Elizabeth felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. She suspected that Mr. Cooper’s roly-poly nephew had come all the way from Ohio for a whopping big dose of trouble.
Details: Originally published by Bantam Books in July 1985. Paperback, 249 pages
Summary: It’s (inexplicably) summer vacation, and a group of Sweet Valley high students are taking a four-week bicycle trip up the coast of California. The group consists of Jessica, Elizabeth, Todd, Charlie Markus, Bruce Patman, Olivia Davidson, Roger Barrett Patman, Annie Whitman, Lila Fowler, and Barry Cooper, the nephew of Chrome Dome Cooper who (inexplicably) decided to tag along with a group of kids he’s never met before. The group is being chaperoned by Mr. Collins and Ms. Dalton, who are on the outs again.
There’s a 3-day stopover in Los Angeles, where the group stays on the grounds of the Patman’s friend, Steve Thomas. His daughter Courtney is the same age as the teens and while she offers them a chilly reception before hopping on the motorcycle of her boyfriend, Nolan Ruggers, her dad begs Mr. Collins and Ms. Dalton to let her join the trip, thinking it would be good for her. They reluctantly agree, and Courtney appears to undergo a complete personality change, suddenly treating everyone very sweetly. She particularly hones in on being sweet to Todd, who seems to love the attention. Courtney gives Todd the typical poor-little-rich-girl story, none of which is true – but Todd is wildly stupid and eats it up. This worries Elizabeth, who can’t help but feel that something is off with Courtney, and she and Todd butt heads about it to the point where they break up while on the trip.
The group keeps meeting up with two boys who are also on a bicycle trip of their own, and Jessica becomes obsessed with one of the boys, named Robbie October. He doesn’t seem that interested at first, but she keeps at it and he finally agrees to meet her one night after everyone else has gone to bed. When Jessica isn’t back the next morning, the group splits up to look for her, and it’s Barry Cooper who discovers that she and Robbie are trapped in a cave with a black bear. He distracts the bear but needs to be rescued by Mr. Collins, and Jessica and Robbie are saved (and she tells him she never wants to see him again).
Courtney convinces Todd to leave the trip early with her, and they kiss. He’s fallen for her shtick hook, line, and sinker, and doesn’t even mind when she throws her lit cigarette into some brush. When the group is awoken later by a raging forest fire all around them, they work quickly to put it out, because they’re all trained fire fighters or something. Elizabeth was in charge of putting out the campfire the night before and blames herself for the fire. She resolves to leave the next morning, but when Todd puts two and two together, he tells the group about Courtney’s cigarette and she flips out at him and the group, revealing her true colors. Mr. Collins sends her home and the rest of the group finishes the trip. Liz and Todd get back together, though he does not deserve this chance with Liz.
The B-Plot: The B-Plot is pretty woven into the fabric of the main story, but it mostly involves Lila being furious about the fact that her dad is dating Ms. Dalton (again), and then discovering that Ms. Dalton might not actually be who she says she is. When Lila meets a couple of guys at one of the youth hostels, they say that she looks a lot like a teacher they used to have named Beth Curtis, and Lila runs with this and blackmails Ms. Dalton into doing a lot of her chores on the trip. When the story comes out, Mr. Collins confronts Nora, who tells him that she was married to an abusive alcoholic, and when she finally left him, he begged her to come back before killing himself. His wealthy family blamed her, and the entire thing was a big old mess. Mr. Collins tells her that it wasn’t her fault and that he’s in love with her, and they get back together, I guess? There’s also this weird throwaway bit about the fact that George Fowler knows who she really is and has been using it as a coercive tactic to date her. It’s gross!
Also, Annie and Charlie Markus start dating, Bruce Patman shows a softer side of himself that surprises the group, and finally accepts Roger as his family.
Mr. Collins let out a long, heavy sigh. “If I weren’t living through this night, I’d say it wasn’t possible.”
Sweet Valley Social Calendar:
Estimated Elapsed Time: 4 weeks
– Bike trip up the California coast
Trivia:
– Enid is working at Casey’s Ice Cream Parlor over the summer; Cara is working as a camp counselor in Oregon
– Principal Cooper drives a Dodge Dart
– Annie and Ricky have broken up without notice
– Courtney smokes Marlboros
Pop Culture:
– The Twilight Zone
– The Jackson Five’s “ABC”
– The Brady Bunch
– Blowin’ in the Wind
– Sports Illustrated
– Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
– The Oscars
Does it hold up? (A totally unqualified critical analysis)
Look, I love the Super Editions, because they’re absolutely bonkers when it comes to plot. This is true here, though I will admit that this is not my favorite of the bunch (that is reserved for Special Christmas and Spring Break, which I can’t wait to revisit). A four-week bicycle trip where it’s clear that none of the characters have done any training to prepare for riding for hours a day? A trip that includes a near-death by drowning (Nora Dalton), a bear attack, a forest fire, and an absolute sociopath? I am IN.
For the most part, this one is entertaining. The kinds of food this group prepared while on their camping trip was honestly so wild (they’re making, like, chicken parmigiana over a campfire), and I have a lot of questions about how this trip was funded, but the book is also 100 pages longer than the average SVH book, and it allowed for a lot more plot and a lot more characters (though not much more in the way of character development, which is on brand for the series).
Something that absolutely doesn’t hold up, though? Todd’s treatment of Elizabeth. For a boy who is supposedly so in love with his girlfriend, he’s awfully quick to ignore her needs and concerns for the perceived needs of a girl who is giving off incredibly obvious manipulation vibes. I get that Todd prides himself on being a ~nice~ guy who thinks he’s giving Courtney the attention she needs, but his complete dismissal of Elizabeth’s concerns feels really gross and worrying to me? The wool is fully pulled over his eyes when it comes to Courtney until the last 10 pages of the book, when it conveniently is not, and while a lot of this is lazy plotting and writing, it’s also infuriating as a reader to see his treatment of Elizabeth. There’s plenty of other drama happening in this one, and I don’t think we needed this irritating and honestly kind of abusive treatment of Elizabeth by a character we’re ultimately supposed to support.
This is the couple that we’re supposed to be rooting for?
A Critical Analysis of Sweet Valley's Most Famous Twins 
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