Sweet Valley High Supper Thriller: Deadly Summer

Jessica and Lila are now completely obsessed with a Ouija board. Jess tells Liz all about it, who naturally expresses doubt that it works. She won’t believe it unless she sees it for herself. I love how Liz is perfectly willing to accept look-alikes, vampires, kidnappers and the thousands of other weird things in Sweet Valley, but draws the line at Ouija boards. Oh and she believes in some kind of psychic connection with Jessica, but that’s it.

After making fun of the two at the Dairi Burger, Lila decides to get back at Liz. She knows that the big summer concert is getting delayed for a week and they can use that to their advantage. They get Liz to hold a séance with them and then make the board tell her about the concert. She refuses to believe them until she gets a call, saying that the concert was postponed.

Lila decides to keep things going and make Liz look foolish later. Jessica reads her private notes from Jeffery and uses the information during séances. She hides her diary and then makes the Ouija board tell her where it is. Lila decides to finally play her last cards and the two make Liz think that Bruce Patman is dying.

Considering how smart Liz is (supposedly), this storyline is ridiculous. Despite the fact that he looks fine, stays active and keeps playing like 700 sets of tennis every day, Liz becomes convinced that he’s dying. She starts spending all this time with him and seeing him everyday. Jess tells Bruce what’s going on, thinking that he’ll back off, but he thinks it’s funny and plays along. Right and in a few years, they’ll be best friends, as per Sweet Valley Confidential.

At the same time, a patient escapes from the Sweet Valley Mental Institution. Wait a minute, there’s an asylum in town? Why has this never been mentioned before and why is it never mentioned again? His name is Donald Redman and Liz has to research him for the paper. She discovers that he went to Sweet Valley High and was super smart, but was expelled several times. He became obsessed with his classmate Melanie and kidnapped her. Then he tried to kill his parents with a bomb and was locked up.

Despite working for the paper, which they act like takes up all their waking moments, Liz also has time to babysit for some new woman Elsa. She makes the mistake of telling Elsa that Redman escaped and the woman freaks out. Did I mentioned that he conveniently has a long forgotten sister who still lives in Sweet Valley? Liz sits for her again and some weird guy shows up. He says he’s an old college friend of hers, but acts all shifty.

Then Redman threatens the movie theater at the mall with a bomb. Liz conveniently gets the phone call and worries because Jess is there. Turns out it was a fake bomb. I love it that Jessica is worried about a possible bomb for all of three seconds and then spends the rest of the chapter hiding because she doesn’t want anyone from work to catch her playing hooky.

Bruce stops by to see Liz and they’re getting all close-close, when Jeffery shows up. He left camp early and didn’t even go home before he stopped by to see Liz. There’s some welcome back party at school with The Droids and the cheerleaders so they decide to go. Bruce kind of assumes that Liz will ride with him and gets a little miffed when she doesn’t.

Bruce and Jeffery kind of fight over who will buy her a drink so she storms off. She sees the principal running and then sees the guy from Elsa’s house. The principal tells everyone to get out because there’s a bomb. Liz runs back inside the school because she’s worried about the guys and never once thinks about her sister.

Liz sees a photo in the paper of Redman and realizes that he looks like Elsa’s friend. Um, if the police really want him captured, shouldn’t they have ran the photo a long time ago? She calls Elsa, who laughs it off and says she noticed it too. Then she hangs up and worries that Liz realized she was lying.

This all leads up to Liz getting ready for a date, when Bruce calls. He’s all depressed so she asks Lila and Jess to cover for her with Jeffery as she runs off. We finally learn that Lila wants Jeffery and is trying to cause problems for them. Yup, she loves him so much that when they actually do breakup, she never even thinks about him again, let alone look at him. Lila waits outside and tells Jeffery where Liz went.

Redman is in the school, building a huge bomb to bring down the school. Liz and Bruce sneak inside and he starts putting the moves on her, just as Jeffery pops up. Liz gets annoyed and asks him what he’s doing there. This whole book Liz has ran around with Bruce, not telling Jeffery why and just expecting him to do what she says. Bruce finally confesses that he isn’t sick and she feels kind of stupid. Before she can react, Redman shows up and takes them all hostage.

Jess feels all nervous so she makes Lila pull out the Ouija board. It spells out danger and they go racing off, running into Elsa on the way. She tells them that she’s Redman’s brother and that he thinks Liz is Melanie, the girl from high school. The cops meet them at the school, but no one really does anything. Elsa does talk to him, but he thinks she’s a copy of his sister.

Jeffery attacks Redman, Bruce helps, gets the bomb and runs off with it. Liz finds the detonator, but keeps dropping it. They finally turn off the bomb, but hear the explosion. She cries a little because Bruce is dead. Then they see him and he says that Redman ran after him and grabbed the bomb before it exploded.

Liz and Jessica make up and she tells her twin about the Ouija board. Liz isn’t really feeling it and Jess says that she thinks it was her subconscious because somehow she knew that Liz was in trouble. Yup, call it another Tuesday night in Sweet Valley.