SVH Special Edition: Elizabeth's Secret Diary, Volume 2
I'm taking a break from Jonathan the Glorious Sparkling Vampire to recap Elizabeth's Secret Diary Volume 2.
I was slightly older when I read the secret diaries for the first time, and had been spoiled by other fictional diarists. While I wasn't exactly expecting Sweet Valley's answer to Bridget Jones - cigarettes 12, dead boyfriends 3 (v.g.) - I remember being extremely let-down that that wily Francine Pascal was basically selling me condensed versions of books I'd already read. I'm not sure what her intentions were, really. Perhaps she just had her eye on a fancy new diving board for her money vault, so she could swim through her hoards of gold like Scrooge McDuck.
Fortunately, they all had a fabulous cheating subplot, so let's get on with that. The back cover promises "true confessions", "classic moments", and a "painful decision" in Liz's life. Intriguing stuff.
Prologue
Liz and Todd are eating dinner at a fancy restaurant. It's unclear at what point in Sweet Valley canon this is meant to be, but this book was published in 1997 - so possibly just before Devon Whitelaw turns up? Anyway. We get four pages of Liz writing in her diary about how great it is to be dating a rich guy and how hot she is, revealing that she is just as shallow as Jessica. Are these the "true confessions" advertised on the back cover? If so, I am already disappointed. Todd is distracted throughout the meal and eventually spills the beans that his girlfriend from Vermont will be flying in to Sweet Valley and attending their date on Monday.
Liz is pissed about this, even though he insists that they're just friends. "When was the last time Ken or Winston wrote you a letter on perfumed stationery and called you 'cute buns'?" she asks. All the time, Liz. All the time. I am kind of on her side, though. I'd be pretty suspicious if my boyfriend's ex flew across the country to see him at short notice, especially if they'd never really broken up. And why does she need to be on their date anyway, huh? Can't Liz and Todd reschedule and then take Michelle to hang out at the Dairi Burger with the rest of the gang? However, this solution does not occur to Todd, and Liz storms out of the restaurant in tears, telling him that she doesn't want to see him until Michelle has left Sweet Valley.
At home a few nights later, Liz can't get the image of Todd and Michelle out of her mind. So she writes an angry limerick(!) which I shall reproduce for you here in full:
There once was a girl named Michelle
whose motto was "I kiss and tell."
She took her best shot -
My boyfriend she caught.
She's the Basketball Groupie from Hell.
She admits to her diary that it's not Wordsworth. No need to tell me that, Liz.
Liz calls up Enid, who has nothing better to do, of course, and she comes over to make cookies. Then Todd and Michelle come over. Uninvited! Miss Manners would have a few things to say to Todd. Michelle is beautiful (of course) and friendly. She tells Liz that she's signed up to write some articles for her school paper, and while she's not a great writer, she's a fast learner. Liz: "I bet your writing is really...memorable. And I'm sure you're right about being fast." Uh...burn? Michelle stares at Liz with some uncertainty, which Liz takes to mean that she's stupid. I think that Michelle is just amazed that Liz used an insult from 1958.
Michelle invites Liz and Enid to have a picnic with her and Todd the following day, and Liz flips out. Todd leaves angrily, with Michelle tailing behind. I think Todd is being the douchiest person in this situation, to be quite honest - I can sympathise with both of the girls to an extent - but I suspect that the ghost-writer wants us to either see Liz as an irrational bitch or Michelle as a home-wrecking harpy. Enid convinces Liz to go over to Todd's with a plate of cookies and beg for forgiveness.
But when she arrives, Todd and Michelle are having secret kisses in his back garden! Liz throws the cookies at them and runs away. Then she goes home and reads her diary. As you do.
Part 1
Olivia Davidson is in love with her art teacher! But Liz doesn't even care about that, giving that storyline only a cursory mention. Fuck Olivia, man. Fuck her especially when she rises from the dead. Fucking zombie girl. No, Liz is more focused on the fact that Todd is moving back to Sweet Valley and she still maybe-loves him. This is problematic as she is currently dating Jeffrey French, her charming, soccer-playing, less-popular-with-the-twelve-year-olds-reading-this-series boyfriend. I wonder who she'll choose.
Jeffrey, when Liz tells him the big news, reacts pretty decently, saying of Todd: "I know his old friends think a lot of him. He must be quite a guy." Jeffrey is very gracious and tactful in this scene, although it's clear that he's also concerned about what this means for his relationship with Liz. Liz considers reassuring him that she's over Todd. That's no fun, though, and instead she just fantasises in her diary about Jeffrey and Todd having a duel in the Dairi Burger with french fries. I don't think that Liz has quite grasped the situation properly.
