SVU #42 - Sneaking In
Sweet Valley University #42
"Sneaking In"
aka "no continuity in the series and completely different than where book #40 was"
Sweet Valley's timeline is effing messed up. Soooo...
Jessica is dating Nick Fox, hawt cop now turned future boring student, and her life seems like it is about to get boring...or is it? Liz and Tom are back together after a long breakup where she almost flew to Denver, but Tom rushed from his revenge girlfriend's side to stop her and now they're back together. Life seems idyllic...or is it? There are drug dealers all over the place and one of Jess' friends gets hurt. And the soap-opera only continues.
Jessica fell in luv with Nick Fox because he is a dangerous cop who let her run a few stings with him. Now he wants to settle down and get a law degree and Jess is bored senseless. She doesn't want to date a nerd. They go to the library, Nick turns from badass cop into fumbling nerd who bites down on his pen and splatters ink all over his face (not even joking here). She gets frustrated and storms out in typical Jessica fasion. Then she runs into Clay DiPalma, some other hawt guy with hypnotizing eyes who has 'bad boy' figuratively tattooed on his forehead, which of course means Jessica is instantly turned on by him. Jess' Theta Alpha Theta friends have a fundraiser and her friend, Isabella Ricci apparently has the most crazy possessive boyfriend ever, Danny (who is roommates with Liz's Tom). He walks up and misinterprets a situation to be Isabella whoring it up with some Sigma and goes nuts. Alison, the Theta pres from hell, tells Isabella that she's a disgrace to the organization for the fact that her boyfriend is a rage-a-holic and that she left the fundraiser table for about 2.4 seconds. I kind of feel bad for Isabella at this point.
Anyway, Jess goes back to try and unload on Liz, and Liz is absolutely no help. "Elizabeth began giggling softly to herself. She curled on her side and gently pummeled her teddy bear's soft stomach." PUMMELED? Good word choice. Isabella and Danny make up and promise never to fight again or something. The Thetas meet up and are told its mandatory for them to go to the Alpha Chi Delta party. "Thetas do not get drunk," is what Alison warns them all with, and I laugh at her sorry excuse for a sorority. Alexandra/Enid gets up to talk about the drug problem that has recently run rampant in Sweet Valley. Foreshadowing, foreshadowing.
Jess meets up with Clay DiPalma again, he flirts with her, she flirts back, she stares deeply into his liquid chocolate eyes. *yawn* I never realized how predicable these plots were when I read them a decade ago. Nick comes to campus to go to dinner with her, and sees her flirting. "Nick suddenly saw red flash in front of his eyes, and his right arm tensed. The guy was trouble. He could feel it in his gut. He balled up his fist and smashed the guy in the jaw, knocking him to the ground." What IS it with the Wakefields and their extremely violent boyfriends?
However, the fact that Nick punched Clay turns Jess back on again, because he's all dangerous and stuff like he used to be. She invites him to the cocktail party at Alpha Chi Delta. What kind frat throws a cocktail party?
Isabella and Danny are hanging out and studying and he throws a hissy fit when she invites him to the cocktail party. She says he could wear that beautiful suit he has. Seriously. Danny agrees to go, but vows to guard her from all the wolves other men that will be at the party. Atta boy, Danny.
Cut to the party. Some band is playing, and Jess and Isabella get wild on the dance floor. Danny's having a shitty time and as Jess looks around, she sees Clay DiPalma roaming through the crowd. Isabella and Jess talk at the bathroom and complain about how possessive Danny is being, and then Isabella mentions seeing Clay and how hot she thinks he is. Nick warns both of them to stay away from Clay.
Isabella goes back out to dance, and Danny gets pissed because he sees her dancing with at least three guys. Hello, Danny, welcome to a frat party. He tries to make her leave, she won't and gets angry, he can't control his insane temper anymore so he bolts. Isabella gets wasted off of not much alcohol, as is standard in the SV books, and she decides to approach Clay. They dance a slow dance together, then head outside and he smokes a cigarette. He offers her one and she starts to refuse but throws caution to the wind and takes it.
