Sweet Valley High

Sweet Valley High is a series of young adult novels attributed to American author Francine Pascal, who presided over a team of ghostwriters to produce the series. The books chronicle the lives of identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, who live in the fictional Sweet Valley, California, a suburb near Los Angeles. The twins and their friends attend Sweet Valley High.
The series began in 1983, and concluded twenty years later after the publication of 181 books. The books are generally classified as young adult or children's fiction and belong mostly to the genre of soap opera, romance novel or fantasy-adventure. The series quickly gained popularity and spawned several spin-off series, including Sweet Valley Senior Year and Sweet Valley University, as well as a television adaptation. In July 2017, a film adaptation was also announced.
The novels Sweet Valley Confidential and The Sweet Life, which follow the characters as adults, were published in 2011 and 2012.
The twins are seven-year-old second graders at Sweet Valley Elementary School in this series, which included several Special Editions and "Super Snooper" mystery books.
The books are:
Super Snooper Editions:
Super Special Editions:
The Sweet Valley Twins series features the twins as sixth grade students attending Sweet Valley Middle School. Though the series focuses primarily on Elizabeth and Jessica, it also features stories of their friends and classmates. Some relationships from Sweet Valley High have changed, such as Amy Sutton being a good friend to Elizabeth rather than Jessica, as they are in high school. The series was succeeded by The Unicorn Club and Sweet Valley Jr. High.
The Unicorn Club is a spin-off of Sweet Valley Twins, featuring the Unicorn Club introduced in the Twins series. The series takes place when the twins are seventh graders, still at Sweet Valley Middle School. This series focused on the club members in general, not specifically the twins.
This series occurs when the twins are eighth graders. Elizabeth and Jessica are rezoned to Sweet Valley Junior High, where a number of new characters are introduced. Elizabeth adjusts quickly to the new school and becomes popular among her peers. Jessica does not adapt to Sweet Valley Junior High as quickly as Elizabeth, especially as she struggles to establish some semblance of the popularity she enjoyed in middle school.
Following the conclusion of the original Sweet Valley High series, the twins' final year of high school was depicted in SVH: Senior Year. After the devastating earthquake that claimed the lives of their friends and destroyed their homes, the damage to the El Carro High forces a redistribution of its students to local high schools in Sweet Valley and Big Mesa. Elizabeth and Jessica find their senior year to be as emotionally tumultuous as the last as new relationships are formed, old ones are changed, and they must look forward to life after high school.
After graduating from Sweet Valley High, Jessica and Elizabeth attend Sweet Valley University, where they begin a new chapter of their lives.
Chronologically this is the final chapter in the series and the only spin-off that did not feature Jessica directly. It continues from the plot that occurred at the end of Sweet Valley University; Elizabeth flees to London, intending to continue her schooling. The series has six books.
Sweet Valley Confidential was published on March 29, 2011. The story was entirely written by creator Francine Pascal, and is set 10 years following the conclusion of the previous novel. Prior to the novel's release, Pascal stated, "I can tell you that what you thought was going to happen to those people doesn't happen. Different things happen. Ten years, from 16 to adulthood, has made very different people. And I'm having kind of a good time writing it, doing what I want to do with these people." Most reviews by professional critics were negative. One review from Entertainment Weekly stated, "Make no mistake: This is a very bad book, bloated and silly and, worst of all, often quite boring."
Fans of the series have given mixed-to-negative reviews, citing many inconsistencies and canonical errors. For example, near the beginning of the book, Elizabeth's ex-boyfriend Jeffrey French is mentioned as being happily married, while in the last "epilogue" chapter, he is "still unmarried and unattached." There are many other mistakes in the epilogue as well, such as what happened to Suzanne Devlin: "Suzanne was forced to leave Sweet Valley but returned 6 months later a changed person; unfortunately, she was ill with multiple sclerosis. She apologized to everyone, then crashed her specially equipped car after taking medication with champagne." Suzanne Devlin was mistakenly diagnosed with MS in the SVH magna edition Perfect Christmas, but then finds out that she was misdiagnosed, and she and Todd fall in love. In describing what became of Roger Collins, Pascal states that after having been accused of molestation by Suzanne Devlin (book 11, "Too Good to be True"), he "felt too uncomfortable being a teacher and left to become a nonfiction writer." SVHC also says his son's name is "Sam," not "Teddy," as in all the SVH books. Another inconsistency is the way Jessica talks in the book, peppering her sentences with "So," and "like," which is a departure from the way she spoke in the SVH and SVU series.