Lila reveals that Todd's father has been named president of his company. I forget its name, although I know it begins with "V". Viagra? Veritaserum? Vermicious Knids? I don't know. Todd, thanks to this new-found wealth, will also be going to private school, a place called Lovett Academy. Don't eat the meat pies, Todd. Liz cries because it seems that Todd has been in contact with everyone in Sweet Valley except her. Then she comes across a letter from him which got lost in the post and is happy once again.
Once Todd returns, things continue to be awkward. He and Liz aren't sure where they stand with each other - "You're still tall!" smoothes Liz at their reunion - but he comes over to the Wakefields for dinner. I think that's quite suspect, as does Jeffrey, who overcompensates with Liz by buying her flowers every day. She expresses her anguish in the following poem:
The Choice
How to choose between sun and moon?
Which is happier: May or June?
You make me dream. He makes me smile.
But triangle love is not my style.
Two in love is what should be.
I never meant to be
one of three.
This would be more convincing if Liz hadn't already cheated on Todd with about twelve different guys at this point in canon. Looking at the poem more closely, I think that Todd is the boy who makes Liz smile. At least, I'm sure everyone in Sweet Valley laughs at him a lot.
The twins visit Lovett Academy, which is full of Persian carpets and chandeliers. Fancy! I went to private school and it was nothing like that, but then again, I didn't go to school in Sweet Valley. I remember when I was eleven we passed around a petition to buy a school guinea pig, but that scheme was nixed when it was deemed too expensive an investment and some of the teachers expressed their concerns about what would happen to it during the holidays. Anyway. Back in Sweet Valley, we meet the infamous Sheffield Eastman and Courtney Kane. Liz hates Courtney because she seems to be dating Todd. That's a pretty stupid reason to hate somebody. My reaction would be one of pity. Or fear for their safety. Dude can get punchy.
Liz makes out with Jeffrey and accidentally calls him "Todd". Ouch. Jeffrey doesn't raise the issue and just pretends he didn't hear her. Dude, you're boned. So boned. There's no way you're not going to get dumped. This is like when the Harry Potter series was still coming out and there was all this debate about WHO WAS HERMIONE GOING TO PICK - RON OR HARRY? And it was so obvious that she was going to choose Ron. And she did. (Spoilers!) I bet no one who read Brokenhearted when it was first released thought for even one moment that Liz was going to pick Jeffrey. I think even Jeffrey knew that Liz wasn't going to pick Jeffrey.
Then there's the fancy party, hosted by Todd and Courtney at his new house. Liz tells us that it has a gazebo and white columns (which date all the way back to 1972?), just in case we-the-readers had forgotten that Todd has struck it rich since we were last reminded on the previous page. The evening ends with Liz and Todd making out at Miller's Point thanks to Jeffrey's machinations. Jeffrey wanders off to, I don't know, fight Voldemort or something.
Jeffrey calls round the following evening to make sure that Liz is okay and they make out. Then they say goodbye. Normally in fiction I'd give this a pass, but this is the beginning of the slippery slope of tears and cheating and tree houses (read on!). I'm watching you, Liz. I'm reading your diary.
Now that Liz and Todd are together again, they keep missing deadlines and extracurricular activity meetings in order to hang out, and the fact that they're not spending all day with each other is tearing their relationship apart. Liz is angry because Todd wants to come back to SVH but is sticking to Lovett because his dad wants him there. I can kind of understand this, but Liz calls him stupid and throws in his face the fact that she used to have lunch with Jeffrey every day. Oh, go and write another limerick about it, Liz. This is so stupid. Jess and Sam managed just fine, as did Enid and Hugh. As do the zillions of people in real life who date but aren't together twenty-four hours a day.
There's almost no special insider information for this book, actually. As we all know, Liz and Todd break up, Sweet Valley and Lovett Academy compete in the Battle of the Schools, Sweet Valley wins, Todd decides to transfer back to Sweet Valley, and Liz and Todd get back together.
Wait, I lie. While Liz and Todd are temporarily split up, Liz tells Jeffrey about her problems and he listens sympathetically. Then - get this - she tries to make out with him because she thought that he was being nice to her because he wanted to get back together with her. Liz really has some fucked up ideas about relationships. Jeffrey rejects her totally: he admits that he still loves her but he's not going to stand for her dicking him around. Liz is left feeling pretty stupid.
So anyway. Todd is back at SVH, Liz and Todd are together again, and order is restored to the universe. Then, tragedy strikes when Ken Matthews is rendered blind after a car crash! Slowly his eyesight is restored as he falls in love with Terri Adams. I think that this was actually one of the stupider Sweet Valley storylines. Interestingly, throughout Liz's retelling of it there's no mention of the steamy affair with Ken she confessed to in her previous diary: she's very sympathetic towards him and talks about him as though he's one of her friends, but there's no hint at romance or remorse or jealousy or anything like that. Draw what conclusions you will from this.
This part ends with Liz feeling bad about being so mean to Jeffrey, but not bad enough to actually apologise to him about it.