As Isabella is talking to Clay, she begins to trip out. His forehead gets big and then small, and his voice gets distorted, and then she thinks she sees a bunch of monsters. She runs through the party, and Lila and Jess see her and think she's really trashed. Then they realize this is more than booze, try to help her, and Isabella gets so freaked out that she runs outside and jumps off the balcony. I know drugs are not a joke, but its hard to read SVU and take this seriously. Jessica and Lila freak out because they just saw one of their best friends take a leap, and Nick turns on investigation mode while calling for some backup and ambulances. They tell him and the detectives that show up that Isabella had smoked a cigarette with Clay, and Nick realizes that drugs may have been involved. "When he first saw Isabella's crumpled body on the ground, he'd suspected it. The scene reminded him of countless other cases he'd investigated in Sweet Valley. Kids too stoned to know they were walking in front of speeding cars. Guys so high, they'd inhaled their own vomit and suffocated. Girls whose hearts had simply given out at the age of seventeen." ...I guess Sweet Valley isn't such a nice, happy, crime free place. Whoa. Jess realizes that this experience has made her love Nick even more, and she is glad it wasn't her while they sit in the emergency room and wait for her friend.
Danny shows up at the hospital with Tom and sees Isabella in her ICU room, covered in tubes and with a bunch of machines beeping. "He told himself to stay in control, but he couldn't help feel anger and confusion welling up inside him like a volcano." Uh oh. I think Danny must be TBT's replacement in the SVU series for right now, since TBT disappeared for the most part after trying to make Liz have sex. Anyway. Danny yells for a doctor, and he comes in and tells her that she's in critical condition but has sort of stabilized and they'll be watching her. He also tells Danny that they found traces of PCP in her blood. This makes Danny angry at Isabella, because if he had just listened to her and had absolutely no fun dancing or flirting or smoking a cigarette with Clay she would have been fine. But noooo, she went and brought it on herself, enticing Clay to give her that PCP laced cigarette. It is at this point that I feel like throwing Danny off a balcony.
As Danny is once again running out, he passes Jess and Liz on their way to Isabella's room. When Jess sees her friend like this, she knows that she and Nick must do something to bust Clay DiPalma. Nick goes to the station to snoop, not knowing that Jess is going to want to get involved. We find out about all the drugs coming through Sweet Valley again (SERIOUSLY? It makes me laugh just reading about it) and Nick finds out that Clay works for Nelson "The Nose" Karl, who is basically like a drug czar with lots of other illegal works.
Jessica and Nick hang out a couple days later and she prods him into admitting that only he could capture DiPalma because everyone else on the force sucks, so Nick makes plans for how to catch Clay and make a citizen's arrest. Jess calls the frat and finds out that Clay was bragging about a bike he bought from a local shop, so Nick calls the shop and gets his address and phone number. Wow, how anti-climactic. Nick calls and tells Clay that he wants some drugs for a party at his frat later this week (SERIOUSLY?). When Clay asks who he is, he tells him that he was the guy with Jess but that they've broken up. He sets up a meeting with him. He refuses to let Jessica come, but once again she pesters him about how he won't have backup and how it was all her idea anyway, and he tells her its far too dangerous. She sobs about how he said they were broken up and eventually breaks his heart enough that he'll let her come.
Danny is dropping in his courses and his professor notices and talks to him. When he puts his books on her desk, he accidentally picks up her copy of the exam and takes it home, not realizing it had gotten shuffled in there. He goes to her office at 7:45 am, right when she gets in, so that he can hand her the exam and explain what happened. She gets really angry and says she might fail him for the exam, for the entire class, or talk to the dean for more "extensive action." Danny blames Isabella for this, of course.
He goes to visit her one more time, and the doctor says that coma is a possibility and that if she doesn't regain consciousness soon, she could be in a lot of trouble.
