Young Adult Revisited

Liz and Jess are working at Simpson’s Department Store during the Christmas holiday, the same store where Olivia’s mom works. She mentions in passing that maybe Liv should work there too, but she isn’t interested. Jessica finds out that the owner’s son Robert is super-cute and becomes obsessed with him. She thinks that once he meets her, he’ll fall in love with her and she’ll never have to work again. Olivia kind of falls for this guy James, but he kind of irritates me. He’s one of those super pretentious artist guys who a teen girl might love, but adult girls eventually realize are losers. All he cares about is creating true artwork, even if that means he doesn’t have money to pay rent or buy food. Trust me Olivia, you can do so much better. Spending time with him makes her realize that she should be more individualistic and not care what people think. Um, isn’t that the whole point of the character, that she’s oh-so different? She then expresses her individuality by wearing an ugly a

It’s Liz, it’s all Liz’s fault! The book opens with Ned and Alice officially getting separating. This is probably the most stable and realistic thing they’ve done in all of the books, but of course no one is happy. Ned is moving across town and into some bland apartment complex and all the kids are helping. There’s a funny scene where he mentions that now he’ll have more time to work on his campaign. Considering how Sweet Valley is, I’m surprised they don’t run him out of town for not having a stable home life. Liz keeps blaming herself for their split. They took one weekend away from Sweet Valley as a family and she gave Alice’s assistant their number. She called and Alice ran off, which was apparently the last straw for Ned. Everyone tries to put on a chipper face about the whole thing. Steve starts coming home from college a lot…wait, is that any different from any other week? Liz throws herself into making their mom feel better and Jess is, well Jessica. In the last book, she start