When news broke that Sweet Valley High creator Francine Pascal had died, SVH fans took to social media to express how much her super popular series had meant to us. I spoke with several contemporary YA authors and reminisced about the books, memorable characters, and how our own novels were inspired by Pascal’s California paradise.
For a few of us, our entry to Pascal’s sunny beachside town was through the chapter book series, Sweet Valley Twins. Author Nia Davenport remembers picking up SVT in third grade. “The everyday friendship issues that Jessica and Elizabeth had to navigate were both fun and heartwarming to read about,” she said. “I was an extremely introverted child, so it was thrilling to live vicariously through the Sweet Valley twins.”
Morgan Baden, an identical twin, shared that her grandmother gave her and her sister the first two Sweet Valley Twins books when she was eight. “The [Wakefield] twins are four minutes apart. My twin and I are four minutes apart. I loved the dynamic of having a good twin and a bad twin, yet they’re still very close and love each other,” said Baden, author of Super Sweet Unicorn Club, a satirical (and loving) romp inspired by SVH, The Baby-Sitters Club, and Judy Blume.
Author and LGBTQ Reads blogger Dahlia Adler dove straight into SVH when she was five years old and read Dear Sister and Playing with Fire because her older siblings owned them. “I definitely did not understand what I was reading, but I somehow knew I loved it all the same!” said Adler, who credits the series for inspiring her to write her YA novel, Cool for the Summer, partly set in a beach town.
Amanda Quain, author of Dashed, a YA contemporary update of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, sums it up best: “SVH were some of the first books that showed me how fun contemporary YA could be.”
As the world of Sweet Valley High grew in popularity with tweens and teens, Pascal expanded the universe to include Special Editions, Sweet Valley High Senior Year, Sweet Valley University, Sweet Valley Twins Super Chillers, and more. The extra editions gave readers a chance to indulge in different genres. “[The Sweet Valley High Super Thrillers books] were most memorable for me because I’ve always loved horror stories,” said Davenport, who penned her debut YA speculative thriller Out of Body as an homage to that series. “I enjoy writing big ensemble casts that are a part of stories with lots of heart, humor, first-love, strong friendships, and strong sibling bonds. SVH absolutely influenced this!”
Several of us mentioned rushing to our local public library or bookstore to read (and re-read) as many of the books we could find. In college, when a classmate and I discovered our mutual love of Sweet Valley High, we bonded by re-reading the series in the aisle of the Barnes & Noble on Astor Place in New York City.
Adler fondly remembers being so engrossed in reading Nightmare in Death Valley (SVH #116) that she was accidentally locked inside a bookstore because she stayed past closing time.
Elizabeth Holden, author of the forthcoming YA novel Mighty Millie Novak, chose Kidnapped! (SVH #13) for her seventh-grade book report when her teacher requested they choose an important book. Holden said with a laugh, “I think the teacher pictured us writing about classics. My mom’s an artist, so I had her replicate the cover on a poster board for my report.”
The original Sweet Valley High covers, like the beloved Baby-Sitters Club series, were actual paintings, according to Wendy Loggia, VP and publisher at Delacorte Press, who was also part of Sweet Valley High’s heyday at Bantam. The classic circular covers are instantly recognizable to fans.
My next YA romance, Hangry Hearts, has an unintentional SVH nod to two characters in a standoffish pose, like the first SVH book I bought on my own, Showdown (SVH #19). My cover feels like a secret wink to Pascal and what her books meant to me.
When I spoke with YA author Amy Spalding, who wrote No Boy Summer, about why we were drawn to Pascal’s world, she simply said, “It was our teen soap opera.” She added, “The people in those books do not look or act like many of us—and yet still, when I saw that Francine Pascal passed away, I thought, ‘What an iconic figure who gave this thing to us.’ ”
Echoing Spalding’s sentiments, Quain said, “The books are California sunshine, with stakes that are both impossibly high—so many kidnappings!—and nonexistent—everything is always fine!—all at the same time. What more do you need?”
Jennifer Chen is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist, mother to twins, and the YA author of Artifacts of an Ex and the forthcoming Hangry Hearts.