Part 2
Liz profiles Patty Gilbert, a dancer, for her new Personal Profiles column. Unfortunately the first interview just ends up with Patty telling Liz all her problems (her boyfriend went on a date with another girl), and Liz vowing to help her out. The book this part of the diary dwells upon hasn't been recapped for this comm yet (it's called Boy Trouble and features Liz with a Sympathetic Hand on Patty's shoulder), but from what I can tell, Liz just flails about until Jessica provides her with the solution to the problem.
Moving on! Jessica signs up for a dating agency, pretending to be two different people so that she can date two boys at the same time. Liz is shocked, simply shocked, even though she was cheating with Jeffrey in her mind three pages ago. Jessica teases her about being boring, and she runs away and writes a poem in her diary:
The Good Twin
Early to bed and early to rise
Responsible, sensitive, loving, and wise
I do what I'm told and never am late
So slow to anger; never show hate.
Trapped in a box built on unspoken lies
While inside a tiny flame sputters
and dies.
I don't know, Liz. I think that your decision to neglect punctuation in that poem was distinctly unwise. (Oh, snap!) (I spent half an hour on that joke, you know.) (God, I feel so alone.)
Liz's mood improves when she perms her hair and has a confidence-boosting conversation with Jeffrey. Then Jessica talks her into pretending to be both Daniella Fromage and Magenta Galaxy on dates with the two boys she's hooked, switching with Jess every half-hour. Liz says that she feels "ridiculous" being Daniella. Hey, fuck you, Liz!
The plot winds up but Liz is still worried about being boring. So she decides to enrol in surfing lessons. In the original book, she keeps it a secret from everyone in order for it to be a huge surprise. However, in this book she tells Jeffrey about it. I'm not sure why. For a "secret diary", this book is surprisingly low on actual secrets.
Steven cheats on Cara with a girl who looks just like Tricia Martin! Uh... again! For such a minor character in the books (she was in, what, twelve books before she died, and played a major role in maybe three of them?), Tricia sure has a lot of doppelgangers running around. Anyway, Steven playing Cara foul throws Liz into turmoil, as she wonders whether she and Todd will always be happy together - because Steven and Cara were extremely happy together before the Tricia Martin lookalike came along. The fact that Mama and Papa Wakefield are also having relationship problems at the same time adds to the worry. Liz the Bard expresses her feelings about this in the form of a haiku for Mr. Collins' English class:
Why was I frightened
and empty inside, when all
you did was kiss me?
I'm not really sure how it relates to Steven and Cara's problems, actually. In fact, I'd venture to suggest that the haiku is in fact addressed to Mr. Collins himself. I think if old Roger came onto me, "frightened" and "empty inside" would describe my emotions quite nicely.
Anyway. Steven and Cara make up after Steven is injured in a TRAGIC HANG-GLIDING ACCIDENT. Unfortunately, things aren't going so well for the Wakefield parentals, whose relationship is further strained when Ned says that he doesn't want to work for I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm™ anymore. He wants to be a Space-Cowboy! Not really, although I wouldn't be surprised if he did. No, he actually wants to help Maria Santelli's father run for mayor. This will end well.
Part 3
Mr. Santelli gets accused of taking bribes and Ned steps in to run as mayor in his place. This storyline has always bothered me for some reason (possibly because when I was a teenie, it was always more important to me to read about Liz and Todd making out than some political campaign), and reading Liz's thoughts on it makes it even more tedious. In between writing about how she's convinced of Mr. Santelli's innocence, she records a conversation with Todd where he basically assumes that they're going to get married and she freaks out. Todd: "I can't believe I'm hearing this." Well, excuse her, Todd, if she doesn't decide if she wants to make a major commitment to you at the age of sixteen. Jeez. I really dislike Todd in this book, and he's usually one of my secret favourites.
Alice gets a car-phone(!) for her job and Ned doesn't approve. Liz writes that he "stared at it as if it were accusing him of being a failure in life". Ned is such a freak. It's a car-phone, Ned, not your severed penis.
Liz cries about the constant fighting of her parents for a few entries. I feel pretty bad for her because (to the ghost-writer's credit), the arguments seem as though they'd be genuinely upsetting to anyone living at Casa Wakefield. Poor Liz (and Jess, for that matter). She has a talk with Jeffrey at the library and feels comforted. I think that she should have chosen him to be her boyfriend, really. So far in this storyline, all Todd has done is make her feel uncomfortable and tell her that her family's problems aren't so bad. Shut up, Todd. Liz works on a poem addressed to Jeffrey:
Do you still love me
as you did
the night the stars sang
to the ocean
and my heart swelled
like the tide?