The story begins with Elizabeth in New York, where she is working on a magazine called Show Survey, described as "a sort of Zagat for Off Broadway." Through flashbacks, we learn that Jessica and Todd had been having an affair off and on for the last five years, and that eight months ago Elizabeth discovered their duplicity, and has not spoken to either of them since. A few characters from the original series pop up, most notably Winston Egbert, who invested in a dot-com venture with Bruce Patman (also a major character in this book, Bruce's personality changed dramatically when both of his parents died, making him a more caring, sensitive person). Time, unrequited love and other negative life experiences have turned Winston into a bitter hateful Scrooge-like miser who womanizes and shows contempt for himself and all humanity. He no longer has any friends. He dies midway through the book from an "accidental" drunken fall from his 20-story balcony. Jessica and Todd still live together in Sweet Valley. Jessica has a very successful career for a cosmetics marketing company called "MYFACEISGREEN" and Todd is a successful sports columnist. They are very much in love, but haunted by what they have done to Elizabeth and by the vicious gossip that surrounds them.
The twins are expected to attend their grandmother's eightieth birthday party. Elizabeth is torn, not wanting to see her sister and Todd again, but wanting revenge for what Jessica has done to her. She goes to the party, bringing Liam, a handsome bartender she has met in New York in order to have him flirt with Jessica and get her revenge for the affair. However, it proves to be a failure as he instead flirts with her older brother, Steven (who also comes out as gay). Liz's actions ends up causing a rift between Jessica and Todd, which escalates into a free-for-all between all the members of the family. Alice Wakefield, the twins' mother, desperately tries to keep the peace, repeatedly asking the staff to serve the cake, finally losing her cool and screaming to her husband, "Ned! Bring out the fucking cake!" After the party, Ned and Alice reprimands Elizabeth for her behavior. They blame her for not only ruining her grandmother, Marjorie's birthday party, but also Jessica and Todd's relationship. Fed up with her family for defending Jessica and not understanding where she's coming from, Liz prepares to leave for New York. Before she could leave, Bruce sympathetically talks to Elizabeth and convinces her to take a long hard look at herself by using their old friend, Winston, as an example.
Later that night, lying in bed, Jessica realizes that in order to get her sister back, she has to give up Todd. She packs a bag and heads to New York to see her sister. Meanwhile, Elizabeth has been doing some serious thinking on the plane at Bruce's admonition. She finally comes to the realization that she and Todd weren't going to make it work a long time ago, but was too much of a "commitment control freak" to admit it to herself. Elizabeth finds Jessica on her doorstep to apologize for what happened. At first, she didn't want to forgive her, but remembering Bruce's wise words, she relents and the sisters hold each other, sobbing, and make up. Elizabeth apologizes to Jessica in ruining her relationship with Todd and convinces her that Bruce had talked to her. She accepted that she and Todd were long over, but was an extreme control commitment freak to admit it. She gives Jessica her blessing to be with him. The epilogue takes place at Jessica and Todd's wedding, which many of the characters attend. Bruce professes his love for Elizabeth, and the two of them presumably live happily ever after.
The new series features six confirmed books and takes place a few years after 2011's Sweet Valley Confidential. Elizabeth, Jessica and Todd are now thirty. Jess and Todd have a son as well. And the two have an affair and nearly divorce after their trial separation. They then get back together after they declare their love for one another. At the end of book six, Elizabeth is hoping that Bruce will propose, but instead he confesses to being in love with an old flame he dated in high school. Also in the books it develops the relationship between the twins' brother Steven and his partner Aaron as the two get married and have a baby girl.
A TV series based on Sweet Valley High ran for 88 episodes in a total of four seasons between 1994 and 1997. It starred real-life twins Brittany and Cynthia Daniel (formerly Doublemint twin models) as Jessica and Elizabeth respectively. The twins also modeled for later editions of the book covers. The show ran for four seasons.
There were notable differences between the television series and the books. New characters were created, such as Reginald "Shred" Patman and Renata Vargas, while other characters were removed, such as Ned, Alice, and Steven Wakefield. Also, while the books are classified in the romance or fantasy/adventure genres, the television series was played out in a more humorous fashion.
Only Season One of the show was officially released on DVD.
In December 2021, it was reported that a new television series adaptation titled, Sweet Valley, is in the works at The CW. The project will be co-produced between CBS Studios, Paramount Television Studios, Chernin Entertainment, and Fake Empire with Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage, and Ashley Wigfield as executive producers. As of 2024, the series has not entered production.
In July 2017, a film adaptation of the novel series began production.
Many tie-in products were produced for this series (primarily the Sweet Valley High run) including a series of puzzles (4), a board game, audio book versions of selected SVH books (6), commercially available VHS (2) and a DVD of the SVH TV Series, a CD soundtrack for the TV show, dolls and doll clothing (6), a neon sign, at least one calendar (for the year 1989/90) and books that were not part of the series (including TV tie-in reprints, a trivia book, a behind-the-scenes book about the TV show, and a "Slam Book").