Review: snarky blog-to-book with a lot of profanity - familiarity with SVH a must
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 26, 2013
This is probably my fault, but when I downloaded the book I missed the part in the description about this being a blog that was published as a book. The book starts out sort of like a thesis -- about young adult literature and the lives touched by the Sweet Valley series, etc. and then starts to parse out points about how the "author" (Francine Pascal created the series and oversaw a team of ghostwriters) had very specific personal issues, including attractiveness being very specifically defined (blonde hair, height, weight, etc.). Then the dissertation just sort of peters out and goes to an extremely casual (and profane) format, which is what was originally blog content. I was caught off-guard by the tone shift as well as the writing and spelling (punctuation and grammar largely go out the window at this point) and the use of "text speak" in the book, like LOL or IDK.From here, there is a book-by-book synopsis, along with the author's own comments. The author can be pretty funny at times, however some of the best jokes are stymied by the poor editing in this book. There are typos galore and the grammar is hard to decipher -- and I don't think it's because I'm too old to read something written by someone in their 20's; it's simply a matter of poor editing and missing words and incorrect punctuation. In any case, a large number of the synopses focus on the cover of the books and a comedic critique of them. Unfortunately, these images are NOT in the Kindle version of this book, so unless you're stopping to look them up, the comedy is wasted. Also, this series of books has had a number of covers over the years, so even your own personal collection of books might not match up to what the author is commenting on.The entries seem to get more profane as the book goes on and the author seems continuously frustrated by the lack of continuity in the books. I guess I understand that, but these are mass-produced books and the "special" volumes were not intended to be part of continuity so it makes sense that those stories/characters only appear once and then disappear.I guess I was hoping for a more cohesive overview of the series -- to call out Pascal's outline for Sweet Valley and question why everyone with brown hair was considered unattractive or how the twins themselves were so excellently attractive that no one could blame people for constantly kidnapping them. The kidnappers couldn't help it! These girls are just so pretty! The far-fetched storylines really parallels the "soap operas" of the era, so some leeway has to be granted, but the basic treatment of teenagers as people in these books is atrocious and worthy of a well-written critique. As I said in the beginning, it was my mistake for overlooking the "blog to book" explanation, so I shouldn't have expected as much.Still, I can only give it 3 stars. The content was good enough I would have easily given 4 stars, but the lack of editing is holding me back.