Jess and Nick go on their sting to bust Clay, and Jess promises to stay in the car for two minutes and then if Nick doesn't come back out, she is allowed to go to the side and hide so she can hear what is going on in the house. Nick goes in and tells Clay that he wants six hits of angel dust for his party, and Clay laughs in his face. He calls Nick stupid for thinking he'd fall for this, and Nick notices his pupils are all messed up and he's all sweaty - he must be on drugs too! Jess crawls into position along the side of the house and can hear Nick and Clay talking. They break out into a fight and Clay bashes Nick, and then he proceeds to keep talking to himself in his drugged up mental state. He takes Nick's hidden gun and the tape recorder hidden in his clothes, calls himself beautiful, giggles like a maniac, and then admits to killing a cop named Steve Riviera a few months ago. He points the gun at Nick's head and sings "And now...it's time...to say...good-bye..." Yeah, with the ellipses there; I didn't insert those. However, Clay doesn't kill Nick, and Jess rushes in after he leaves. He sort of comes round and Jess says that Clay pistol whipped him, and Nick says how it was a mistake to bring her and for him to do this, and it doesn't look good for him...and then he passes back out in her lap.
Meanwhile, Liz and Tom are newly back together after they split up and Liz left the TV station and almost Sweet Valley. Apparently they broke up because Tom's father made a pass at Elizabeth and Tom didn't believe her. Everything is all shiny and happy at the moment. Tom dated a "sexy, talented cellist named Dana Upshaw" while him and Liz were on the rocks, and Liz dated some guy named Scott that was Bad News at the paper. Tom gives her an incredibly romantic gift...what might that be, you say? A fountain pen. From his dead mother. This makes Liz go all gooey inside like the nerd that she is.
Liz is the star over at the Sweet Valley Gazette; everyone keeps coming to her for advice. Everything is going well. Scott faxes her from Denver to just add to the plot mess that occurs in these next few books. Seriously, there are too many things going on. He also calls, and she hangs up on him. He makes her sick blah blah blah she's over it, she loves Tom more than anything. As they eat and kiss after their astronomy class, we find out that Tom has a secret that he's afraid to tell Liz because it will hurt her. His eyes will now begin to fill up with pain every four seconds when in her presence.
They go out to dinner and Liz brings up how Scott keeps trying to contact her. Tom gets all weird, and Liz tries to ask some questions about Dana and he clams up. They eat, and Liz tries to bring it up again, but Tom shuts her down. Apparently "Love shimmered off her blond hair and glowed in her eyes," which sounds to me like Tom might be taking some of those drugs circulating around SVU. He can't bear to hurt her, so he'll just keep it inside.
Liz is upset by the incident with Isabella that happens at this point, and she works on some articles about PCP and what happened for the Sweet Valley Gazette. She can't believe that drug dealers can do that sort of thing. Her editor, Ed, says "Yeah, but what can you do? Station bodyguards with metal detectors around the punch bowl?" Uh, no Ed. Because drugs are not made of metal. She didn't snort steel up her nose, she smoked a cigarette. Liz responds with "I guess we have to keep our eyes open every second now, even when we're out just having a good time." Welcome to the real world, Liz.
Liz also finds out that Scott was expelled from the school he transferred to in Colorado since he falsified documents and plagiarized and forged parts of his transcript. So obviously she made the right choice not to go with him and to stay with Tom. They are flirting and studying at the library, and she brings up Scott and Dana again. And once again, Tom gets on edge about it. They go to make dinner in his dorm room (Beef Burgundy?) and they're all happy and cuddly, and then Tom goes to wash the dishes. Liz looks around the room at some pictures hanging up of them, and when she goes to look at one, it falls under the bed. She reaches down and comes up not with the pictures, but a box of condoms. But her and Tom haven't taken that step yet, sooo...Liz dumps them out and counts that there are five, but it was a box of twelve. So where did the other ones go? It takes a moment, but Liz puts two and two together. Tom and Dana must have had sex.
Will Nick Fox live long enough to put Clay behind bards--and save Jessica from his deadly plans? Find out in my next recap, SVU #43 - The Price of Love.