Indeed. In the meantime, the Wakefields go on their "annual family trip" to Lake Tahoe. What promises to be a happy occasion soon turns into disaster, as Jessica accidentally reveals to her mother that her father is running for mayor (which confuses me. Did Ned not want Alice to know? Was he planning to be a secret mayor?). Additionally, Alice's assistant calls the cabin about an emergency design project(!) - a huge faux pas, as this was supposed to be a work-free vacation. The telephone number was actually given to the assistant by Liz the Meddler, but Ned doesn't care about pesky things like "facts"! Alice decides to go home, even though Ned declares: "If you leave now, you're leaving me. You're leaving our marriage."
Incidentally, I just skimmed the recaps I'm linking to and apparently Ned moved out some time before this? You'd have thought Liz would have noticed that.
Liz goes over to Jeffrey's place and makes out with him in his tree house. That sounds pretty fun! I too would make out with Jeffrey in his tree house. Then she breaks up with Todd - because of her home life rather than because of Jeffrey, which I think is fair enough. Then (because God forbid any girl in Sweet Valley be without a man for more than five minutes) she goes on a series of dates with a bunch of minor characters. Jessica freaks out the way she always does when Liz goes on the prowl for men.
Then Liz runs away from home! To Enid's house. If I were going to run away from Casa Wakefield, I'd probably go to Lila Fowler's house, which has a telephone in every room and a neat-o hot tub. Sadly, Lila would probably set the dogs on me before I came within two hundred yards of her place, sending me shrieking into the night. Exacerbating the lameness of her daring escape, Liz comes back home about two days later. Meanwhile, Todd is dating some other girl - until Jessica pretends to be Liz and asks if they can get back together, and he agrees. Liz is pleased and they go to a dance dressed as Romeo and Juliet. Gross.
Halfway through the dance, Liz sneaks off to Miller's Point to make out with Jeffrey. It doesn't make much more sense in context, either. A few days later, she makes out with him in the tree house again. I can't really blame you for that, Liz. Few are able to resist the lure of the tree house.
Now that Ned and Alice are officially splitsville, Jessica devotes her time to setting them up with different people. She makes her mother go on a date with Mr. Collins because her English grade is suffering - but Ned shows up with the twins and it turns into a family meal. Cock-blocked again, Mr. Collins!
Jeffrey comes over to Liz's house late at night and climbs through her window with a rose clutched between his teeth! I love how Jeffrey is so goofily romantic. They make out for a while - but then Todd taps on the window as well and Jeffrey has to hide in Liz's closet. She makes out with Todd, all the while worried that Todd will find Jeffrey in the closet. Incidentally, this was actually the exact moment years ago when I stopped liking Liz. Well done, Francine Pascal! Todd finally leaves when Jessica wakes up and asks Liz why her light is on - and then Jeffrey angrily leaves as well. This scene should have taken place in his tree house. Then the ghost-writer could have made it a tribute to that Simpsons episode where Bart gets his heart ripped out by his babysitter.
The mayor storyline is still going on, by the way. Let's bring it to a close. Mr. Santelli is cleared, Ned drops out, and he and Alice get back together. Liz writes: "As Jess might say, 'Cool beans!'" You know, I've been saying "cool beans" for years. It's depressing to realise that I probably picked it up from a Sweet Valley book.
Part 4
Liz and Todd decide to set up Aaron Dallas and Dana Larson in The Love Bet (and will you just look at that cover? I don't know what bothers me about it so much, but something makes me want to punch Todd right in his smug face). They are successful, and Aaron and Dana date for twenty books or so. Oh, and Liz and Todd have an argument where Jeffrey steps in and nearly spills the beans about him and Liz - but then he doesn't. Thanks for that, ghost-writer.
Sweet Valley High is torn apart by racism! There are absolutely no secret diary moments for this storyline. Liz doesn't even write an anti-racism poem! I'm guessing that the ghost-writer was getting tired of this whole secret diary thing by this point. I don't blame her, to be honest. The Claire Middleton storyline suffers a similar fate. My roommate, fellow Sweet Valley fan and sometime 1bruce1 commenter, says that there should have been a subplot here where Liz and Jeffrey had sex in his tree house. I'm inclined to agree.
Liz and Todd make out at Miller's Point and apparently have a "great time". Such a great time, in fact, that Liz writes that they have to stop "before [they] did something [they] might regret"! Is Liz acknowledging that she has the hormones of a normal teenager? Damn. They go to the Dairi Burger and Jeffrey is on a date with some redheaded chick (Ginny Weasley?). Liz is kind of jealous but also happy for him.
Epilogue
Liz puts her diary away and cries. She thinks that because she cheated on Todd all those times with Jeffrey (and Nicholas Sorrow and Sam and Bruce and that guy who was a werewolf and Ken and Joey, although she doesn't mention these), she should give him a pass for kissing Michelle. Rather than realising that the fact that they keep cheating on each other with all these other people might indicate that something is wrong with their relationship. Liz is really dumb.
Anyway. She calls him up and they make out. No word on what happens to Michelle. I guess she just goes back to Vermont with a huge scarlet "A" stapled to her chest, driven out of town for incurring St. Liz's displeasure.
