Young Adult Revisited

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 J...

Melanie Martin is a new girl who arrives at Careville High and makes absolutely no friends. On one of her first days, she manages to hit the car of Rindy, a popular but not well liked girl. Rindy is a rich kid, who once dated Clyde. Clyde was a huge football star until the two were in an accident and he ended up paralyzed. Melanie wants friends and ends up helping Susan Trels cheat on a math quiz. The two start talking and Susan asks her to try out for the school play. She’s a popular actress and agreed to a starring role in a later play, if she has the chance to direct one first. She picked a play from the 1940s by Stan Russel, which she and her friends found in a used bookstore. The story involves two couples, with one girl loving her friend’s husband. A murder happens and the play revolves around finding the killer. It turns out that Rindy is playing the dead girl, the hot guy Marc is playing her husband and Melanie is auditioning for the role of the killer. The whole play is a secr...

Ronnie Edwards is back and I have no idea how he got his own book because no one really likes him. He shows up at the Dairi Burger, flashing around money and offering to buy everyone dinner. He keeps talking about his new car (a Mustang) and some guys ask to see it, but then jump him outside. Jeffery shows up, because it’s one of those books, and saves the day, which makes Ronnie think that they’re best friends. It turns out that Ronnie’s been betting money, but he now owns a bunch to a bookie named Big Al. That doesn’t stop him from offering to loan Jess $1,000 to start her own jewelry design business. Yeah, I’ll get to that in a minute. Big Al decides that he’ll let Ronnie off the hook if he helps him fix the next big soccer game and he turns to his new best friend for help. That puts Jeffery in an awkward position because a scout from a big college is coming by, just to see him! Jess has decided that she wants to design jewelry and takes a few samples to a shop called Treasure Islan...

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 ...

This was one of my favorite Christopher Pike books when I was younger. The whole ground glass in the hamburger thing really freaked me out and I was always eyeing the person who made my hamburgers suspiciously. Then I read some article in college about how ground glass actually can’t kill you because your body just digests it and pushes it out. It kind of made me a little pissed off at Pike… Josie and Helen are best friends, but in that high school way, where they actually don’t really like each other. Helen’s family is kind of poor, but that didn’t stop them from sending her to Greece the summer before. Now they’re going back, thanks to Josie’s dad. He’s a screenwriter and traveling with his stuckup, prissy girlfriend Silk. The book flashes back to two women and I bet you know where this is going. Sryope and Phthia were two women living during ancient times. Phthia was obsessed with a guy who Sryope secretly loved. She made him indebted to her and then got bored and ran off with other...

Steven Wakefield is an ass and Cara Walker is a moron and this book reinforces both. Steven met this girl Andrea, who looks just like his dead girlfriend Tricia. I fear that Mr. Walker got around town, considering how many girls pop up, looking just like his daughter. He doesn’t tell Cara that they have a date planned because he thinks that he needs to go out with her just once. He’ll see how different she is from Tricia and get over her right away. Their first date isn’t exactly one for the record books. He keeps calling her Tricia and when she calls him on it, he tells her about the other girl. Personally if a guy went out with me because I looked like his dead girlfriend and then proceeded to call me by her name, I’d be out the door right away. She ends up liking him and agrees to call him, though she says she’ll call the next day and he wants to talk to her right away. Steven doesn’t let his obsession take over completely (yet) and remembers he has a girlfriend. He calls Cara and t...