I won’t lie. If someone gave me a copy of Sweet Valley Confidential, the conclusive follow-up to the Wakefield twins’ story, I would drop everything and read it. I hope that doesn’t seem like an indication of my usual taste in books; I’m actually not a fan of most chick lit, but the Sweet Valley series was a definitive part of my adolescent years, and it would be nice to read a series with some closure.

But even in the old spinoffs, Sweet Valley doesn’t stop at high school. Its college series, Sweet Valley University, is grittier and deals with issues such as sex, academic stress, marriage, etc etc. I wasn’t allowed to read it, because my aunt read a book I left lying around and she promptly told my mom that it wasn’t appropriate for me. There were other spinoffs of the original Sweet Valley High series: SV Twins, Kids, The Unicorn Club… I’m sure I’m leaving out some.

The books were such a hit with us pre-teens, we hid the treasured paperbacks behind musty old encyclopedia sets and wedged in between volumes no one in grade school would think of reading, like Florante at Laura. I was one of those dorks who spent lunch hour reading in the library (not just Sweet Valley though, I did like the classics as well), and it wasn’t an unusual sight for me to see other kids diligently hunting through old books in hopes of finding a slim paperback hidden in between its pages. What uncultured swine we were, but it was all part of growing up.

I was more of a Sweet Valley Twins reader because at the time I got into the series, I couldn’t relate to the high school version all that well. It was secretly fun reading about them going out and making out (that was as far as I could get, because even back then, I knew that those fat paperback romance novels were trash and I didn’t care to read them), but I couldn’t relate. Plus, those books created skewered images of high school—imagine my surprised reaction when my parents didn’t allow me to attend the Ateneo high school dance in freshman year, because that’s not how things went in Sweet Valley. The horror, the horror.

I also found the Sweet Valley Sagas interesting, but mainly because they were very loosely based on history. I read a lot of historical stuff now (still going through the Habsburgs of Spain and Austria, as well as the boom of tourism in Europe when the English discovered the continent), so I guess my moment with cheesy 'historical' fiction wasn't so bad.

I’ve always preferred Elizabeth, even if I wasn’t always “like” her. Not according to my mom anyway, who thought I was more like Jessica as a teen. In an attempt to find a connection to the adolescent me, she read a copy of Sweet Valley Twins and tried to point out I was more like Jessica (irresponsible, fun-loving) than Elizabeth (responsible, level-headed). Of course, that fell on deaf ears. What? I was 11 years old. Anyway, Elizabeth wanted to be a writer—a journalist, to be exact—and here I am trying to do the same thing, more or less. And in the teaser released in time for the book’s launch, a chapter talks about her living in New York, trying to survive in the big ‘ol city. Sounds.. kind of familiar.

So yeah, if I’m reading this book, it’s to find out what happened to Elizabeth, not her happy-go-lucky, freeloading, and admittedly rather vapid sister. So if anyone finds a copy in Manila, give me a heads up—I’ll be happy to lend it to the legions of former Sweet Valley fans out there, and if I remember correctly from those grade school days, there are many.