Double Love

I think this would be the book I've re-read the largest number of times. As the first book in the Sweet Valley series, it demonstrates perfectly what the series is going to be about. It's not well-written, it's enormously corny and I love it to death and probably always will, even if I know it so well that I can almost recite each sentence before I get to it.

The Plot
Elizabeth and Jessica are both chasing after the same guy – the stunningly dull Todd Wilkins. While Elizabeth relies upon blushing glances, Jessica is far more proactive when it comes to nabbing her man, thus entangling Todd just enough to make Liz believe the two are together. Cue Great And Enduring Angst for most of the book. Meanwhile, Jessica embarks upon underage show more drinking with sleazy Rick Andover, neatly ruining Liz's reputation in the process. In an uncanny coincidence, it turns out that Steven Wakefield has been dating Trisha Martin, a member of the most gossipped-about family in town. It's okay, though, because he's not dating her sister Betsy, who apparently sleeps around. (Missed a good opportunity there, Steve!) Willing to believe that Liz has undergone a complete personality change, Todd takes Jessica to the PBA/PE dance, but still isn't convinced by her charm, forcing her to seek revenge through telling Liz he'd gone the grope. Liz is suitably horrified, but continues to moon over Todd nonetheless, perhaps encouraged by the fact that he might not be as boring as he'd seemed. Rick carjacks the twins, and Todd comes to the punch-throwing rescue, thus demonstrating that violence solves everything – or, at least, is the way to Liz's heart. Truth is revealed, snogging happens and Jessica is thrown into a pool to teach her a lesson.

The People
Elizabeth Wakefield: For the very first time, we are treated to what will soon become the most tiresome physical description ever to be churned out once a book. We learn that Elizabeth is five foot six, blonde, blue-green eyed, tanned and otherwise perfectly formed. She has a "tiny" mole on her right shoulder and never goes anywhere without her watch. Her big dream is to be a writer, much like every female on the internet between the ages of ten and thirty, and she writes the school gossip column, "Eyes and Ears", so she's obviously well on her way to fame and fortune.

Jessica Wakefield: Jessica, unlike Elizabeth, is bereft of a shoulder mole and a watch. She wears a matching gold lavaliere, however! Jess is co-captain of the SVH cheerleading squad and believes in the motto that all is fair in love and war.

Rick Andover: A SVH drop-out, Rick is Dangerous with a capital D. He looks like a young Clint Eastwood (ew), with added "sultry" dark eyes and an eagle tattoo on his forearm so you just know he's up to no good. Drives a pimped-out silver Camaro, smells like a combination of petrol and leather, and is a fan of cigarettes and underage drinking.

Mr Collins: Faculty adviser for the Oracle and in possession of strawberry-blonde hair.

"Chrome Dome" Cooper: The "stuffy" principal of SVH.

Ronnie Edwards: Quiet and judgemental. New to SVH.

Winston Egbert: Lanky, dark-haired class clown. Has been in love with Jess since 5th grade. Nice and funny, but unattractive.

George Fowler: One of the richest men in Sweet Valley. Made his fortune through silicon chips.

Lila Fowler: Poor little rich girl. One of Jessica's best friends.

Dana Larson: Lead singer for The Droids.

Betsy Martin: Has been doing drugs for years and "sleeps around", according to Elizabeth The Slut-Shamer.

Tricia Martin: A sweet strawberry blonde.

Mr. Martin: A heavy drinker, who gets "bombed out of his mind" every night.

Mrs. Martin: Died of leukemia when Betsy and Tricia were young. In other words, it's her fault that Betsy is a junkie.

Ken Matthews: Blond captain of the football team.

Emily Mayer: Drummer for The Droids.

Bruce Patman: He drives a black Porsche, in case you haven't heard. Tall, dark and handsome and rich and spoiled to boot, there's no wonder he's arrogant and just a little bit sleazy. Star of the tennis team and part of Sweet Valley's richest family. Oh and he has a Porsche.

Henry Wilson Patman: The richest man in Sweet Valley. The Patmans are old money, thanks to the canning industry.

Mrs. Patman: Was a Vanderhorn before marriage. The Vanderhorns were one of the first families to settle Sweet Valley. So that makes Bruce REALLY old money.

Caroline Pearce: School gossip, who lives three doors down from the Wakefields. Owns a small black poodle.

