If You Lived Here You'd Be Perfect by Now

This is a very unusual book. The author examines many of the SVH books. She covers 150 of the regular series plus many of the Super Editions, the Super Thrillers, Sweet Valley Confidential and the E-book series.

That's a lot of books to cover. What makes it unusual is that, basically, the author finds fault or faults with every single book. Among these faults she notes that people who are not really welcome in Sweet Valley include blacks, anyone who is divorced, kids without a father, anyone who is overweight and anyone who is poor.

She also says that messages the series gives include above all physical attractiveness matters the most and there's no such thing as being too rich and there's no such thing as being too thin.

She says Jessica is a sociopath. The twins are the center of the universe. Sexual activity is not talked about. Jessica is a 'manipulative skank.' Jessica has 'histronic personality disorder.' Jessica is a 'selfish little piece of shit.'

The school itself is unrealistic with its fraternities and sororities and the apparent lack of time actually spent in the classrooms learning.

There's a lot more she says. Some of the things she says I do think are pretty accurate in relation to how Jessica behaves. However, for a series that has gone on this long it can be expected that the sisters would be the center of things. Around them are their parents and their friends, although who their friends are can change over time. She is also not the first person to say that Jessica is a sociopath; I've even seen that term used in an academic article about the series.

I think the thing the author misses is the fact that the series is very successful. If people did not like the series, for whatever reason or reasons, then the series would have died out long ago. It would not have covered different sets of books at different ages of the twins. It would not have produced a fairly successful television series.

There are also some positive things she neglects like no matter what happens the sisters are still close to each other. There's the power of friendship (even if it can get a little weird from time to time) that is shown among the friends of the sisters. If every single book ahd been message-oriented then it probably would not have lasted anywhere near as long as it has.

It's an interesting book, overall, but a book full of only negative things said about something can get to be a little difficult to wade through.