"Sneaking In"
aka "no continuity in the series and completely different than where book #40 was"
Sweet Valley's timeline is effing messed up. Soooo...
Jessica is dating Nick Fox, hawt cop now turned future boring student, and her life seems like it is about to get boring...or is it? Liz and Tom are back together after a long breakup where she almost flew to Denver, but Tom rushed from his revenge girlfriend's side to stop her and now they're back together. Life seems idyllic...or is it? There are drug dealers all over the place and one of Jess' friends gets hurt. And the soap-opera only continues.
Jessica fell in luv with Nick Fox because he is a dangerous cop who let her run a few stings with him. Now he wants to settle down and get a law degree and Jess is bored senseless. She doesn't want to date a nerd. They go to the library, Nick turns from badass cop into fumbling nerd who bites down on his pen and splatters ink all over his face (not even joking here). She gets frustrated and storms out in typical Jessica fasion. Then she runs into Clay DiPalma, some other hawt guy with hypnotizing eyes who has 'bad boy' figuratively tattooed on his forehead, which of course means Jessica is instantly turned on by him. Jess' Theta Alpha Theta friends have a fundraiser and her friend, Isabella Ricci apparently has the most crazy possessive boyfriend ever, Danny (who is roommates with Liz's Tom). He walks up and misinterprets a situation to be Isabella whoring it up with some Sigma and goes nuts. Alison, the Theta pres from hell, tells Isabella that she's a disgrace to the organization for the fact that her boyfriend is a rage-a-holic and that she left the fundraiser table for about 2.4 seconds. I kind of feel bad for Isabella at this point.
Anyway, Jess goes back to try and unload on Liz, and Liz is absolutely no help. "Elizabeth began giggling softly to herself. She curled on her side and gently pummeled her teddy bear's soft stomach." PUMMELED? Good word choice. Isabella and Danny make up and promise never to fight again or something. The Thetas meet up and are told its mandatory for them to go to the Alpha Chi Delta party. "Thetas do not get drunk," is what Alison warns them all with, and I laugh at her sorry excuse for a sorority. Alexandra/Enid gets up to talk about the drug problem that has recently run rampant in Sweet Valley. Foreshadowing, foreshadowing.
Jess meets up with Clay DiPalma again, he flirts with her, she flirts back, she stares deeply into his liquid chocolate eyes. *yawn* I never realized how predicable these plots were when I read them a decade ago. Nick comes to campus to go to dinner with her, and sees her flirting. "Nick suddenly saw red flash in front of his eyes, and his right arm tensed. The guy was trouble. He could feel it in his gut. He balled up his fist and smashed the guy in the jaw, knocking him to the ground." What IS it with the Wakefields and their extremely violent boyfriends?
However, the fact that Nick punched Clay turns Jess back on again, because he's all dangerous and stuff like he used to be. She invites him to the cocktail party at Alpha Chi Delta. What kind frat throws a cocktail party?
Isabella and Danny are hanging out and studying and he throws a hissy fit when she invites him to the cocktail party. She says he could wear that beautiful suit he has. Seriously. Danny agrees to go, but vows to guard her from all the wolves other men that will be at the party. Atta boy, Danny.
Cut to the party. Some band is playing, and Jess and Isabella get wild on the dance floor. Danny's having a shitty time and as Jess looks around, she sees Clay DiPalma roaming through the crowd. Isabella and Jess talk at the bathroom and complain about how possessive Danny is being, and then Isabella mentions seeing Clay and how hot she thinks he is. Nick warns both of them to stay away from Clay.
Isabella goes back out to dance, and Danny gets pissed because he sees her dancing with at least three guys. Hello, Danny, welcome to a frat party. He tries to make her leave, she won't and gets angry, he can't control his insane temper anymore so he bolts. Isabella gets wasted off of not much alcohol, as is standard in the SV books, and she decides to approach Clay. They dance a slow dance together, then head outside and he smokes a cigarette. He offers her one and she starts to refuse but throws caution to the wind and takes it.
