My addiction to the Sweet Valley book series was perhaps the pinnacle of my desperate-to-fit-in adolescent years. At 10 years old, I was a geeky bookworm who often spent class hours reading books under my desk instead of listening to lectures.

But some of my early favorites, like “Little Women” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” didn’t quite cut it with the cool crowd. So during lunch breaks, I headed to the library to either read or hunt down pocketbooks with other girls.

These girls and I—sometimes, we didn’t know each other’s names—would spend a good part of lunch hour looking for books in the library. It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds; pocketbooks were the most coveted finds, and we were limited to borrowing one book a day. In the interest of saving a book for another day, girls often hid them in between other books that few people had interest in borrowing, such as encyclopedias and dictionaries.

So there we were, a sisterhood of rogue bookworms, running our hands behind musty encyclopedia sets and rare Filipiniana volumes in the hopes of stumbling upon a paperback novel. Those were shallow—and possibly ignorant—times for us, as many of us in grade school chose to go for the acceptably hip reading fare for adolescents back then.

These included R.L. Stine’s “Goosebumps” series, “The Baby-Sitter’s Club,” and of course, Sweet Valley in all its permutations: Sweet Valley High, Twins, Kids, University, The Unicorn Club, Saga, Thriller Edition, and so on and so forth. Sweet Valley High, the most popular of the set, was eventually turned into a television series.

As the library often didn’t carry the latest titles, girls who brought newly purchased ones to school were besieged with requests of “Pa-overnight,” only to have the books returned to them a couple of weeks later, creased and smeared after going through half a dozen schoolgirls. But somewhere along the way, the Sweet Valley craze died out, only to become a footnote to youth. Later spinoffs proved to be flops (the “Elizabeth Wakefield in London” series comes to mind), and people just stopped caring.

Until now.

Last year, when Francine Pascal, the creator of the Sweet Valley series (she presided over a team of ghost writers), announced that she was writing a definitive sequel to the Sweet Valley High books, grown women everywhere suddenly reverted back to their adolescent selves. Fan blogs came alive just to discuss what had happened to the golden-haired twins, their family and friends. Were they going to retain their perfect lives, or was Pascal going to spice things up a little?

The much-anticipated “Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later” definitely opts for the latter direction. The book starts off with Elizabeth living in New York as a writer, although she and her sister are apparently estranged due to some serious betrayal by Jessica. It inevitably turns out to be because of guy issues, although anyone who read “Jessica’s Secret Diaries” in the SVH series probably wouldn’t be surprised by the turn of events.

Old characters

Although “Sweet Valley Confidential” can stand on its own as chick lit, it will be better appreciated by people who are familiar with the original series. Old characters such as Todd Wilkins, Bruce Patman, Lila Fowler, Enid Rollins, AJ Morgan, Winston Egbert, Steven Wakefield, Caroline Pearce, Aaron Dallas and many more make appearances in the book—and how.

One character becomes an instant millionaire and dies by falling off a balcony, another abandons his wife for his gay lover, someone gets a boob job, another becomes a cancer patient, while one of the main characters gets married thrice. But the fun lies in looking for “Easter eggs” throughout the novel—keep an eye peeled for references to details in the original series, such as Bruce Patman’s Porsche (with the ‘1BRUCE1’ license plate).

There’s plenty of content that wouldn’t have landed on the pages of the perpetually sunny pages of Sweet Valley High, either: detailed sex scenes, talk of orgasms, and even the occasional expletive (there’s a priceless one by no less than Alice Wakefield, the twins’ mother). It all reads like juicy gossip, none of it believable.

Loyal fans will be torn by their allegiances—because you just have to side with one Wakefield twin—so the turnout of the novel will leave hardcore enthusiasts ambivalent. The Sweet Valley series had spent much of its time establishing the identities of its characters to the point of boxing them into stereotypes, so it’s a little strange to see those characterizations reversed in one fell swoop. Yes, the events are more reflective of those in the real world, but everything seems to happen to the Wakefields and their friends, even at the risk of suspending disbelief.

I brought the book, encased in its apple-red dust cover, to the office last week. An editor raised a slightly judgmental eyebrow: “Are you reading that?”

Yes, I replied defensively.

“That’s trash,” she grunted.

“I know,” I replied.

“Then why are you even reading it?” she asked.

“I need closure. Also, I wanted to know if Elizabeth was planning to stay a virgin until marriage.” (The answer? A resounding “no.”)

Originally published in the Inquirer.