John Pfeifer: Sports editor of the Oracle

Enid Rollins: Elizabeth's BFF – or just a weird nerd, if you ask Jess. Shoulder-length brown hair, big green eyes and smart and funny, despite being quiet.

Bob Russo: SVH science teacher. Elizabeth and Jessica are in his Chemistry class. He's the smartest and most demanding teacher at the school, moody and sarcastic. Not a very nice guy, except for when he lets his class eat sorority-pledge pizza.

Coach Schultz: The school coach. No, really.

Alice Wakefield: Blonde like the twins and an interior designer.

Ned Wakefield: Dark, handsome and a lawyer.

Steven Wakefield: Just over six foot tall and in possession of "beautiful" dark eyes and an athletic body, it's no wonder that Steven makes a success story out of the internet meme and convinces his sister to make him a sandwich.

Cara Walker: Despite her long, dark hair, great figure and mad tennis skillz, Steven just isn't interested.

Mrs. Waller: School dietician.

Marianna West: The newest partner at Ned Wakefield's law firm. A beautiful divorcée (GASP!), she used to be married to heart specialist Gareth West. According to Bruce, she's a "trampy broad".

Todd Wilkins: Todd is captain and star of the SVH basketball team, and supposedly one of the cutest boys in the school. (Presumably Kate William never saw how he looked in the cover art.) He's tall and lean with brown (coffee-coloured!) eyes and a tanned, muscular chest. Unfortunately, he drives a battered Datsun, not a Porsche.

The Places

Sweet Valley: Rolling hills, a "quaint" town centre and a beach fifteen minutes away. Sounds too good to be true!

Elizabeth's Bedroom: Cream walls, off-white carpet, a velvet-covered chaise longue, a closet with louvered doors and two mirrors. A large table is home to a typewriter, books, paper, pens and pencils. Above it is a theatre poster of A Touch of the Poet. Because she's a writer. And writers have bedrooms that look like writers sleep in them.

The Dairi Burger: Local hamburger joint and SVH hangout.

Kelly's: The most notorious bar in Sweet Valley. A beachfront roadhouse with loud country & western music, dimly-lit cracked-vinyl booths, smoke-filled air and a lack of respect for underage drinking laws.

Greek Life

Pi Beta Alpha: The "positively best" or "snobbiest" sorority at SVH, depending upon whether you're Jessica or Elizabeth. Members include Liz and Jess, Lila, Cara, Caroline and Enid. Why exactly Enid was accepted is anyone's guess.

Psi Epsilon: Members include Todd Wilkins and Ronnie Edwards.

The Fashion

* A tuxedo outfit owned by Elizabeth and borrowed by Jess: consists of a shirt, trousers and bow tie.
* Jess' outfit for her date with Rick: her sexiest red blouse, a black silk-jersey skirt and Elizabeth's black sandal heels.
* Jess's dance outfit: a blue, slinky dress with spaghetti straps, a plunging neckline and a full skirt with a handkerchief hem.
* Elizabeth's dance outfit: a white, strapless dress.
* Todd's and Winston's dance outfits: cords, shirts, ties and sports coats.
* Jessica's dunking outfit: Elizabeth's blue button-down shirt and jeans.

The Pairings

* Jessica/Todd – Jess chasing; one actual date
* Enid/Ronnie – ongoing dating
* Jessica/Rick – one date
* Jessica/Winston – unrequited love on Winston's behalf
* Elizabeth/Bruce – rejected date invitation from Bruce
* Elizabeth/Winston – one platonic date
* Elizabeth/Ken – one largely-platonic date
* Elizabeth/Todd – much angsting by Elizabeth; eventual serious relationship show less

Hoo boy! did teenage me have some bad taste in books.

I saw this yesterday in a Free Little Library and couldn't resist finding out how it would read now.

It's pretty awful; what was teenage me thinking?? The characters were so cardboard: Jessica is the vain, selfish, shallow, 'evil' twin; Elizabeth is everything good and shiny. Jessica steals Liz's love interest and Liz is all brave and noble. Liz's love interest is an absolute jackass of an 80's teen with a 50's mentality. And I don't even know what the hell was supposed to be going on with their parents...

Dumb book. I'd probably be less harsh with it if I didn't know there were authors out there like Blume who were doing exponentially better books for teens long before this was show more written, but thankfully there were, and thankfully I read them. show less

I was reading Sweet Valley Kids when I was little. All of it were hand me downs by the daughter of my mother's officemate. I didn't even see her or know her name (Wherever you are right now, thank you for giving me books when I was young).

