Young Adult Revisited

I somehow ended up with this book, one in the middle of the series, and the last five or six books. Since I had no idea this series even existed until a few years later, I had to do a little reading to get caught up. Basically, this is the twins’ eighth grade year. Sweet Valley redid the school districts, and somehow the twins ended up at Sweet Valley Junior High, while all their other friends are still at Sweet Valley Middle School, including Winston who literally lives a block away, in the same direction as the new school . They no longer talk to any of their old friends because their new friends want nothing to do with them. Salvatore is Todd 2.0. He’s the guy who draws funny cartoons that the newspaper constantly rejects, and since this is still a Sweet Valley book, he has a mad crush on Elizabeth. He thinks about her all the time and can barely function around her. None of this sits too well with his best friend Anna because she recently developed a thing for him...

Fran comes home from working at McDonald's to find a purple envelope in the mailbox. Naturally, it is a new chain letter sent just to her. The book then jumps to Tony and Alison. They planned to both attend college in LA and stay together, but then Alison got accepted into NYU and decided to move across the country. They haven't had sex lately and they just keep fighting about her move. She's pissed that he brought it up yet again before they could have sex, while he's pissed that she's leaving him behind. He eventually walks out on her and seemingly breaks up with her. Since she has plans to go shopping for school clothes with Brenda, she heads over to her friend's house. Brenda says that Fran called her, so they head over there. Fran tells them about the letter, which has her task hidden in a secret message in the classified ads. They read the message, and it tells her to drown her puppy. Alison calls the other friends, but no one answers the...

Adam and his family just moved from the big city to the small town of Springville. While helping his dad carry furniture into the new house, his dad throws out his back and gives him some money to run and grab a pack of Coke from the store. He runs into a girl who introduces herself as Sally, helps herself to one of his drinks, and offers him a tour of the city. Sally tells him that all the kids call the town Spooksville because so many weird things happen there. She tells him about the girl who disappeared when a cloud came out of the sky and swallowed her whole, which her friend Watch saw happen. As they go near the grocery store, he sees a gorgeous black Corvette. As a shopping cart careens toward it, he throws himself in front of the car and Sally screams at him to stop. The woman is Ann Templeton, and she seems to know everything about Adam. She tells him that he’s much more polite than the other kids in town, makes a few cryptic comments, makes rude comments abou...