For a lot of people my age, Sweet Valley was an indelible companion though adolescence. They were first published in 1983, and ran for more than 175 books over two decades – most of which are in Kindle Unlimited. (Sorry to your to-do list.)
Off the top of my head I can think of so many traits, phrases, and absolutely bizarro details from the “strange and terrifying world of Sweet Valley,” to quote Double Love, one of my favorite podcasts re-examining the SVH world.
I challenged myself to set a timer for 1 minute and write as many as I could remember.
Hooboy.
- Jessica (the Id) and Elizabeth (the SuperEgo) Wakefield
- 1Bruce1, the Patman porsche
- Lavaliere necklaces
- Elizabeth gets kidnapped in like book 4 or something (I looked it up – it was #13)
- red Fiat spider
- Ken, the original Himbo
- the Droids, the high school band with cassette releases
- maillot bathing suits – for years I had no idea what that was
- string bikinis. Bikinis everywhere.
- “perfect size 6” (fuck offfffffff, says current me on behalf of 13 year old me)
- Spanish tile?
- Constant pool parties
- Never growing out of junior year of high school despite having two spring breaks, two summer vacations, two winter whatever it was, and every single month there was some kind of dance that not having a date for was inconceivable?
- Blonde!
- Pacific blue eyes
- The refrigerator fell on Olivia and killed her (sorry, spoilers)
- Lila Fowler was a shoplifting menace
- I never tried cocaine because of Regina Morrow.
That’s kind of a lot of things given that I barely remember what day it is, and have no idea where my keys are. All these Sweet Valley factoids just floating around in my brain, soaking in the nostalgia department like they built that wing of my memory – probably because they did.
Francine Pascal “created” the series concepts and if I remember correctly wrote outlines for most of the books, which were then penned by a ghostwriter under the name ‘Kate Williams.’ I think I’ve met one of the Kates Williams.
To say my young self was obsessed with the series is not an understatement. I still wonder why this series had such a hold on me then, and now. The first Sweet Valley I read was Winter Carnival, which is incredibly bonkers in the best way. There’s a nightmare sequence and spangly silver ski suits, and so much drama over a ski trip. Everything was dramatic in Sweet Valley. And very, very White.
My discovery of romance echoes my discovery of Sweet Valley: I learned about romance fiction in the public library from another student in my high school who had read almost every historical romance in the spinny rack (this was 1991-1993 so the books were extremely fuchsia and very chonky). She’d dog-eared every dubious consent-laden sex scene so that readers could skip them if they didn’t want to read them – a true public service.
With Sweet Valley High, one of my very good friends in church youth group had Winter Carnival, and I started reading it out of curiosity. I was and am a pretty fast reader, and I was devastated, and I mean devastated when she took it HOME with her and wouldn’t let me BORROW it because she was in the middle of READING IT, can you BELIEVE THAT. (Pearl, wherever you are, sorry I was a little, ok, a lot over the top about that. You were right.)
I wasn’t sure I could convince my parents to buy them for me, and I don’t remember seeing them in my library at the time. I was desperate to finish this book, and imagine my little face when I saw in the B. Dalton’s how many there were to read at that point. Endless shelves with slim white spines and red block letters! I was unstoppable.
They weren’t durable, even though they are enduring. Even now, the ones I spot in used bookstores are delicate, with crispy, brittle pages and torn covers. They were produced with what seems like minimal longevity in mind, but wow, did that series have legs: spinoffs about the Wakefield twins when they were little, when they were older, mystery series, tv series.
There is a lot to unpack in the world of Sweet Valley. The Whiteness, as I mentioned. The constant emphasis on slimness as “perfection.” Even in the ill-received updates to the series, and the book with the twins as adults, the issue of what size they were was fraught. Then there’s the wealth fantasy, the emphasis on heteronormativity, the idea that high school was the pinnacle of your life as a young person.
Would we have 90210 without Sweet Valley? I don’t think so.
Much like my discovery of Sweet Valley matches my discovery of romance (attempted petty larceny), Sweet Valley also led me to romance. When the series grew stale, or I outgrew it, I moved on to Sweet Dreams romances, which were slightly more adventurous, but just as chaste. I recapped a bunch of the Sweet Dreams romances for the podcast, in fact, because there were a few from that never-ending series that had a hold on my memory as much as Jessica and Elizabeth did. Sweet Valley and Sweet Dreams led me to series romances – some of which had SEX in them, which blew my young mind, because they looked just like Sweet Valley and Sweet Dreams in size, weight, page numbers, and the fact that they had images of individual women on the covers. But the Harlequin ones had sexytimes?!
And for many readers, the Sweet Valley trajectory included VC Andrews in the realm of “books we passed around in school, sometimes secretly.” Talk about mind blowing!
