Document Type
Review
Abstract
[First paragraph]
The Sweet Valley High young adult romance series has unexpectedly returned in the form of a sequel, Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later. Primarily detailing the adventures of sixteen-year old Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, two beautiful, blonde, upper-middle class twin sisters growing up in suburban California, the series has sold over 150 million copies since its inception in 1983. Sweet Valley Confidential follows the sisters past college, to New York and Europe, and through several failed marriages. As was the case in the previous novels, participation in conventional coupledom is the major – if not only – defining element of successful personhood in creator Francine Pascal's world. The book concludes with a fabulous California wedding and a gossip column epilogue which reassures that almost every character has been partnered up. Despite this social conservatism, the specter of infidelity lurks; the novel deconstructs some of its most cherished partnerships in order to suggest that the idealized (but unstable) love depicted in the teen novels cannot hold in adulthood.
Repository Citation
Phruksachart, Melissa. "Review of Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later and Reading the Adolescent Romance: Sweet Valley High and the Popular Young Adult Romance Novel." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 11, no. 3, 2011, pp. 1–4. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol11/iss3/10