Sweet Valley High #133: To Catch a Thief

Since I read the first book in this miniseries many, many, many moons ago, I'll let you catch up here before I continue. Ready?

Elizabeth just spent the night with Laurent in his little cottage, but despite the fact that he's a rich and handsome prince who she kind of loves, she still didn't give it up. He takes her back to the castle and shows her how to sneak in through the underground tunnels. The prince also tells her a story about a royal person who fell in love with a servant girl. When he was forced to marry royalty, the girl became a bird who sang sad songs for the rest of her life. Huh, kind of sounds like the next Disney movie.

Since Jessica has to keep picking up the slack for her sister, she hears through the grapevine that the prince needs to marry soon. There's a big ball coming up. The plan is for him to announce his engagement to Antonia, the daughter of the countess, on the big night. She thinks about telling her twin to save her from heartbreak but keeps getting distracted by Jacques.

That's mainly because he keeps popping up all the time. Jacques tells her that his family and the royal family, remember that he's supposedly royal too, have a long standing feud. If they catch him in the house, they'll throw him out and make Jessica go back to America. It's far better to just sneak around. This totally reminds me of the American Dad episode where Haley falls in love with the “terrorist.”

They start making out one morning, he pushes her back on the bed, and her head starts to spin until she realizes he's putting his hand under her pillow and not under her bra. That's where she keeps the necklace he gave her in the last book. Jacques claims that it's a piece of garbage and not fitting of someone like her. Jess tells him she loves it and won't let him have it back, which leads to his dad screaming at him to get it back.

Jacques pretty much sneaks in all the time to steal the necklace. Jessica keeps catching him and assuming that he just missed her. They fight over the necklace all the time, but he brings her a pearl bracelet made from real pearls as a replacement. As much as she loves it, she still won't give him back the old necklace.

Elizabeth keeps sleepwalking through the palace as she thinks about Laurent and compares him to Todd. Though she thinks she loves the prince, she can't stop thinking about Todd and how much she misses him and oh yeah, why hasn't he tried to get in touch with her? She hears some of the servants talking about the prince's upcoming engagement and freaks out because she doesn't understand how he could propose without talking to her first! Jessica knows about Antonia but doesn't tell Liz because she wants to fantasize about having a BIL prince.

As part of the big party, everyone has to do a tableau. Small groups do a scene from history or something, and they have to hold the pose for five minutes while everyone else guesses who they are. For some reason, the twins get assigned to do one with the kids. If kids under the age of 10 are known for anything, it's sitting still for long periods of time.

Liz finally puts on her big girl pants and goes to see Laurent. She figures they should at least talk to each other before he proposes. Instead of talking, she finds him outside in the garden and holding Antonia's hand. The countess then makes a talk about how it's the perfect arrangement. Laurent is very uncomfortable because he loves Liz but his parents forced this engagement. Liz bursts in and basically calls him a dog, while the countess looks down at her and reminds her that she's not suitable for a royal marriage.

After crying to her twin for more than an hour, Liz finally puts it together for the party. They do a scene from Cinderella. Jessica is the fairy godmother, and Liz is the wicked stepmother. She puts the pearl bracelet on her ankle to carry a part of Jacques with her and then wears the necklace as a headband. The countess makes a big deal out of how uncouth the twins are during the tableau and almost makes him see red before she gets really loud about something.

That something turns out to be Jessica's necklace, which is actually the gem someone stole from the countess on the train. The palace guards rush to her room and drag her downstairs before going to grab Liz. Laurent gets a visit from his dad who tells him what happened, but he swears Liz would never do something like that. The guards then literally put them in the dungeon in leg and arm cuffs chained to the wall and leave them there crying. Jessica then realizes that she lost her pearl bracelet but also realizes that Jacques was a thief after all.

*It is kind of unrealistic for Liz to assume that the prince would propose marriage to her after a few days or that he could even propose marriage to someone like her. But given that this almost happened before with Prince Arthur, I can understand her confusion.

*I haven't read the last book in this miniseries yet, but does Laurent make a big speech and give up the throne if he can't marry the woman he loves? I feel really bad for Todd because I think Devon will pop up soon so that Liz can cheat on him again.

*At one point, Jessica feels swept away by Jacques while lying on her bed with him on top of her. She then stops him, not because she's afraid of going too far, but because she doesn't want him to think he has the upper hand. Yeah, she totally finished high school as a virgin.

*The countess and her daughter wear gold dresses, and no one can guess who they are. She finally tells them that she's Zeus or something with his daughter, and one poor guy is just like, “oh, that was going to be my next guess.”

*When the countess throws a fit, it throws off the kids and makes them ruin their tableau.

*There are literally dozens of servants running around all the time, but they somehow needed to go all the way to America just to find two teens to watch their kids.

*Dungeons are not cool man! Can you imagine the storm that would erupt if royals put two pretty teen girls in a dungeon today? It would be an international incident!