The novels also influenced the trajectory of my life in ways I recognized recently. I researched studying abroad in high school after reading Leaving Home, where Elizabeth wants to spend a semester abroad in Switzerland, and I was so excited for her but everyone convinced her not to go. I was so enchanted with the idea (and possibly pissed off at the story I didn’t get to read) that I did in fact study abroad, in Zaragoza, Spain, in fall 1990. I was the youngest in my cohort of student travelers; my birthday was two days before the age cutoff. I don’t know if I would have discovered the idea of study abroad without having read about it first.
It’s overwhelming, almost, when I line up all the ways Francine Pascal’s work influenced where I am, what I do, and what I love. When I read Papaerback Crush by Gabrielle Moss, and found other people writing and podcasting and talking about the book series that were so formative to my life, I feel a little less alone and weird. So many of us were influenced by these books in ways we don’t see until years later.
I’ve written and talked about Sweet Valley a lot over the years, too. I reviewed Dear Sister, the one where Elizabeth is in a coma and wakes up thinking she’s Jessica and acts accordingly, back in 2007:
…I’m not here to judge the sexism, racism, and fatism inherent in the Sweet Valley series, nor am I here to opine at the larger effect the series had on young women of my generation. No, no! I am here to tell you how bad this book was.
Was it bad? OMG. Please. It was fucking awful. And yet, I read it. [in 42 minutes!]
This is famously the one where Bruce Patman gets to second base with Elizabeth-who-thinks-she’s-Jessica and I was scandalized at reading the word “breast.” Dear Sister was originally published in 1984, so I probably read it a few years later, closer to when I was 13 or 14. Little of it makes sense, but boy howdy doo, is it compelling.
I also interviewed the hosts of the podcast Double Love, Karyn Moynihan and Anna Carey, back in 2019 in Episode 335, where we spent a lot of time discussing how the books were “a mix of nostalgia and camp” and how many people have “some familiarity, if not fluency, in Sweet Valley lore,” even if that lore is rather alarming from current perspectives:
Sarah: …what are some of the things you notice about messages that they have about dating and sexuality and masculinity?
Anna: Oh God.
Sarah: Nothing good, right?
Anna: No!
Karyn: No!
Anna: Completely.
[Laughter]
Anna: I think one of the things that’s really struck us is that they need a date to go to everything.
Karyn: To go anywhere! To their friends’ parties.
Anna: Yeah!
The “compellingly ridiculous,” as I called them in that episode, world of Sweet Valley influenced me in ways I’ll probably keep discovering as I look back at my reading history and the genres I love. I often joke about moments when my inner 13 year old is NOT CHILL, and Sweet Valley was what my 13 year old self was reading as fast as she could. They formed a piece of the foundation of my adult self, which is no small feat.
Farewell to Francine Pascal, and thanks for the campy memories.
Did you read Sweet Valley High books? What strange details do you remember from them?
Thank you for this! I read the Sweet Vwlley Kids, Sweet Valley Middle, and Sweet Valley Saga (talk about bizarro) books in the early 90s but, weirdly, none of the original/high school stories. Dunno why not. Maybe there were better books featuring high school protagonists by the mid 90s.
Anyway, the spin-off books are also weirdly, enduringly memorable to me even now.
They were quite a bit after my time, but gosh, they sound like they would have been a lot of fun. Though we had Flowers in the Attic!
It’s wild how very specific ages have specific media, right? Like tree rings of popular culture that separate.
It reminds me of how my children, now teenagers, had one set of tv shows, but kids a few years younger have an entirely different set of characters and shows.
OK time for my SVH story. I was reading these in 6th grade and lending them to my friends. One of their mothers had an absolute fit that her child was reading SMUT, and the books ended up being banned from our classroom. My mother read one, didn’t see anything wrong with it, but told me not to bring them to school any more so that Ginny’s mom wouldn’t freak out. Don’t remember the name of the book, but I think a boy untied Jessica’s bikini top in the water? Gateway books to bodice rippers in junior high!
A friend gave me their collection a few years ago and I really tried to reread them, but they’re so inconsistent even from book 1-2. They now sit in my attic.
Oh Sweet Valley High. Definitely my gateway to bingeable romance, although I moved on to VC Andrews before getting through the whole SVH series. It may also have been a lack of access; I remember getting these through my school library which was a feat considering I went to a Catholic school lol. God bless librarians.
Also I remember finding out a few years ago that Francine Pascal (and VC Andrews) didn’t actually write all of their books and my inner child was *scandalized* to find that out lol.
I read so dang many of these in middle school, mainly because they were what my middle-school library HAD. I spent half last night trying to explain the world of SVH to my husband.
“A high schooler had a Porsche?”
