Sweet Valley High #52: White Lies

John Pfeiffer is in this book, as the once again nice guy. I’m really starting to think that this whole “date rapist” thing was either all in Lila’s mind, or something the ghostwriter decided on at the last minute.

John is secretly in love with his next door neighbor, Jennifer Montgomery, which cracks me up because one of my best friends in high school was a Jennifer Montgomery after she got married. He confides in Liz that he loves her, but she’s hanging around Rick Andover. Liz thinks back to how Rick almost ruined her reputation. Um no, he didn’t, that would be your sister. Had she not told the cops she was you, Jessica’s reputation would have been ruined.

Jennifer is really sad and pathetic in this book and she takes the whole “stand by your man” thing a little too far. She completely disregards what everyone tells her about him because she knows that he’s good and sweet and would never do anything bad. Her parents don’t like him so they make plans to run away together. She tells John, which is a huge mistake.

John and Liz follow Rick, looking for a way to stop him. They see him break into the music store (where he met Jennifer) and rob it. Then Liz (fucking Liz) convinces John not to call the police, oh no because that would make sense, but to call the owner of the shop. He does and the owner calls the cops.

Jennifer convinces herself that Rick would never rob a store and that her dad must have set him up because he knew they were running away. Yup, that totally makes sense. She yells at him and tells him that she hates him. A few days later, he has a heart attack and she won’t even go see him in the hospital.

Liz pressures John and after like a week, he finally tells Jennifer the truth, that he was the one who called. She decides that she hates John and runs to the hospital. Liz butts her head in once again and buys flowers for John and gives them to Jennifer. Jennifer finally accepts John’s apology and realizes that she actually had feelings for him all along. Fucking sophomores…

The subplot is even worse. Jessica has AJ wrapped around her finger and gets him to change his plans constantly. He wants to go hiking and they end up at the Dairi Burger, he wants to go out for a romantic dinner and they end up with her friends, he made plans for them to have dinner with his uncle and she makes him go to Lila’s party because it’s more important. Doesn’t Lila have a party every three days?

Jess starts riding Liz about how she should do the same thing and convince Jeffery to do stuff he doesn’t want to do because that’s how relationships work. She also talks about how she and AJ are a much better couple. I really wish Jessica understood, just once, what a real relationship is…