* Photo credit to The Closet *
Rosa’s left boob seems to be growing right before my very eyes. Liz and Jess both look like Liz. What’s with all the excessive denim on the covers lately?
Miss hearing about Pi Beta Alpha, the on-campus sorority? Me neither. But it’s rush time, and all the PBA girls want Rose Jameson, the new hot sensation at school, to pledge. However, little do they know Rose’s deep dark secret. No, she never killed a man, or kidnap a babysitting charge, or commit armed robbery. The truth is—oh, I can barely even tell you—she’s a chicana. Yes, totally Mexican American. COULDN’T YOU JUST DIE?!
Rose—actually named Rosa—smothers her heritage and reinvents herself as a girl of colonial American descent “distantly related to Queen Elizabeth” and everyone totally believes her. You see, all she aspires to do is fit in with the Sweet Valley crowd. “Rose didn’t miss her old friends from her high school in Texas nearly as much as she thought she would. She was making new friends like Jessica, Elizabeth, Lila [Fowler] and Amy [Sutton]—the kind of friends she had always dreamed of having.” Disgusting. And these new friends—especially Lila—get all “ew ew get away from me” when they see Manuel Lopez and Lila’s maid. Actually, Lila is really fucking annoying in this one, constantly displaying racist behavior and inviting herself over to Rosa’s house. Bitch, plz: why do you need to hang out at the Jamesons’? You live at Fowler Crest!
Then—to really gum up the works—Rose’s uber-Mexican grandma comes to visit for two weeks, and Rose has to shun all her new-found friends (who keep trying to invite themselves over *coughLilacough*) in order to spend time with Spanish-speaking Nana and be resentful of her grandmother who clearly loves her. (“Already Nana was causing trouble? Just how many fun plans was she going to ruin?”) To Rose’s surprise, she starts actually respecting and enjoying Nana, who teaches her how to cook Mexican treats and tells her stories of the past.
Rose starts realizing that “there was nothing in her background to be ashamed of.” But Lila continues being a pest and tells Rose that for a pledge task, she has to throw a party. Does Lila realize that Rose is sixteen and not a homeowner? Anyway, Rose is horrified of her friends seeing her grandmother so she arranges for Nana to be out of the house—but Nana returns for a brief moment to tell Rose that she baked her and her friends a cake, and Rose all but shoves her back out the door and tells everyone that that was her cleaning woman. Oh, no, she didn’t! To make matters worse, the cake reads (in Spanish), “To Rosa and all her friends. With love from Nana.” That’s a lot of icing. Rose feels so god awful that she throws the entire cake in the trash. Noes! A perfectly good dessert, wasted on the ungrateful.
Before Nana leaves, she gives Rose a dress she sewed, but it’s way too Mexican for Rose to ever consider wearing in public. However, she starts thinking, “although [she] had new friends in Sweet Valley, the Pi Betas, how close could she ever feel to any of them is they didn’t know the real Rosa Jameson?” So true. However, at the PBA picnic, a little Mexican girl falls in a well (good lord) and no one knows how to speak Spanish to calm her down—but then Rose steps up to the plate and everyone’s like “HUH? A Spanish-speaking person in southern California? How unusual!” But Rose finally comes clean and admits to her Mexicanness, and everyone accepts her and tells her that they’ll keep her heritage a secret. That’s when Rose decides everyone’s on crack, declares herself “Rosa,” wears her Mexican dress to the PBA dance, and declines membership. And of course, everyone goes out of their way to make her swear to still hang out with them. They never do.
Meanwhile, Todd Wilkins is pissed that being in Phi Epsilon, the SVH frat, is no fun thanks to Bruce Patman, who has all sorts of clout in the organization, so he vows to make it fun again by recruiting pledges. Bruce gets huffy that Wilkins is running the show, so he drums up some pledges as well, and they spend the duration of the story hazing the fuck out of each other’s minions. Bruce has Todd’s pledges moving all of the guidance counselor’s furniture out on the front lawn of the school, Todd has Bruce’s pledges steal a bus. Liz, of course, does not approve of all this. But then, when Bruce and Todd realize that their pledges have been helping each other out, they realize the error of their way and the true meaning of brotherhood and Bruce and Todd make out and everyone lives happily ever after. Okay, one of those events isn’t true.
Other Notes:
- It is so annoying how everyone goes out of their way to have discussions about Rosa’s awesomeness when she’s not around, like to really cement the fact that they liked Rosa just the same before and after she was declared Mexican. Lila even says, “She’s exquisite.” Stop trying so hard, you losers!
- This book is totally fucking bratty. The school revolves around the frat and sorority, and no faculty bats an eye when the PBAs start a food fight and the PEs hijack a bus. Everyone even gets a half-day to have a picnic. Is everyone insane?
- In a subplot, Jess fails math and thinks new boyfriend Sam Woodruff is hot for a close gal pal of his. Blah blah, no one cares.
- Rosa’s new. First thing everyone insists that she must do? Write for The Oracle. Give it a rest!
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