The Sweet Valley High is still about the sun-colored hair identical twins; this series is the adult or older version of the SVK.

No matter how identical the Wakefield twins in appearance, their characters are far from each other. They're like day and night. Elizabeth Wakefield--older by four minutes than her sister--is smart, kind, and the best sister you can ever have. While Jessica Wakefield is the popular, vain, and the worst sister you can ever have.

I just love to hate Jessica. She's the original show more Blair Waldorf of Gossip Girl or Regina George of Mean Girls. Do girls like these really exist? Throughout the story, she was preventing her sister's happiness. She's manipulative and doing things in her way, usually without being reprimanded.

Though Elizabeth is very kind, I can't help but get irritated sometimes because she's being way too kind. She's spoiling her rotten sister, maybe that's one of the reasons why Jessica takes advantage of her. But Elizabeth is the epitome of good always wins in the end.

I think that Todd is not the right guy for any of the twins because he did WHAT?! in the middle of the story. But I'll give him a chance as it is still the start of the series.

I'm amazed on how Francine Pascal never ran out of plots for these twins; she made tons of series for all age brackets. It is evident that she got some formulas, but who cares? It's interesting and it's still making readers hooked. show less

These books were so racy when I was younger. I had to borrow them from friends and read them in a locked bathroom. (My poor mom probably thought I had some weird ailment.)

Anyway, this book wasn't nearly as torrid as I remembered - just some underage smoking and beer-drinking and a scandalous run-in with the local bad boy. Jessica was just as conniving as I remembered and Elizabeth just as dull.

Go Elizabeth, we’re rooting for you!

Double Love by Francine Pascal
4 out of 5 stars

Double Love Book One in the Sweet Valley High series by Francine Pascal was extremely better than I originally thought it would be.

Elizabeth Wakefield is the smart, level-headed, melt into the background twin.
Jessica Wakefield is the deceitful, social ladder climbing cheerleading squad captain twin.
Todd Wilkins is the perfect, hot, football player they both want.
Jessica is use to getting her way, but for the first time her competition, Elizabeth, isn’t going to give up. In a world of high school drama, lies, crushes, twins, and rumors, how can you survive?

I am usually not into the girly, boy snatching drama stories, but this time I couldn’t help but show more get caught up in the plot and dramas. All the characters are completely realistic. Almost right off the bat I feel sorry for Elizabeth who is getting used by her own twin, Jessica. At the exactly same time I feel angry at Jessica for being so low. It was weird, I actually felt proud of Elizabeth when she finally stood up against her sister and told her so couldn’t use her anymore. Then it got even better when Todd came to his sense and realized Elizabeth was the one he wanted, not Jessica. I mean, I was completely pulled in and rooting for her!

Drinking and thought to be affairs were brought up. But every time that happened in the book, it was clearly looked down upon, so I don’t think they should be any reason for not reading the book.

I believe it was a good decision on the authors part to include Enid as a loyal and true friend to Elizabeth. If Elizabeth hadn’t had someone who believed in her out of all those people, I don’t think it could have been realistic or likely that she wouldn’t have been emotionally scarred or depressed from all the rumors and hurtful crud thrown her way.

Double Love is one high school drama that will stay with you, and have you reading more. (It did for me, the tomboy!)

Review Date: August 12th, 2008 show less

Okay...reading these because of nostalgia. For the time period, these books totally deserve 4 stars. They were originally published in the 80's, and you can only find majority of them on ebay or by thrifting. As an adult, its an easy read, filled with the cattiness of high school. I loved these books when I was growing up (usually found at the local thrift store) and I'm so excited to read them from start to finish as an adult!

A few long thoughts on SVH as a whole...
http://babydraco.insanejournal.com/62200.html#cutid1

And now on to the updated version of Double Love.

On the very first page we learn that the twins are no longer a perfect size six. They’re now a perfect size four.

Yeah.

