- Brittany and Cynthia Daniel
Long before Mean Girls, way before Beverly Hills, 90210, and even before Heathers, there was only one school worth attending: Sweet Valley High. Reading the series, created by Francine Pascal, who died earlier this week (Sunday July 28) aged 92, was a rite of passage for millions of girls — beginning in 1983, when the first book, Double Love, came out, all the way through to to 2011, when the final title Sweet Valley Confidential: 10 Years Later was published.
Whether you identified more with studious, sensible Elizabeth Wakefield or her wilder, more popular identical twin sister Jessica, you knew that your allowance would be well spent at the book store every time a new title was published — and there were 181 to devour in the Sweet Valley High series alone, along with hundreds of spin-offs, from Sweet Valley Twins, documenting their younger years (cute!), to Sweet Valley University (racy!) and even a horror mini-series (creepy!).
And, of course, the books were so successful that they made it to TV, with real-life twins Brittany and Cynthia Daniel bringing the Wakefields to life on-screen in 1994 and looking exactly how we pictured them (you know how it goes: “sparkling aquamarine eyes the color of the Pacific Ocean and perfect size-six figures.”)
While the Sweet Valley books might not be considered great works of literature, any author who gets moody teenagers enthusiastically reading deserves a special place in the canon. Through characters like Jessica, Elizabeth and their friends (aww, Enid Rollins), frenemies (Lila Fowler was a piece of work, wasn’t she?!) and love interests (how boring was Todd Wilkins?), those of us who grew up dreaming of more exciting, glamorous lives learned a lot from Sweet Valley. Here’s why it has such a special place in the hearts of so many nostalgic millennials and Gen Xers…
They gave us an endless fascination with twins
So, ultimately Jessica was silly and shallow and Elizabeth was boring and holier-than-thou, and yet still we were deeply invested in their lives and still we envied them. Why? Because they made it seem like having an identical twin was SO COOL! The infinite opportunities for mistaken identity, mischief and mayhem basically formed the backbone of the series. Stories about sisters who are oh-so different are always compelling — from Little Women to 10 Things I Hate About You to Frozen to The Kardashians — but sisters with identical DNA add an extra level of intrigue. What 13 year old girl doesn’t fantasize about having a twin they can swap clothes, secrets and boyfriends with?
They showed that families aren’t perfect
On the one hand, you could say that some of the family dynamics in the Sweet Valley ecosystem were a little toxic. Jessica was constantly scheming against Elizabeth, and Elizabeth was constantly judging Jessica, but ultimately the twins understood each other like nobody else. They also did a lot of meddling in their parents’ lives — in one memorable book in the series, The Parent Plot, Jessica manipulated them into separating because she wanted to matchmake them with other people. Seriously, who does that?!
Actually, though, one of the best things about Sweet Valley was that the grown-ups had lives too. There were usually sub-plots about what they were up to, from the twins’ dad Ned running for mayor to the ins and outs of their mom Alice’s interior design business. Before Sweet Valley, parents in teen books, shows and movies usually just existed to criticize their kids’ outfits and tell them they were grounded. Here, they had love lives, careers and personalities of their own. Could it be that Pascal’s creations influenced shows like The OC and Dawson’s Creek, in which parents were allowed to be sexy and complicated too?
They showed that sisterhood was more important than romance
The guys in Sweet Valley were largely terrible, from hot, narcissistic rich boy Bruce Patman to goofy (and ultimately doomed) class clown Winston Egbert (wow, these names were really something too, weren’t they?). And then there was Todd Wilkins, Elizabeth’s on-off boyfriend who, in hindsight, was the absolute worst, and not even interesting with it.
Naturally, all the girls in Sweet Valley were totally boy crazy, but the female characters had more to them. Lila Fowler, Jessica’s best friend and arch rival, was initially portrayed as a total nightmare but, over time, her character became more nuanced — and her relationship with the twins was much more complex and intriguing than any of the romances. It’s the same reason why Sex and the City wasn’t really about sex, and basically what the Spice Girls were singing about on ‘Wannabe’ too.
They taught us that money isn’t everything
Sweet Valley, a fictional suburb of Los Angeles, was an opulent place, where teenagers drove Porsches and everyone had housekeepers. If you were a kid growing up in a small town, riding the bus to school and cleaning your own bedroom (occasionally), it was the ultimate fantasy world. But, we soon learned that money couldn’t buy happiness. Some of the richest characters, like Lila and Bruce, were really the most miserable, and had many terrible things happen to them over the years (and we don’t just mean all that manipulation courtesy of Jessica). We’d still love to have a poke around their houses, though.
They showed that sometimes life gets weird
OK, so life in Sweet Valley went a bit crazy sometimes. It’s no surprise that Pascal came up with the concept after years working as a writer on soap operas. One minute you’re reading about life at a relatively normal high school, albeit one where everyone is a major stereotype, the next there are teenagers dating vampires, being hunted down by evil doppelgangers, dying in plane crashes, joining cults and becoming nannies for the royal family.
If you crossed High School Musical with Heathers, Mean Girls, Pretty Little Liars, The Princess Diaries, 90210, Gossip Girl and Twilight, you still wouldn’t come up with something as far-fetched, ridiculous and downright fun as the various incarnations of Sweet Valley. These days, some of the storylines feel a little dated and problematic. But ultimately we’ll always be grateful to Francine Pascal — and her fleet of ghostwriters — for bringing the Wakefields into our lives.