As Isabella is talking to Clay, she begins to trip out. His forehead gets big and then small, and his voice gets distorted, and then she thinks she sees a bunch of monsters. She runs through the party, and Lila and Jess see her and think she's really trashed. Then they realize this is more than booze, try to help her, and Isabella gets so freaked out that she runs outside and jumps off the balcony. I know drugs are not a joke, but its hard to read SVU and take this seriously. Jessica and Lila freak out because they just saw one of their best friends take a leap, and Nick turns on investigation mode while calling for some backup and ambulances. They tell him and the detectives that show up that Isabella had smoked a cigarette with Clay, and Nick realizes that drugs may have been involved. "When he first saw Isabella's crumpled body on the ground, he'd suspected it. The scene reminded him of countless other cases he'd investigated in Sweet Valley. Kids too stoned to know they were walking in front of speeding cars. Guys so high, they'd inhaled their own vomit and suffocated. Girls whose hearts had simply given out at the age of seventeen." ...I guess Sweet Valley isn't such a nice, happy, crime free place. Whoa. Jess realizes that this experience has made her love Nick even more, and she is glad it wasn't her while they sit in the emergency room and wait for her friend.
Danny shows up at the hospital with Tom and sees Isabella in her ICU room, covered in tubes and with a bunch of machines beeping. "He told himself to stay in control, but he couldn't help feel anger and confusion welling up inside him like a volcano." Uh oh. I think Danny must be TBT's replacement in the SVU series for right now, since TBT disappeared for the most part after trying to make Liz have sex. Anyway. Danny yells for a doctor, and he comes in and tells her that she's in critical condition but has sort of stabilized and they'll be watching her. He also tells Danny that they found traces of PCP in her blood. This makes Danny angry at Isabella, because if he had just listened to her and had absolutely no fun dancing or flirting or smoking a cigarette with Clay she would have been fine. But noooo, she went and brought it on herself, enticing Clay to give her that PCP laced cigarette. It is at this point that I feel like throwing Danny off a balcony.
As Danny is once again running out, he passes Jess and Liz on their way to Isabella's room. When Jess sees her friend like this, she knows that she and Nick must do something to bust Clay DiPalma. Nick goes to the station to snoop, not knowing that Jess is going to want to get involved. We find out about all the drugs coming through Sweet Valley again (SERIOUSLY? It makes me laugh just reading about it) and Nick finds out that Clay works for Nelson "The Nose" Karl, who is basically like a drug czar with lots of other illegal works.
Jessica and Nick hang out a couple days later and she prods him into admitting that only he could capture DiPalma because everyone else on the force sucks, so Nick makes plans for how to catch Clay and make a citizen's arrest. Jess calls the frat and finds out that Clay was bragging about a bike he bought from a local shop, so Nick calls the shop and gets his address and phone number. Wow, how anti-climactic. Nick calls and tells Clay that he wants some drugs for a party at his frat later this week (SERIOUSLY?). When Clay asks who he is, he tells him that he was the guy with Jess but that they've broken up. He sets up a meeting with him. He refuses to let Jessica come, but once again she pesters him about how he won't have backup and how it was all her idea anyway, and he tells her its far too dangerous. She sobs about how he said they were broken up and eventually breaks his heart enough that he'll let her come.
Danny is dropping in his courses and his professor notices and talks to him. When he puts his books on her desk, he accidentally picks up her copy of the exam and takes it home, not realizing it had gotten shuffled in there. He goes to her office at 7:45 am, right when she gets in, so that he can hand her the exam and explain what happened. She gets really angry and says she might fail him for the exam, for the entire class, or talk to the dean for more "extensive action." Danny blames Isabella for this, of course.
He goes to visit her one more time, and the doctor says that coma is a possibility and that if she doesn't regain consciousness soon, she could be in a lot of trouble.