Mrs. Wakefield is still cooking huge, fatty breakfasts for them every schoolday though. Sure. What post mil working mom doesn’t? In the 70s, it was new, uncomfortable, and strange, for a middle class mother to be at work all the time and if she wasn’t also managing to run her household perfectly while working as many hours as the dad, she was considered a bad mother. The concept of “latchkey kids” was still new in 1983. I remember (in 89)being surprised that one of my show more friends, the daughter of a poverty stricken single mom, was expected to make her own breakfast every morning. These days, Alice Wakefield would say “get your own breakfast”, if she was even there when they woke up. Everyone would have about ten minutes or less to eat- Ned would eat a donut or bagel with coffee on the way to work and finish it at his desk. The twins would down Pop Tarts and bring their Styrofoam Starbucks coffee cups into class with them. Neither parent should be home when the kids get back from school, either. No one would be surprised by this.

“The Oracle” school newspaper is now a website, and Liz does an anonymous gossip blog for it. First, can you say “Gossip Girl” ripoff? Second, I never understood why Liz was the gossip columnist anyway, when she’s always talking about “serious journalism”. Shouldn’t Caroline Pierce be the gossip columnist? Third, any high school computer geek worth their salt with a half hour of free time can find out who the “anonymous” blogger is.

Elizabeth’s blue velvet chaise lounge is now a “vintage settee”. Um, okay. Don’t see why that needed changing.

The Droids are now called “Valley of Death” and they’re Goth.

“Can you believe this?” He asked as they joined the crowd on its way outside. “An actual protest in Sweet Valley. I bet it’s a first.”

“Probably,” Elizabeth said. “The town’s not exactly known for its progressive politics.”

Bwaahaha. Such an understatement.

The cars have all been updated.

The twins red Fiat Spider is now a red Jeep Wrangler. Makes sense, since Fiat Spiders are not driven much anymore.
Bruce’s black Porche is now a black Cadillac XLR Roadster (and there’s no 1bruce1 plate). Which does not make sense. Porches are still cool, expensive cars. A Porche never goes out of style, and a classic old money preppy type like Bruce is gonna go for the classic, cliché look.
Rick Andover is driving an electric blue VW Eos with running lights and racing stripes like in “The Fast and the Furious” (and I quote).

You’d think that with all these “updates” they would have remembered to hire a better copyeditor this time around. But they misidentify Todd as “the captain of the football team” in the first chapter, then a couple of chapters later, call him a basketball player, then in the next chapter, John Pfiefer (boo! Hiss!) is looking for Todd to get a replacement picture of him for an article about the football team. Even if Todd was somehow able to be on both teams, he could not be on both at once. Normally, basketball is a winter sport, and football is fall but in SVH, they are played at the same time because the football season lasts all year. Apparently.

I don’t remember if Elizabeth and Steven ate chips and salsa in that kitchen scene in the original Double Love but I would find it hard to believe that they did. Even in SoCal, acknowledgement, and embracing of, Mexican culture wasn’t exactly in vogue in the early 80s. Especially not in white, preppy, well to do, Sweet Valley, where Mexicans are the people who clean your pool.

But in this version, as a nod to newer trends of discarding 50sesque burgers’n fries for eclectic ethnic food, The Dairy Burger is now a Mexican place called “Casa del Sol”. Which probably means “House of the Sun” but could also mean it’s owned by some guy named Sol.

Instead of going to a bar with Rick Andover, Jessica ends up at a F&F style drunken drag race. I’m not sure why. But it's certainly less sexist and cliche.

The famous tuxedo shirt is replaced by a “red top and J Crew skirt”. Updated, sure, but not very memorable.

You’d also think that the editors would take this opportunity to correct some continuity errors that resulted from the fact that Double Love was the very first book in the SV world to exist. SVT appeared about thirty books later at least, and although in SVH Todd and Elizabeth have just begun dating, they date for most of SVT, The Unicorn Club, and SVJH. But wait, then SVK comes along, and Todd is their friend in second grade! There’s no “Oh, but he’s a jock and I’m a brain and we’ve never really hung out before”.

Yet another problem with updating the books is that fashions have changed drastically. Even though the “trendy” 80s styles are coming back into fashion (so some of the characters don’t even need their clothes updated if they are the uber trendy types), the world has still changed since 1983. Just like the 1960s fashions that were popular in the mid 90s didn’t mean that the previous twenty years had never happened. No contemporary person would mock Olivia’s hippie clothes or imply that she’s strange for dressing that way or immediately assume that Roger Barrett’s faded t shirt and cargo pants meant he was poor (hey, just eight years ago that would have made him totally indistinguishable from any other boy around).

I will be patient and wait to see what they do with the other books, but so far I’m not terribly impressed. show less