth for still thinking that the announcement was a divorce. Even if you're happy to get a divorce, you're not gonna be BEAMING about it when announcing it to your kids!


Hook:

What is the dark mystery in Enid's past, and how does Jessica use it to her own advantage?

I love how the books try to foreshadow things and create a semblance of continuity. You can read them out of order, you can read them alone, but what I'm looking forward to is reading them in order. I can't remember what Enid's secret is. I think maybe it's something on the more serious side, like her younger brother drowned when she was supposed to be watching him, but that it's also something that wasn't her fault at all. I don't remember Ronnie, so I want to say that he gets pissed off when he finds out about her secret and dumps her permanently. Of course, Elizabeth will stay by her side and Jessica will be a total bitch about it. I hate hate hate Jessica! It's none of her business! And the fact that she tries to use it to her advantage? Ugh, what a bitch! haha