Hello, readers! Bad Books, Good Times is going on vacation this week. I was out of town last weekend and will be moving at the end of the month, so Ariel and I decided it’d be a good idea for us to take a week to, like, breathe.
Also we need to catch our breath after the Calendar Girl series, which we wrapped up all twelve novels of last week after we started back in September. 2016. Remember 2016? lol.
We’re looking into the next book we want to read alongside A Court of Wings and Ruin (if you’ve got any hot tips, please tell us in the comments!), but first we need a bit of a palate cleanser after all that Calendar Girl. And you know what we haven’t done in a while?
Sorry, that song will be stuck in your head for days. Sweeeeeet Vaaaallayyyyyyyy…
We’ve read the first two Sweet Valley High books previously, as well as the ten-years-later spin-off that… was somehow the worst book we’ve ever read on the blog. Ariel and I decided that there’s no particularly compelling reason to actually read these things in order, so it’s time to vote! A friend of the blog sent us BuzzFeed’s alluringly titled “The Most Insane Things That Ever Happened In The Sweet Valley High Books“, and that seems very much like our shit. Go check it out there, read the blurbs I shamelessly stole here, VOTE FOR OUR CHAMPION.
Dear Sister
BuzzFeed: Elizabeth gets in a motorcycle accident and is a coma. When she wakes up, she has a complete personality change: she’s a narcissistic, boy-obsessed brat. In other words, she turns into her twin sister. She regains her original personality when she bangs her head against notorious playboy Bruce Patman’s oak bed- when they’re about to do it!
Matthew: Classic Elizabeth v Jessica shenanigans? Head trauma-induced multiple personalities? Sign me up!
Kidnapped!
BuzzFeed: Elizabeth gets kidnapped by a creepy orderly who serves her nothing but frozen pancakes. Even weirder? It doesn’t explain how she uses the bathroom!
Matthew: Why frozen pancakes. Why.
Kidnapped by the Cult!
BuzzFeed: Jessica has a total emo meltdown because her friends go to the mall without her. This is like, the worst thing ever. So what does one do in this situation? Join a cult of course! Jessica is this close to running away with the Good Friends cult before she is saved by an undercover reporter.
Matthew: In case the first kidnapping book sounded good to you, but you were hoping for a 100% increase in cults in your Sweet Valley High book. Beyond, like, rich white people.
A Night To Remember
BuzzFeed: Sisters always fight, it’s inevitable. But happens when you are mad at your sister for trying to steal the title of prom queen from you? Spike her punch, let her get behind the wheel, and then kill your boyfriend with vehicular manslaughter. Teenagers, am I right?
Matthew: OUR CHANCE FOR SOMEONE IN A BLOG BOOK TO FINALLY MURDER THEIR SHITTY BOYFRIEND ALREADY.
Lila’s New Flame
BuzzFeed: John Pfeifer blames Lila Fowler ruining his life by accusing him of attempted rape. What’s a guy to do? Of course, try to burn down Lila’s house, frame her for arson, and then strap dynamite to his chest and threaten to blow up the stadium during a football game. Teenagers and their problems, am I right?
Matthew: I wasn’t going to include this one in the poll but then I saw the thing about the dynamite so IDK MAYBE?
Return of the Evil Twin
BuzzFeed: A sociopath teenager named Margo sees a picture of the Wakefield twins and coincidentally looks identical to them. Naturally, she heads across the country, murdering children and anyone else that gets in the way of her goal to kill Elizabeth Wakefield and take over her life. Her evil plan is thwarted when she is thrown out a window and dies from being impaled by glass shards…or was she?
In the sequel no one asked for, Margo never really died, and killed the paramedics that were taking away her body. She finds out that SHE has a long lost identical twin, Nora (I mean, what are the odds? Apparently pretty high.) Nora and Margo now hatch a plan to kill both Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield and live as the Wakefield twins. Except, they argue over who gets to be Jessica, because she’s more fun. Margo then murders Nora, except everyone thinks Jessica was murdered, so they hold a huge memorial for her in the high school, except that Margo has Jessica tied up in the boiler room of the school for several days, and now Elizabeth must track down Margo and murder her and OH MY GOD did I mention these were children’s books?
Matthew: …how could you not vote for this one you guys
Murder in Paradise
BuzzFeed: You’ve been a loser all your life. What’s the most likely thing to do to fix it? Well, duh, you blame it on your college rival (the mother of the Wakefield Twins), so you hatch a plan to get back at her by taking twenty years to open up a remote spa resort, hire and brainwash teenage runaways to staff the spa, and then somehow trick your rival into thinking she won a contest to the spa. While visiting at the spa, you terrorize her and her teenage daughters, and finally plan to steal your rival’s face to surgically affix to your own so you’ll be beautiful. Too bad your foolproof, two-decade plan is thwarted by those perfect Wakefield twins!
Matthew: Who doesn’t love seeing us try to explain a convoluted evil plan?
Jessica the Genius
BuzzFeed: Jessica gets a perfect score on her SATs. That’s crazier than people stealing people’s faces and murderous lookalikes.
Matthew: …maybe this one’s uplifting? Maybe we need that right now?
This has bee tn he hardest decision of my life so far
Like trying to decide between Jeffrey French and Todd Wilkins?
Oh man. I’ve read Dear Sister and it is delightfully bonkers but…HOW can I pass up Return of the Evil Twin? Fingers crossed that it ends with a dramatic reveal of an Orphan Black-style cloning conspiracy because how many people can there reasonably be with blonde hair, blue-green eyes, and a perfect size six figure?
SVH: Attack of the Clones
Oh Lord, I read SO MUCH SVH as a tween. Dear Sister would be great because there is some end stuff I’d loooooooove to see you guys handle, but I voted A Night to Remember because that’s the beginning of a 5 book arc that goes so bonkers that even as a 10 year old I knew was completely cray .
Dudes. Murder in Paradise!
I mean… TATTY MULE WANTS TO STEAL ALICE’S FACE. That shit is five hundred and thirty-seven kinds of camptacular.
Hi, long time lurker here! I don’t know if you’d want to read more Audrey Carlan, but she has another saga partially written from the POV of the female protagonist’s stalker, and another which is basically Calendar Girl but if Mia were a dude… I feel like there is a lot of insanity to unpack there, just so you know.
Also thank you guys so much for your hard work <3
I used to watch the Sweet Valley High tv-series, but I don’t remember episodes about evil lookalikes trying to kill the twins. That book is clearly the winner.
As for a new series, I suggest ‘Tiger’s curse’ by Colleen Houck. Think House of night, but you also get to talk about how not to write about other cultures. 😀