The Sweet Valley High Books Dominated My Teenage Years – But Have They Stood The Test Of Time?

The Sweet Valley High books were first published 41 years ago - how do they fare today?

Sweet Valley High

by Rebecca Holman |
Published on

If you were born between the years of 1975 and 1990 and were ever described as a child as a ‘voracious reader’ then chances are the news that Francine Pascal the creator of Sweet Valley High has died this week, aged 92, has hit you hard.

With the publication of 181 books over 20 years, plus several spin-offs and a TV show, no franchise dominated my pre and early-teen years in quite the same way. I knew everything there was to know about protagonists Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield (perky blonde identical twins with eyes frequently described, as my colleague Jess reminded me this morning, as ‘as blue as the Pacific Ocean,’) and their friends and family, who lived together in a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles. I even had their family tree down pat, thanks to two pseudo-historical novels exploring the Wakefield history, which told us how frontier-era twin Jessamyn ran away to the circus, leaving her twin Elisabeth behind - see what they did there?

But in the main the books focus on the twins’ family and high-school peers. There are villains, like Bruce Patman, the archetypal old-money snob and bad boy who drives a Porsche with personalised number plates who has a love/hate (hate/hate?) relationship with the equally self-absorbed Jessica, and heroes (basically anyone who Elizabeth befriends and most of the featured high-schoolers, for whom every book represents some sort of journey or exercise in personal development).

Suffice to say, I was obsessed. I definitely read every single book in the original 100 at least once if not twice, and I said today that if you presented me with the cover of any of the original books I could tell you the storyline was - and I stand by that claim.

The hook for me, as an 11-year-old living in suburban London with a very modest pocket-money stream, was that the Wakefield twins lived a highly desirable life I could barely imagine in someone just five years older than me. It feels weirdly quaint now, but in a world before Instagram, Pascal and her writers had an innate understanding of what aspiration looked like to pre-teen me. The girls’ bedrooms were described in intense detail - Jessica, the ‘bad’ twin painted her bedroom walls dark purple and was obsessed with leopard print, whereas ‘good girl’ Elizabeth painted her walls a more sensible cream colour - in hindsight, it sounded more show home than teenage bedroom. The girls’ rooms were linked by an adjoining bedroom, and I’m pretty sure they had not only their own telephone, but their own phone line in their bedroom  - the holy grail. The pair shared a Jeep they would drive to school, and had an extensive, endless wardrobe of clothes that were perfectly matched to their personalities and fit for every trip to the beach, school prom or house party they might find themselves at.

But you can’t write 181 books about a 16-year-old’s bedroom, however boujie, which is where the books attempted to tackle the same thorny issues teenagers the world over were grappling with (plus a few extras: I’m not sure how universal an issue it is when someone who looks exactly like your identical twin plans to murder them and take their place - see: books 99-100). It definitely didn’t always land (I’m cringing now thinking about the story where an overweight girl at school is bullied into losing weight - only to become homecoming queen and instantly popular overnight), and the stories get progressively more histrionic as the series progresses (see: evil murderous third twin). I still remember a hilarious aside in one book called Rosa’s Lie, where a Hispanic student at school pretends to have English heritage in order to fit in, and keeps talking about bumping into Princess Diana and Fergie at the races, which no-one ever questions. There’s also no escaping that throughout the books these two white, blonde, wealthy, thin (they’re often specifically described as being a 'perfect size 10') young women are presented to us as the ideal main character in every sense. Every diverse character or complicated storyline is written as a sideshow to their life.

Part of the reason I remember so much about the Sweet Valley High Books is because I drank the books up like water. They were easy, they were unchallenging and they taught me that reading easy, mindless books for pleasure is just as valid as wading through a piece of literary fiction. As a knackered parent with two children under five, I’ll be lucky if I finish the book I’ve just started before September, but this time 30 years ago, I was probably on my sixth Sweet Valley High book of the summer holidays.

The original Sweet Valley High books feel like a relic now - which is a little humbling given that they're the same age as me. But the unleashed in me a lifelong love of reading and taught me that books don't always have to be improving - they can be fun and escapist.

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