Best Friends (edit title/settings)

This was an alarmingly fast read but fear not, I don't own very many. I thought I'd get the SVT ball rolling as an amusing diversion from the meatier (by which I mean smuttier) SVH books.

I remember that Best Friends begins with the twins being alike and ends with them being different. Neat. An important concept to bear in mind with the “Twins” series is that it’s fairly retconned. #1 was first published in 1986 and I would suspect there were many SVH books by then, although wikipedia tells me the first was only published in ’84! How can that be right? Anyway, on to the twins...

We begin with both “Lizzie” and Jessica dressing alike in a kind of uber-drab hybrid Wakefield lacking nerdy charm or sassy flair. Elizabeth wants to be part of the new school paper and assumes Jessica will want to participate, while Jessica dreams of taking ballet and being part of the “Unicorn Club” (OMG the Unicorn Club!) along with such social luminaries as Lila Fowler. The first description we get of Lila? “She had the biggest wardrobe in Sweet Valley.” And really, what more do you need to know? We meet Bruce Patman in chapter two, “a really cute seventh grader from one of the richest families in town,” who thinks calling both girls ‘Blondie’ is hilarious. It sort of is. They’re seriously asking for it.

Great moments in Wakefield: Jessica must endure pledge tasks to earn her way into the Unicorn Club. She has to hide a teacher’s lesson plan and safely return it by the end of class (which she achieves with unforeseen aide from Winston Egbert), trick girls to use the boy’s bathroom instead of the girl’s, and dress unlike her sister. Tragically, we don’t get to know what outfit she chooses, but by curling her hair and wearing mascara she totally brings Bruce Patman to the yard. Elizabeth is predictably crushed.

Elizabeth retaliates by parting her hair down the middle and holding it back with a clip. Not only is that lame, but they’re both lame! Retaliation is changing your look by switching to a black wig, just ask Jan Brady.

The twins begin ballet and Jessica gets schooled for dressing like a back-up dancer on the Purple Rain tour, which is naturally awesome. Meanwhile, Elizabeth decides the world is ending because she and Jessica have different interests, which clearly means they are drifting apart and will no longer be BFF. She decides that Jessica should get her into the Unicorn Club as well. Jessica convinces the girls, but Elizabeth’s pledge task is to make a fool of poor plump Lois Waller. Virtuous Lizzie naturally balks so Jessica pretends to be her, makes Lois eat a shaving cream sundae, and is horrible. Elizabeth catches on, coerces Lois to not switch to private school out of mortification (!!) and they pull the same prank on Lila. So proper retaliation actually is one of the valuable lessons Lizzie learns.

Elizabeth ends up moving into the desk room, dividing the now odd couple further. Liz chooses navy curtains, off-white walls, and a big desk. Jessica’s room presumably continues to look like Claire’s Boutique exploded in it. All’s well that ends well except for some ballet drama that will come to a head in #2, Teacher’s Pet.

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