And we're done! Twelve books in one recap! I feel like the Reduced Shakespeare Company.
I was slightly older when I read the secret diaries for the first time, and had been spoiled by other fictional diarists. While I wasn't exactly expecting Sweet Valley's answer to Bridget Jones - cigarettes 12, dead boyfriends 3 (v.g.) - I remember being extremely let-down that that wily Francine Pascal was basically selling me condensed versions of books I'd already read. I'm not sure what her intentions were, really. Perhaps she just had her eye on a fancy new diving board for her money vault, so she could swim through her hoards of gold like Scrooge McDuck.
Fortunately, they all had a fabulous cheating subplot, so let's get on with that. The back cover promises "true confessions", "classic moments", and a "painful decision" in Liz's life. Intriguing stuff.
Prologue
Liz and Todd are eating dinner at a fancy restaurant. It's unclear at what point in Sweet Valley canon this is meant to be, but this book was published in 1997 - so possibly just before Devon Whitelaw turns up? Anyway. We get four pages of Liz writing in her diary about how great it is to be dating a rich guy and how hot she is, revealing that she is just as shallow as Jessica. Are these the "true confessions" advertised on the back cover? If so, I am already disappointed. Todd is distracted throughout the meal and eventually spills the beans that his girlfriend from Vermont will be flying in to Sweet Valley and attending their date on Monday.
Liz is pissed about this, even though he insists that they're just friends. "When was the last time Ken or Winston wrote you a letter on perfumed stationery and called you 'cute buns'?" she asks. All the time, Liz. All the time. I am kind of on her side, though. I'd be pretty suspicious if my boyfriend's ex flew across the country to see him at short notice, especially if they'd never really broken up. And why does she need to be on their date anyway, huh? Can't Liz and Todd reschedule and then take Michelle to hang out at the Dairi Burger with the rest of the gang? However, this solution does not occur to Todd, and Liz storms out of the restaurant in tears, telling him that she doesn't want to see him until Michelle has left Sweet Valley.
At home a few nights later, Liz can't get the image of Todd and Michelle out of her mind. So she writes an angry limerick(!) which I shall reproduce for you here in full:
There once was a girl named Michelle
whose motto was "I kiss and tell."
She took her best shot -
My boyfriend she caught.
She's the Basketball Groupie from Hell.
She admits to her diary that it's not Wordsworth. No need to tell me that, Liz.
Liz calls up Enid, who has nothing better to do, of course, and she comes over to make cookies. Then Todd and Michelle come over. Uninvited! Miss Manners would have a few things to say to Todd. Michelle is beautiful (of course) and friendly. She tells Liz that she's signed up to write some articles for her school paper, and while she's not a great writer, she's a fast learner. Liz: "I bet your writing is really...memorable. And I'm sure you're right about being fast." Uh...burn? Michelle stares at Liz with some uncertainty, which Liz takes to mean that she's stupid. I think that Michelle is just amazed that Liz used an insult from 1958.
Michelle invites Liz and Enid to have a picnic with her and Todd the following day, and Liz flips out. Todd leaves angrily, with Michelle tailing behind. I think Todd is being the douchiest person in this situation, to be quite honest - I can sympathise with both of the girls to an extent - but I suspect that the ghost-writer wants us to either see Liz as an irrational bitch or Michelle as a home-wrecking harpy. Enid convinces Liz to go over to Todd's with a plate of cookies and beg for forgiveness.
But when she arrives, Todd and Michelle are having secret kisses in his back garden! Liz throws the cookies at them and runs away. Then she goes home and reads her diary. As you do.
Part 1
Olivia Davidson is in love with her art teacher! But Liz doesn't even care about that, giving that storyline only a cursory mention. Fuck Olivia, man. Fuck her especially when she rises from the dead. Fucking zombie girl. No, Liz is more focused on the fact that Todd is moving back to Sweet Valley and she still maybe-loves him. This is problematic as she is currently dating Jeffrey French, her charming, soccer-playing, less-popular-with-the-twelve-year-olds-reading-this-series boyfriend. I wonder who she'll choose.
Jeffrey, when Liz tells him the big news, reacts pretty decently, saying of Todd: "I know his old friends think a lot of him. He must be quite a guy." Jeffrey is very gracious and tactful in this scene, although it's clear that he's also concerned about what this means for his relationship with Liz. Liz considers reassuring him that she's over Todd. That's no fun, though, and instead she just fantasises in her diary about Jeffrey and Todd having a duel in the Dairi Burger with french fries. I don't think that Liz has quite grasped the situation properly.
Lila reveals that Todd's father has been named president of his company. I forget its name, although I know it begins with "V". Viagra? Veritaserum? Vermicious Knids? I don't know. Todd, thanks to this new-found wealth, will also be going to private school, a place called Lovett Academy. Don't eat the meat pies, Todd. Liz cries because it seems that Todd has been in contact with everyone in Sweet Valley except her. Then she comes across a letter from him which got lost in the post and is happy once again.
