Estimated Elapsed Time: 5-6 weeks
Summary/Overview:
Lila throws a party to show off her estranged mother to all her friends but then has a meltdown in the bathroom when she realizes that Grace still doesn’t plan to stay in Sweet Valley. She thinks mean thoughts about her mother’s boyfriend, a man named Pierre who exhibits the worst stereotypes about French people. But she isn’t the only one who thinks he’s sort of a letch, because all her friends make comments about it.
When Amy calls her the next day to tell her why she left the party in such a hurry, Lila is stunned. It seems that Pierre came onto Amy, and then he groped her chest. That’s sexual assault, asshole. Lila assures Amy that it’s not her fault and tells her she’ll deal with the situation. But then she decides to not tell her mother what he’s done, figuring she can find another way to get rid of him. Um, what?
Lila and Pierre spend a day together, and it’s like straight out of The Parent Trap. She takes him to a notoriously terrible diner for breakfast, makes him go surfing, carry her shopping bags, and play her in a rousing game of tennis. Then she gets him drunk on scotch at lunch so that he passes out when they get home. She locks him in a closet and goes to dinner without him. There, George proposes to Grace, who accepts. They barely even notice a drunken Pierre make a scene at the front of the restaurant. Lila tells Pierre to get lost or she’ll tell Grace what he did to Amy.
She and Grace start planning the wedding of the century, and then they have the wedding at the Fowler estate. Everyone is very happy.
Jessica is still super miserable about Sam’s death and thinks about how she’s only dating Todd (also miserable) to make Elizabeth feel pain. She knows she doesn’t love him (and won’t ever) and that he doesn’t love her. When Todd breaks up with her one night, she realizes she’s all alone. She visits Sam’s gravestone and cries a lot, then decides to start living her life. She’ll start by planning a charity dirt bike rally in his name.
At the Sam Woodruff Memorial Dirt Bike Rally, Jessica gives a rousing and moving speech about drunk driving before starting the race. A latecoming entry who goes by the name “Black Lightning” wins the race by a hair, and when Jessica hands him the trophy, she falls head over heels for him. It’s James, who Margo has paid to get information on the Wakefields. The two begin dating, and Jessica doesn’t think it’s weird at all that he’s obsessed with taking her picture and asking tons of personal questions.
Elizabeth is slowing getting back into the swing of her life. She and Enid study at the library and then go to the Dairi Burger. Elizabeth is feeling pretty good until she runs into Sam’s best friend, who basically tells her that she’s a shitty person to be moving on so quick. Elizabeth continues to feel grateful she’s free and rebuffs attempts by Todd to reconcile. Although she dances with him at the Fowler wedding, she excuses herself quickly.
Margo is in Sweet Valley and staying in an old woman’s guest house. She looks up the Wakefields in the phone book and calls the number only to hang up. She spies on the family as they leave for work and school one day and discovers that she will have a brother when she joins the family. She meets James at Kelly’s bar and offers to pay him money to spy on the Wakefields. She also applies for a job as a caterer for the Fowler’s wedding, but it requires her to bump off someone already on the list. So she runs over the woman with her car and then ditches it in the woods. She works the wedding reception and creeps on everyone.
Meanwhile, Josh is still hot on her trail. He follows leads from Los Angeles to San Diego and then makes a connection that Margo is in Sweet Valley after a train conductor tells him she was reading the Sweet Valley News.
Trivia/Fun Facts:
- The Fowler mansion has an original Picasso hanging in the living room
- The Lone Fighter, a movie starring a foreign hunk named Jean-Paul Bertrand, is all the rage
- The Wave Cafe has live music every Sunday. This is apparently a popular hangout we’ve never heard of before.
- Sam’s middle name was Benjamin.
- This is the first book where Steven goes to SVU instead of “a nearby university”
Memorable Quotes:
- “‘Yeah,’ Lila said skeptically. ‘The other driver wasn’t to blame for Elizabeth’s drinking and driving.'” (7)
- “Pierre will regret ever meeting Lila Fowler. Lila chuckled demonically. If he survives what I have in store for him!” (84)
- “If the trial had taught her one lesson, it was that she’d have to start looking out for herself.” (96) [Um, what trial was she a part of? That was her takeaway?!]
A (Totally Unqualified) Critical Analysis:
Apart from being a little disturbed by how weirdly nonchalant Lila was about Amy’s sexual assault–which, by the way, was horrifying–there’s not a ton to snark on here, in terms of how crazy things are for a Sweet Valley book. I do think the George-and-Grace-get-engaged thing is a little compressed, timeline wise, but whatever. It’s not like these idiots have ever exercised restraint before.
And I still find it odd that Margo thinks her life will be perfect once she’s in Elizabeth’s place. Like, I don’t understand any of her thoughts about this. I understand that she’s a crazy person and therefore not rational, but the ghost writers have made her so mercurial and unpredictable I don’t understand for a second how anyone would believe that she could pull it off for more than a few minutes.*
Can’t wait to see what happens next!
*I mean, don’t get me wrong: I know we aren’t supposed to, because this is Sweet Valley. But still.