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Magna Edition: A Night to Remember

* Photo credit to The Closet *

The prom! How exciting. I am entrusting that SVH will do this up right. Don’t read a later recap before moving through this quintessential, fictional rite of Sweet Valley passage.

In with A Night to Remember rushes the new covers, logo, and formatting, and let me just say that I am not looking forward to reading numbers #95 to fin because—and get this—they’re too damn long. The original books were the appropriate length: Not only did they tell the story they needed to tell, but they were redundant enough as it was. I cringed at the thought of reading this story—at a hefty 345 pages—and I was a Lit major.

Anyway, so the reign of original cover artist James Mathewuse is over, and Francine and the gang got someone new to create this masterpiece. I’ve always been annoyed at how the two Jessica pictures are exactly alike on the inside cover. As usual, Todd looks a billion years old. Jess still has her wonky little bangs. I guess certain things never die…unlike some boyfriends I know. Oh, but I’m getting ahead of myself!

Plot A: Jess and Liz come up with the idea of having a Jungle Prom. Actually, Liz comes up with it, but whatever. At a beach party, Jess swims out to a buoy in the dark on a dare, and Liz begs her not to do it but of course she does anyway, and Liz resolves then and there to not give a shit about Jessica anymore. It’s sad it took her more than ninety books to make such a satisfying decision, but better late than never.

There’s also this insane rivalry developing between Big Mesa and SVH, which makes sense, because if I went to Big Mesa, I’d be pissed about losing every Big Game and whatnot. Big Mesa crashes the beach party, makes the partygoers scream and gather in a huddle for protection (…), and covers everything with shaving cream before taking off. Everyone takes it really personally and blah blah.

Liz is co-chair of the prom committee, as is Jess, even though Jess doesn’t bother to show up for meetings. Both girls start pining away for the coveted Prom Queen title, which will also result in an all-expenses-paid trip to Brazil courtesy of the dance’s sponsor, Environmental Alert. Liz busts her ass to ensure that prom is awesome, while Jess just does some cheerleading back flips and assumes she’s a shoo-in. Jess is back to being a pain in my ass in this story; I’m sick of her just assuming she’ll win everything. Confidence is one thing but really. The twins go head-to-head and wind up hating each other for about 300some pages.

Then comes prom. Liz’s longtime lovah Todd Wilkins wins Prom King, striking fear in Jess’s heart. So she sidles up to a drunk Big Mesa student, nabs some of his liquor, and dumps it into Liz’s drink. Enter Magic Punch—one sip is the equivalent of about fourteen shots. This just backs up my mom’s insistence words of “Never leave your drink unattended!” which is something she’s been drilling in my head since I went to my first fifth-grade dance. Anyway, Liz splits the contents of her cup with Jess’s boyfriend Sam Woodruff, and they get TOTALLY WASTED and dance like a bunch of wackos. Liz drunkenly “wifdraws” from the Prom Queen competition, leaving Jess to win, but Jess isn’t satisfied with her Pyrrhic victory. She’s horrified to see how her twin is acting—and with her boyfriend! Big Mesa raids the prom, there’s a big, panicked to-do, and Jess sees Liz and Sam drive off together in the twins’ Jeep. Jess and Todd follow them, and see that there’s been a fatal accident. Then Jess cries in agony into the “unforgiving night.” What will happen?!

Plot B: Bruce Patman is seeing rock star daughter Andrea Slade and treats her like shit, but THEN! Bruce bumps into Nicholas Morrow and acts like it’s the most uncomfortable thing in the world to talk to him, even though they’ve hung out before and everything was cool. AND THEN! He goes home and cries over a picture of his long-lost beloved Regina Morrow. What. The shit. I’ve heard that it takes boys longer to get over doomed relationships than girls because they don’t deal with the pain immediately, but this is straight-up shit. This is the billionth book after her death! We didn’t hear a peep of how tormented he’s been feeling until now; he seemed pretty content to forget Regina and go stick it in Amy Sutton. I’m so hatin’ on this. Anyway, Bruce tries to distract himself by organizing ex-Club Xers to take on Big Mesa, and when Big Mesa raids the prom and it results in a crazy-ass fight (on the football field! I love it!), Bruce almost gets his head bashed in by a Big Mesa kid with a baseball bat when in steps a beautiful girl… who reminds Bruce of Regina but only hotter. Before Bruce can ponder it anymore, he gets his skull kicked in. What will happen?!

Plot C: Lila, still angsting over her encounter with John Pfeifer (I’m glad the writers didn’t gloss over and forget about that whole sitch, even though she was acting pretty whimsical when she was in SVH’s production of Macbeth), continues to hate life and fear the boys she apathetically goes out with. However, now she’s more actively making snide commentary to whatever Jess is babbling about, so that’s nice. Lila’s been seeing a counselor—Nathan—about her problems but remains frosty to him until Jess points out how cute he is. Well, of course he is—he lives in Sweet Valley, doesn’t he? Lila realizes that Nathan’s always been there for her, and they have a flirty dance at prom, but everything takes a toboggan ride to Hell when Nathan pulls Lila into an empty classroom to protect her from Big Mesa’s raid, and she gets John Pfefier flashbacks and fears he’s going to rape her. So the police show up and arrest Nathan when Lila screeches. At last, a sexual assault claim that is not used vindictively! Francine, you’re progressing. But now what will happen?!

Other Notes:

  • Personally, I think A Night to Remember should switch titles with That Fatal Night, considering that this book was a wee bit more fatal than #60; we have actual fatalities in this. (Well, alleged fatalities at this stage in the game.)
  • Oh shit! Is it called A Night to Remember because later Elizabeth doesn’t remember it? Oh shit some more! (It’s taken me decades to make this dumb connection.)
  • It’s hard for me to comprehend why MASSIVE groups of teenagers are allowed to throw HUGE, unsupervised parties on the beach at night, and no adult bats an eye.
  • DeeDee Gordon and boyfriend Bill Chase do the twist at the beach party. Is Annette Funicello there too? Honestly, what universe is this?
  • It turns out that Big Mesa is made up of psychopaths who have nothing better to do than put shaving cream on every car in the Sweet Valley lot, torment the cheerleaders, and even insult The Oracle in an editorial cartoon in their own paper. (The things in Big Mesa’s paper are downright slander and don’t even pretend to have integrity.) Seriously? Where are the adults? Not one teacher acknowledges all this bullshit.
  • When Big Mesa students show up at the prom and want to get in, it’s Todd Wilkins who makes the final say. Again: WHERE ARE ALL THE GROWN UPS? You’d think that at least Mr. Collins would be shoving his nose in this business.
  • Todd’s nickname on the court is “Whizzer.” That’s like, what I’d name a dog who peed a lot. Well done, Wilkins.
  • The Droids actually do not play at the prom! This really is a sign of the apocalypse.

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