Once Todd returns, things continue to be awkward. He and Liz aren't sure where they stand with each other - "You're still tall!" smoothes Liz at their reunion - but he comes over to the Wakefields for dinner. I think that's quite suspect, as does Jeffrey, who overcompensates with Liz by buying her flowers every day. She expresses her anguish in the following poem:
The Choice
How to choose between sun and moon?
Which is happier: May or June?
You make me dream. He makes me smile.
But triangle love is not my style.
Two in love is what should be.
I never meant to be
one of three.
This would be more convincing if Liz hadn't already cheated on Todd with about twelve different guys at this point in canon. Looking at the poem more closely, I think that Todd is the boy who makes Liz smile. At least, I'm sure everyone in Sweet Valley laughs at him a lot.
The twins visit Lovett Academy, which is full of Persian carpets and chandeliers. Fancy! I went to private school and it was nothing like that, but then again, I didn't go to school in Sweet Valley. I remember when I was eleven we passed around a petition to buy a school guinea pig, but that scheme was nixed when it was deemed too expensive an investment and some of the teachers expressed their concerns about what would happen to it during the holidays. Anyway. Back in Sweet Valley, we meet the infamous Sheffield Eastman and Courtney Kane. Liz hates Courtney because she seems to be dating Todd. That's a pretty stupid reason to hate somebody. My reaction would be one of pity. Or fear for their safety. Dude can get punchy.
Liz makes out with Jeffrey and accidentally calls him "Todd". Ouch. Jeffrey doesn't raise the issue and just pretends he didn't hear her. Dude, you're boned. So boned. There's no way you're not going to get dumped. This is like when the Harry Potter series was still coming out and there was all this debate about WHO WAS HERMIONE GOING TO PICK - RON OR HARRY? And it was so obvious that she was going to choose Ron. And she did. (Spoilers!) I bet no one who read Brokenhearted when it was first released thought for even one moment that Liz was going to pick Jeffrey. I think even Jeffrey knew that Liz wasn't going to pick Jeffrey.
Then there's the fancy party, hosted by Todd and Courtney at his new house. Liz tells us that it has a gazebo and white columns (which date all the way back to 1972?), just in case we-the-readers had forgotten that Todd has struck it rich since we were last reminded on the previous page. The evening ends with Liz and Todd making out at Miller's Point thanks to Jeffrey's machinations. Jeffrey wanders off to, I don't know, fight Voldemort or something.
Jeffrey calls round the following evening to make sure that Liz is okay and they make out. Then they say goodbye. Normally in fiction I'd give this a pass, but this is the beginning of the slippery slope of tears and cheating and tree houses (read on!). I'm watching you, Liz. I'm reading your diary.
Now that Liz and Todd are together again, they keep missing deadlines and extracurricular activity meetings in order to hang out, and the fact that they're not spending all day with each other is tearing their relationship apart. Liz is angry because Todd wants to come back to SVH but is sticking to Lovett because his dad wants him there. I can kind of understand this, but Liz calls him stupid and throws in his face the fact that she used to have lunch with Jeffrey every day. Oh, go and write another limerick about it, Liz. This is so stupid. Jess and Sam managed just fine, as did Enid and Hugh. As do the zillions of people in real life who date but aren't together twenty-four hours a day.
There's almost no special insider information for this book, actually. As we all know, Liz and Todd break up, Sweet Valley and Lovett Academy compete in the Battle of the Schools, Sweet Valley wins, Todd decides to transfer back to Sweet Valley, and Liz and Todd get back together.
Wait, I lie. While Liz and Todd are temporarily split up, Liz tells Jeffrey about her problems and he listens sympathetically. Then - get this - she tries to make out with him because she thought that he was being nice to her because he wanted to get back together with her. Liz really has some fucked up ideas about relationships. Jeffrey rejects her totally: he admits that he still loves her but he's not going to stand for her dicking him around. Liz is left feeling pretty stupid.
So anyway. Todd is back at SVH, Liz and Todd are together again, and order is restored to the universe. Then, tragedy strikes when Ken Matthews is rendered blind after a car crash! Slowly his eyesight is restored as he falls in love with Terri Adams. I think that this was actually one of the stupider Sweet Valley storylines. Interestingly, throughout Liz's retelling of it there's no mention of the steamy affair with Ken she confessed to in her previous diary: she's very sympathetic towards him and talks about him as though he's one of her friends, but there's no hint at romance or remorse or jealousy or anything like that. Draw what conclusions you will from this.
This part ends with Liz feeling bad about being so mean to Jeffrey, but not bad enough to actually apologise to him about it.