Jess and Nick go on their sting to bust Clay, and Jess promises to stay in the car for two minutes and then if Nick doesn't come back out, she is allowed to go to the side and hide so she can hear what is going on in the house. Nick goes in and tells Clay that he wants six hits of angel dust for his party, and Clay laughs in his face. He calls Nick stupid for thinking he'd fall for this, and Nick notices his pupils are all messed up and he's all sweaty - he must be on drugs too! Jess crawls into position along the side of the house and can hear Nick and Clay talking. They break out into a fight and Clay bashes Nick, and then he proceeds to keep talking to himself in his drugged up mental state. He takes Nick's hidden gun and the tape recorder hidden in his clothes, calls himself beautiful, giggles like a maniac, and then admits to killing a cop named Steve Riviera a few months ago. He points the gun at Nick's head and sings "And now...it's time...to say...good-bye..." Yeah, with the ellipses there; I didn't insert those. However, Clay doesn't kill Nick, and Jess rushes in after he leaves. He sort of comes round and Jess says that Clay pistol whipped him, and Nick says how it was a mistake to bring her and for him to do this, and it doesn't look good for him...and then he passes back out in her lap.
Meanwhile, Liz and Tom are newly back together after they split up and Liz left the TV station and almost Sweet Valley. Apparently they broke up because Tom's father made a pass at Elizabeth and Tom didn't believe her. Everything is all shiny and happy at the moment. Tom dated a "sexy, talented cellist named Dana Upshaw" while him and Liz were on the rocks, and Liz dated some guy named Scott that was Bad News at the paper. Tom gives her an incredibly romantic gift...what might that be, you say? A fountain pen. From his dead mother. This makes Liz go all gooey inside like the nerd that she is.
Liz is the star over at the Sweet Valley Gazette; everyone keeps coming to her for advice. Everything is going well. Scott faxes her from Denver to just add to the plot mess that occurs in these next few books. Seriously, there are too many things going on. He also calls, and she hangs up on him. He makes her sick blah blah blah she's over it, she loves Tom more than anything. As they eat and kiss after their astronomy class, we find out that Tom has a secret that he's afraid to tell Liz because it will hurt her. His eyes will now begin to fill up with pain every four seconds when in her presence.
They go out to dinner and Liz brings up how Scott keeps trying to contact her. Tom gets all weird, and Liz tries to ask some questions about Dana and he clams up. They eat, and Liz tries to bring it up again, but Tom shuts her down. Apparently "Love shimmered off her blond hair and glowed in her eyes," which sounds to me like Tom might be taking some of those drugs circulating around SVU. He can't bear to hurt her, so he'll just keep it inside.
Liz is upset by the incident with Isabella that happens at this point, and she works on some articles about PCP and what happened for the Sweet Valley Gazette. She can't believe that drug dealers can do that sort of thing. Her editor, Ed, says "Yeah, but what can you do? Station bodyguards with metal detectors around the punch bowl?" Uh, no Ed. Because drugs are not made of metal. She didn't snort steel up her nose, she smoked a cigarette. Liz responds with "I guess we have to keep our eyes open every second now, even when we're out just having a good time." Welcome to the real world, Liz.
Liz also finds out that Scott was expelled from the school he transferred to in Colorado since he falsified documents and plagiarized and forged parts of his transcript. So obviously she made the right choice not to go with him and to stay with Tom. They are flirting and studying at the library, and she brings up Scott and Dana again. And once again, Tom gets on edge about it. They go to make dinner in his dorm room (Beef Burgundy?) and they're all happy and cuddly, and then Tom goes to wash the dishes. Liz looks around the room at some pictures hanging up of them, and when she goes to look at one, it falls under the bed. She reaches down and comes up not with the pictures, but a box of condoms. But her and Tom haven't taken that step yet, sooo...Liz dumps them out and counts that there are five, but it was a box of twelve. So where did the other ones go? It takes a moment, but Liz puts two and two together. Tom and Dana must have had sex.
Will Nick Fox live long enough to put Clay behind bards--and save Jessica from his deadly plans? Find out in my next recap, SVU #43 - The Price of Love.