“Yes, but his parents were incredibly wealthy, plus he had to have something to console him after his girlfriend died of an overdose–”
“A character DIED? On-page?”
“Well, she was at a party and trying to be cool to win him back, and she tried cocaine and her previously unknown heart condition–”
“You were reading these when you were TWELVE?”
“I didn’t even mention the kidnapping and amnesia!”
There was *one* book that had a nonwhite character, I remember this very clearly. She was a dancer named Jade Wu whom Elizabeth befriended, and she was going to win a thing right up until they asked her if they could say and print her name as “Jade Williams” or something because the bestower was Of a Certain Age and Had Opinions. She turned it down, told them off, and a nice white boy took her to the beach party.
Oh my gosh, the bikini top untie – I remember that, too. Scandalous!
Thank you so much for this great piece! The Sweet Valley High books were my gateway into romance (and into becoming a reader). I read them and traded them with friends until I outgrew them for the R.L. Stine/Christopher Pike horror books of the late 1980s and 1990s. My sister, who is nine years younger than I am, read the Sweet Valley Senior Year series, and that gave me a chance to revisit the Wakefields and other citizens of Sweet Valley when I was in my early 20s.Looking back, they are incredibly problematic, but I still have a fondness for them even as I can acknowledge their many issues.
I loved the Sweet Valley Sagas! I still have them but haven’t reread in a long time, maybe I’ll have to page through them tonight..
I read all of them in the 90’s…. I went from Baby Sitters Club and Nancy Drew to Sweet Valley High before I found Tamora Pierce and then the absolutely enjoyable train wreck that was the Sweep series in 2001 (way better than Twilight, imo).
I’m sure they have not aged well…. but they will live forever in that nostalgic corner of my brain.
I inherited a few from various slightly-older babysitters as a tween. I remember the one where Jessica is trying to be all grown and edgy and crushes on an older college guy with an 80s mustache and he basically tries to SA her in a boathouse at some lakeside vacation house party. Yeah.
“She’d dog-eared every dubious consent-laden sex scene so that readers could skip them if they didn’t want to read them – a true public service.”
Or alternatively she’d do geared those pages for rereading!
These came out after my time (a mix of Barbara Cartland, Valley of the Dolls, Sidney Sheldon, the Godfather, and Cherry Ames), but I enjoyed reading your appreciation, Sarah, and the comments above.
The SVH books were my gateway drug to romance. They are definitely problematic in hindsight but without them I may not have discovered the wider world of reading. And definitely the reason I now have a Fiat Spider!
Hmm, dog-eared NOT do geared. Thank you, auto corrupt!
I’m not sure if I read them. I read a different series covered previously on the podcast, and the contemporary Sunfires. I think, by ’83, I had moved on, since I’m an older GenX.
I read soooo many SVH and Sweet Dreams romances in middle school! My favorite SVH book was That Fatal Night where Ken (original Himbo indeed!) is suddenly struck blind and finds love with a nerdy girl who he had been completely oblivious to. I loved the shy nerd/ outgoing jock match-up, and the surprising depth of his struggles with his sudden disability. While the twins drama was always pretty banana pants, the romance in many of the books were solid, and definitely led me to enjoy meatier adult romances in high-school.
I guess I graduated to SVH at some point from the Babysitters club. I was always Team Elizabeth!
I was so jealous a younger cousin who had these! We acted out the plots with her Barbie dolls. She was also allowed box cereal, television, Disney movies, and sugar – these all being things my hippie parents were convinced would rot my head. It was so much fun staying there. Alas, apparently we traumatized a much younger cousin with all the SVH dubcon storylines, and then I was sat down for a new round of excruciatingly earnest and wholesome chats about feminist theory and capitalist pressures. I did not appreciate it as a teenager, indeed it seemed to me that my parents were only interested in draining the joy out of life. There was this whole lecture around sex positivity vs rape culture, which, in hindsight was doubtless very helpful, but it has definitely left me unable to even think of those books without a physical resurgence of please kill me now mortification.
Omg SAME on cocaine. Well into my thirties when I was offered coke I would fight the urge to reply “Are you kidding Regina DIED.” Was convinced my heart would stop. That book did more for drug use prevention than decades of DARE. (Also am I remembering correctly that Regina had been deaf at one point? Girl belonged in a Lurlene McDaniel novel.)
I was fascinated by SVH and Sweet Dreams because they gave me this idea of what school was like in the US. I grew up in a small city on the east coast of Canada, and we didn’t have a football team, our cheerleaders mostly cheered at hockey games and anybody could join the squad, we had no sororities, and we only went to school dances if there was absolutely nothing else to do.