Part 2
Liz profiles Patty Gilbert, a dancer, for her new Personal Profiles column. Unfortunately the first interview just ends up with Patty telling Liz all her problems (her boyfriend went on a date with another girl), and Liz vowing to help her out. The book this part of the diary dwells upon hasn't been recapped for this comm yet (it's called Boy Trouble and features Liz with a Sympathetic Hand on Patty's shoulder), but from what I can tell, Liz just flails about until Jessica provides her with the solution to the problem.
Moving on! Jessica signs up for a dating agency, pretending to be two different people so that she can date two boys at the same time. Liz is shocked, simply shocked, even though she was cheating with Jeffrey in her mind three pages ago. Jessica teases her about being boring, and she runs away and writes a poem in her diary:
The Good Twin
Early to bed and early to rise
Responsible, sensitive, loving, and wise
I do what I'm told and never am late
So slow to anger; never show hate.
Trapped in a box built on unspoken lies
While inside a tiny flame sputters
and dies.
I don't know, Liz. I think that your decision to neglect punctuation in that poem was distinctly unwise. (Oh, snap!) (I spent half an hour on that joke, you know.) (God, I feel so alone.)
Liz's mood improves when she perms her hair and has a confidence-boosting conversation with Jeffrey. Then Jessica talks her into pretending to be both Daniella Fromage and Magenta Galaxy on dates with the two boys she's hooked, switching with Jess every half-hour. Liz says that she feels "ridiculous" being Daniella. Hey, fuck you, Liz!
The plot winds up but Liz is still worried about being boring. So she decides to enrol in surfing lessons. In the original book, she keeps it a secret from everyone in order for it to be a huge surprise. However, in this book she tells Jeffrey about it. I'm not sure why. For a "secret diary", this book is surprisingly low on actual secrets.
Steven cheats on Cara with a girl who looks just like Tricia Martin! Uh... again! For such a minor character in the books (she was in, what, twelve books before she died, and played a major role in maybe three of them?), Tricia sure has a lot of doppelgangers running around. Anyway, Steven playing Cara foul throws Liz into turmoil, as she wonders whether she and Todd will always be happy together - because Steven and Cara were extremely happy together before the Tricia Martin lookalike came along. The fact that Mama and Papa Wakefield are also having relationship problems at the same time adds to the worry. Liz the Bard expresses her feelings about this in the form of a haiku for Mr. Collins' English class:
Why was I frightened
and empty inside, when all
you did was kiss me?
I'm not really sure how it relates to Steven and Cara's problems, actually. In fact, I'd venture to suggest that the haiku is in fact addressed to Mr. Collins himself. I think if old Roger came onto me, "frightened" and "empty inside" would describe my emotions quite nicely.
Anyway. Steven and Cara make up after Steven is injured in a TRAGIC HANG-GLIDING ACCIDENT. Unfortunately, things aren't going so well for the Wakefield parentals, whose relationship is further strained when Ned says that he doesn't want to work for I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm™ anymore. He wants to be a Space-Cowboy! Not really, although I wouldn't be surprised if he did. No, he actually wants to help Maria Santelli's father run for mayor. This will end well.
Part 3
Mr. Santelli gets accused of taking bribes and Ned steps in to run as mayor in his place. This storyline has always bothered me for some reason (possibly because when I was a teenie, it was always more important to me to read about Liz and Todd making out than some political campaign), and reading Liz's thoughts on it makes it even more tedious. In between writing about how she's convinced of Mr. Santelli's innocence, she records a conversation with Todd where he basically assumes that they're going to get married and she freaks out. Todd: "I can't believe I'm hearing this." Well, excuse her, Todd, if she doesn't decide if she wants to make a major commitment to you at the age of sixteen. Jeez. I really dislike Todd in this book, and he's usually one of my secret favourites.
Alice gets a car-phone(!) for her job and Ned doesn't approve. Liz writes that he "stared at it as if it were accusing him of being a failure in life". Ned is such a freak. It's a car-phone, Ned, not your severed penis.
Liz cries about the constant fighting of her parents for a few entries. I feel pretty bad for her because (to the ghost-writer's credit), the arguments seem as though they'd be genuinely upsetting to anyone living at Casa Wakefield. Poor Liz (and Jess, for that matter). She has a talk with Jeffrey at the library and feels comforted. I think that she should have chosen him to be her boyfriend, really. So far in this storyline, all Todd has done is make her feel uncomfortable and tell her that her family's problems aren't so bad. Shut up, Todd. Liz works on a poem addressed to Jeffrey:
Do you still love me
as you did
the night the stars sang
to the ocean
and my heart swelled
like the tide?
Indeed. In the meantime, the Wakefields go on their "annual family trip" to Lake Tahoe. What promises to be a happy occasion soon turns into disaster, as Jessica accidentally reveals to her mother that her father is running for mayor (which confuses me. Did Ned not want Alice to know? Was he planning to be a secret mayor?). Additionally, Alice's assistant calls the cabin about an emergency design project(!) - a huge faux pas, as this was supposed to be a work-free vacation. The telephone number was actually given to the assistant by Liz the Meddler, but Ned doesn't care about pesky things like "facts"! Alice decides to go home, even though Ned declares: "If you leave now, you're leaving me. You're leaving our marriage."
