The Lazy Reader’s Guide: April 25-29

It’s the first Lazy Reader’s Guide I’m writing since the website redesign! It is not all that different. Don’t worry. I figured out how to do it.

Sweet Valley Confidential

In New York, Elizabeth makes out with the playwright/Todd-doppelganger Will! In Sweet Valley, Jessica has a flashback about the time she left her husband in France, which was weirdly full of wacky mishaps. Because tone?

• Elizabeth is sitting in on a rehearsal for the play – something that reviewers for small, independent theater magazines can do, I guess – and Will totally embarrasses himself by giving direction to an actor, instead of suggesting the director do it. TOTAL AMATEUR HOUR OVER HERE.
• Elizabeth meets an Irish bartender who is totally Jessica’s type. I bet that totally won’t result in some convoluted plan for revenge.
• Elizabeth sees Will at the bar and is super snarky to him. Obviously, they make out.
• Elizabeth’s mom asks her if she’ll be coming back to Sweet Valley for her grandmother’s 80th birthday. She asks Will if he’d come as her date, but he’s busy! But luckily they agree that she could totally bring the aforementioned Irish bartender to make Jessica jealous. That was fast.
• Jessica doesn’t do anything. She just has flashbacks.
• Jessica thinks of the time that she left her husband, which involved pretending to be an airplane to get a French cabbie to understand she wanted to go to the airport. Unrelated, did you know apparently all the old Sweet Valley High books were ghostwritten? Crazy.

Beautiful Redemption

Thomas hits the part of a Jamie McGuire novel where he crashes dinner and calls it a date even though the main character asked him not to. Another Maddox brother shows up off-screen vis a vis loud sex noises, so we can be assured the next book in this series will be pretty much the same.

• Liis makes just-friends dinner plans with Sawyer. Thomas gets upset about this and crashes dinner, like the reasonable adult here.
• Sawyer tries to turn the tables on Thomas by making him talk about his ex, Cami (whom we know ends up with Thomas’s brother in Beautiful Oblivion). Thomas tells a story about how he dated a girl that belonged to his brother, which is wrong for so many reasons on top of how it’s not really what even happened in that book.
• Thomas admits that he still loves Cami. Get excited for the whole rest of the book to be about that.
• Seriously, Thomas lays it on pretty thick that he’s still in love with his ex. Smooth.
• After… that… they naturally go back to Cami’s apartment and cuddle up under the pretenses of practicing for posing as a couple on their upcoming assignment.
• Liis wakes up in the middle of the night to hear sex noises coming from Thomas’s apartment! But it’s actually his brother banging their coworker. Phew! That was almost weird.
• Thomas realizes that Liis was jealous, and that she has feelings for him. Thomas. Dude. Have you been paying attention to this book?