Going on dates wasn’t a thing either – people got together at parties or the mall or the pole line 😛 I couldn’t imagine somebody going up to somebody else and asking them out on a date.
SVH was just so surreal that I devoured them all. Even when my reading tastes matured, I still read every SVH and Sweet Dreams that came out.
I absolutely read all of these, along with my best friend (who possibly still has her collection!). SVH was far from surreal for us, growing up in Santa Barbara CA – we were not of the privileged class but our classmates sure were, and things like kids getting brand new BMWs for their 16th birthday and spending vacations on the slopes or in Europe were common!
Longtime reader here, first time commenter. I’m a 90’s baby, so I read the Sweet Valley Kids/Twins/Junior High series growing up (whatever was at the library). I don’t think I ever made it to the actual SVH books because I became more interested in other genres by the time I got to the right age, but I’ll always have a soft spot for these terrible but entertaining books. I do remember joining my middle school’s newspaper because Elizabeth was editor in chief of hers.
There are times I regret being old and reading all the rhapsodies about Sweet Valley High do so. All I can remember are Nancy Drew books, but those are still going although I have no nostalgia for them. SVH sounds a LOT more interesting (“I didn’t even mention the kidnapping and amnesia!”)
@Jo: Oh, my gosh – YES. I was the editor of my college newspaper, too. You’re so right.
Isn’t it interesting how there are pieces of pop culture where the characters become types that we sort ourselves into? Were you a Jessica or an Elizabeth? Are you Team This Character or Team That Character? Which of the four whatevers are you?
@Al: Lurlene McDaniel! Another author I couldn’t get enough of and so every bruise I ever got was surely a sign of some dire cancer!
I never read many of the Sweet Valley High books. I was an avid read of Sweet Valley Twins as a child – I must have been 9 or 10 when I got my first one, so that checks out. I must have had a couple dozen before I aged out of that series, but I never picked up many SVH. I had a handful of them, I remember I had the Elizabeth being kidnapped one, Dear Sister, and another one I can’t remember because it featured a girl who wasn’t one of the twins lol. I kind of wish I’d kept them all but I dumped my entire collection at a used book store many, many years ago. Too sad!
I will say, the one Sweet Valley Twins book that stands out (other than the ballet one which was the one that drew me in) is the one where the twins’ friend Belinda, a tomboy who plays ball, gets her first period (because of course it could never be one of the precious TWINS, ew). Mostly I remember this because I was young and ignorant enough that I only had the vaguest notion of what a period was, if any at all, and naturally it was referred to so vaguely in the text that you were clearly supposed to know what it was, but it was never directly stated (or maybe it was and I was just really that ignorant; it’s been 30+ years, I’m not sure) and I was just so confused! Oh dear. I liked it anyway at the time because the twins give Belinda a lil makeover so the boy she likes (who also plays ball) will see her as a girl and not a tomboy. Cringe!
I read a lot of the Sweet Valley Twins and a handful of the Sweet Valley Kids in elementary school, but I’d moved on by middle school and never got to SVH.
@Sarah M – there’s definitely a SVT book where the twins get their first periods!, but I don’t remember which one it is. Elizabeth gets hers first, and I think she assumes Jessica did too? but she didn’t, and she’s embarrassed, so she pretends she did, and then at the end after it all comes out, she gets her period for real.
I always felt bad for Jessica. Everyone always openly preferred Elizabeth, seemingly since birth, so it always kind of felt to me like she was desperate for any attention she could get at all and ended up giving into all her worst impulses because that was all she was ever rewarded for. The Wakefields were horrible parents???
I remember having to ask my dad what a Fiat was because I’d never seen one.
My mom forbid SVH, saying it was too soap opera-y.
I ended up diving into historical romance after that, and as it was 1992 I read a lot of 80s books with dubious consent. I’ll bet if she knew what I was going to end up reading she would’ve let me keep reading SVH haha!
@Star ohhh that does sound familiar! I had so many of that series but just don’t remember many individual stories now.
I was a BSC girl as a kid, but this series absolutely defined my early adolescence.
Thank you so much for explaining the part about Francine Pascal creating the outline and then a ghostwriter stepping in. I wondered back in the day if she was creating, then who was doing the writing? How did that work? Etc. You all solve so many mysteries 🙂 Much appreciated!
I only heard about these books because they were on the “we’re not getting these” list at my high school librarian (I volunteered there in my lunchtimes). I think they were deemed to be a bit too tacky by the staunch feminist head librarian. They weren’t the only series off the list and it wasn’t because they were romances; the other vetoed series was a line of Westerns. The ones we passed around and talked about in hushed whispers were Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series.
Thinking about that librarian, she loathed the idea of “romance” as a genre category and insisted that we call these books the “relationship” genre. They still got the heart stickers on the spine!