Incidentally, I just skimmed the recaps I'm linking to and apparently Ned moved out some time before this? You'd have thought Liz would have noticed that.
Liz goes over to Jeffrey's place and makes out with him in his tree house. That sounds pretty fun! I too would make out with Jeffrey in his tree house. Then she breaks up with Todd - because of her home life rather than because of Jeffrey, which I think is fair enough. Then (because God forbid any girl in Sweet Valley be without a man for more than five minutes) she goes on a series of dates with a bunch of minor characters. Jessica freaks out the way she always does when Liz goes on the prowl for men.
Then Liz runs away from home! To Enid's house. If I were going to run away from Casa Wakefield, I'd probably go to Lila Fowler's house, which has a telephone in every room and a neat-o hot tub. Sadly, Lila would probably set the dogs on me before I came within two hundred yards of her place, sending me shrieking into the night. Exacerbating the lameness of her daring escape, Liz comes back home about two days later. Meanwhile, Todd is dating some other girl - until Jessica pretends to be Liz and asks if they can get back together, and he agrees. Liz is pleased and they go to a dance dressed as Romeo and Juliet. Gross.
Halfway through the dance, Liz sneaks off to Miller's Point to make out with Jeffrey. It doesn't make much more sense in context, either. A few days later, she makes out with him in the tree house again. I can't really blame you for that, Liz. Few are able to resist the lure of the tree house.
Now that Ned and Alice are officially splitsville, Jessica devotes her time to setting them up with different people. She makes her mother go on a date with Mr. Collins because her English grade is suffering - but Ned shows up with the twins and it turns into a family meal. Cock-blocked again, Mr. Collins!
Jeffrey comes over to Liz's house late at night and climbs through her window with a rose clutched between his teeth! I love how Jeffrey is so goofily romantic. They make out for a while - but then Todd taps on the window as well and Jeffrey has to hide in Liz's closet. She makes out with Todd, all the while worried that Todd will find Jeffrey in the closet. Incidentally, this was actually the exact moment years ago when I stopped liking Liz. Well done, Francine Pascal! Todd finally leaves when Jessica wakes up and asks Liz why her light is on - and then Jeffrey angrily leaves as well. This scene should have taken place in his tree house. Then the ghost-writer could have made it a tribute to that Simpsons episode where Bart gets his heart ripped out by his babysitter.
The mayor storyline is still going on, by the way. Let's bring it to a close. Mr. Santelli is cleared, Ned drops out, and he and Alice get back together. Liz writes: "As Jess might say, 'Cool beans!'" You know, I've been saying "cool beans" for years. It's depressing to realise that I probably picked it up from a Sweet Valley book.
Part 4
Liz and Todd decide to set up Aaron Dallas and Dana Larson in The Love Bet (and will you just look at that cover? I don't know what bothers me about it so much, but something makes me want to punch Todd right in his smug face). They are successful, and Aaron and Dana date for twenty books or so. Oh, and Liz and Todd have an argument where Jeffrey steps in and nearly spills the beans about him and Liz - but then he doesn't. Thanks for that, ghost-writer.
Sweet Valley High is torn apart by racism! There are absolutely no secret diary moments for this storyline. Liz doesn't even write an anti-racism poem! I'm guessing that the ghost-writer was getting tired of this whole secret diary thing by this point. I don't blame her, to be honest. The Claire Middleton storyline suffers a similar fate. My roommate, fellow Sweet Valley fan and sometime 1bruce1 commenter, says that there should have been a subplot here where Liz and Jeffrey had sex in his tree house. I'm inclined to agree.
Liz and Todd make out at Miller's Point and apparently have a "great time". Such a great time, in fact, that Liz writes that they have to stop "before [they] did something [they] might regret"! Is Liz acknowledging that she has the hormones of a normal teenager? Damn. They go to the Dairi Burger and Jeffrey is on a date with some redheaded chick (Ginny Weasley?). Liz is kind of jealous but also happy for him.
Epilogue
Liz puts her diary away and cries. She thinks that because she cheated on Todd all those times with Jeffrey (and Nicholas Sorrow and Sam and Bruce and that guy who was a werewolf and Ken and Joey, although she doesn't mention these), she should give him a pass for kissing Michelle. Rather than realising that the fact that they keep cheating on each other with all these other people might indicate that something is wrong with their relationship. Liz is really dumb.
Anyway. She calls him up and they make out. No word on what happens to Michelle. I guess she just goes back to Vermont with a huge scarlet "A" stapled to her chest, driven out of town for incurring St. Liz's displeasure.
And we're done! Twelve books in one recap! I feel like the Reduced Shakespeare Company.