Thursday, June 30, 2011

Sweet Valley Confidential

I remember reading my first Sweet Valley book - I was in second grade, stuck at home with a flu and bored out of my wits. My friends were already reading the books, and when my mom asked me if I wanted anything, I asked her to get one for me. It was Jessica and the Jumbo Fish (from SV Kids), and from then on, I was hooked. I have fond memories of rushing to the bookstore every month to buy the new releases (Kids, Twins, High, SVU, and even the Unicorn Club), staying up late at night to read, and even of sneaking the books so I could read during classes. Great memories. But sometime during high school I lost interest. I moved on to Erich Segal, Sidney Sheldon, Neil Gaiman, and other more "serious" authors and never looked back.

That is, until my friend P gave me a copy of Sweet Valley Confidential. (Thanks for that again, dearie.)

It's trashy. It's high drama. It's not really written that well.

Still, I love it.

There's a comfort in returning to characters that you grew up with. It's like reuniting with childhood friends and hearing all their sordid stories. But what I liked the most is how the readers can still relate to the characters. It's amusing how we can get so emotionally caught up in what's happening to them, as if they were real people. Yes, some parts made me cry. Some parts made me so mad. And cliched as the ending may be, it made me happy. It's a throwback to old days when we didn't have to work, when school was the biggest worry, when there were no TV shows like Jersey Shore or Gossip Girl to captivate our imaginations.

It's escapism, pure and simple. And it's glorious.

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