* Photo credit to The Closet *
I don’t like how Lila Fowler is drawn to look skinny but less skinny than Jessica. SCOFF! I asked my co-worker who he thought was hotter, and he’s like, “Which one’s not talking?” Har. As you can see on the inside cover, Liz is so in demand that she has Tarzan grabbing her calf, begging her to please not go. That’s how it is in my mind, at least.
Alice Wakefield’s name was picked from a phone book at random, and thus she won a week’s free vacation to Paradise Spa for her and not one, not two, but conveniently six guests, so Jess, Liz, Lila, Lila’s mom Grace, and Enid Rollins are all in attendance. Enid’s mom couldn’t get away from work, but that’s not the only reason Enid feels like shit: Her boyfriend Hugh Grayson finally dumped her for some sexy little sophomore. Enid is convinced she’s absolutely horrific looking and brushes aside Liz’s inane, halfhearted attempts to cheer her up because they’re worthless. Liz has never had an ugly day in her life, and when Enid reminds her of that fact, Liz is just all, “Yeah, well…” Ugh.
Speaking of Liz, she falls in love with a sexy spa employee / golf pro named Chris approximately ten minutes after e-mailing her beloved Todd Wilkins on her fancy new laptop. Liz is getting significantly less apologetic about cheating on her boyfriends. She doesn’t even bother to wrestle with her conscience in this book about it. (“She didn’t want to feel guilty about having such a wonderful time with Chris… she wanted to savor the magic of the moment. After all, this was just a week’s vacation, one week out of time.”) I’m so SICK of Liz’s ridonculous excuses. Furthermore, she gets all involved in the personal life of Katya, an employee who always looks tragical and is prone to crying fits and is all up Alice’s butt. This is because Katya is a runaway and misses her own mom. Then Katya mysteriously dies in the steam room and Liz has the gall to command the owner, Tatiana Mueller, not to touch the body so the police can look for clues. Bitch, PLEASE.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. All the Paradise Spa staff members are young and unrealistically good looking, except for the owner, Tatiana Mueller, who is essentially a deformed, dumpy troll. She dotes on the group, marveling at Alice’s exquisite beauty and showering poor Enid with affection. Alice swears she knows Tatiana from somewhere, but just can’t figure out how! Meanwhile, Enid is reveling in the attention that Tatiana gives her, which comes in the form of nicknames (“little sparrow”), vitamin supplements, special hair conditioning treatments, and hypnosis. This book is so over the top. Tatiana convinces Enid that plastic surgery is just what she needs, and I must say, I thrilled when I heard Enid would go through with it; I just want Enid to give Liz and Co. a run for their money.
Okay, so Katya’s dead, and barely anyone on staff seems to care; they react with as much emotion as Steven Wakefield conveys in his face. Bloodhound Elizabeth vows to get to the bottom of this and goes snooping through Katya’s room, where she comes across an ad for Paradise Spa employment in a publication put out for runaways in shelters—because that, I’m sure, is what all runaways want to be reading. Liz interrogates the Stepford-Wife-esque staff and learns that everybody’s a runaway and working for exactly zero dollars an hour! Then she goes to Tatiana and demands to see the autopsy. Why doesn’t someone take out Liz in the steam bath? That would solve plenty of problems. My problems.
Then Alice goes missing! Okay, one of my other problems just got solved. All the phone lines are dead, so everyone claims, so Liz e-mails Ned, who writes back, remembering where he knows Tatiana from: “She lived down the hall from [Alice] in the dorm junior year. Everyone called her Tatty Mule because she was so homely and pathetic. She worshiped your mother, though, and followed her around like a puppy dog.” WHAT. THE. EFF. Ned and Alice are fucking DICKS. Meanwhile, Jess is snooping through Tatiana’s office when she finds Alice’s SVU yearbook picture (“Most Popular Girl on Campus”—pfffffff) cut out, as well as before and after pictures of the staff—everyone underwent plastic surgery! I can’t believe this is a Sweet Valley High book, really.
Liz gets kidnapped beneath a scenic waterfall and taken to an underground lab, where Tatiana confesses she killed Katya and is all mwa-ha-haing her master plan of murdering Alice and taking over her face and life. Did I mention that I can’t believe this is an SVH book? Then Lila, Jess, and Enid burst in just in time for Liz’s speech, made in effort to convince her fling / brainwashed idiot Chris that he can do what’s right: “You’re still a human being, Chris. You’re a man, with feelings and a conscience. You still have your own good judgment—that’s one thing she couldn’t take from you.” I’m hurling, like, everywhere. But Liz’s words touch Enid’s heart, and Enid springs into action and turns a scalpel on Tatiana and is all, “Let my people go!”
Then the cops finally burst in (after all the action, natch) and they graciously give Tatiana, a psychopathic murderer, time to sit down and go all Scooby Doo, explaining why she did what she did: She was always homely while Alice was always beautiful. And Alice, who was just too fucking cool to even remember how she shunned Tatiana, is just like, “Yeah, well…” The runaways all get to go home. Enid pops out of her trance and Randall, a total stud / former fatty who lost about 30 pounds in three days at the spa (was the Robin Wilson miracle diet offered?), asks for her address. Way to go, Enid! I guess that makes everything okay…?
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