-of any other gender
-that age but only vaguely aware of those books or
-a younger person (well, 13+) looking for a YA horror/ fantasy/humor mashup
and see how it goes. Although I do think you should have some familiarity with Sweet Valley to get the jokes. There were certain elements that were hallmarks of the series. These tropes include:
- Jessica & Elizabeth LOOK exactly alike but have different personalities. So different that their creator called them "the good and bad sides of one person". Which is kind of an insult to twins. You can write about twins and give them different personalities (and have them be interesting) without commenting on their morality. I guess that isn't EXCITING or EXTREME enough, so we ended up with one twin who was boring and condescending and the other twin was a sociopath. This is more prevalent in Sweet Valley High. In Sweet Valley Twins (where they are 12), these extreme personalities are toned down. But still, Jessica will do something awful to her twin and Elizabeth will smile and say, "I could never be mad at you!" (Ugh). Or she's mad but then they make up by the end of the book. How handy.
- The twins are the main characters and everyone LOVES them. In Sweet Valley Twins (*and Friends*) there's always some random person who is new to the school or goes to the school already and is being mentioned now, because either Elizabeth is trying to "help" them (the token charity case), or if they're deemed "interesting" enough to be bugged by the Unicorns (Jessica's snobby club), then that happens (either the person is famous or "cool" and the Unicorns fawn all over them, or they're a freak and therefore snubbed by the Unicorns, while simultaneously being befriended/ felt sorry for by Elizabeth.) (This trope comes in handy for inserting my character Piper into the story and having it still feel "real"/SVT.)
- When supernatural events happen (in the Super Chillers books), the books ends neatly with the twins defeating the ghost/ breaking the curse/ solving the mystery and coming out relatively unscathed in terms of both physical and emotional injury. Then future books pretend nothing happened. (They are Stand-Alone plots). In Sweet Valley High the danger factor was heightened and made more realistic since they were older (i.e. less hauntings and curses, more drug rings, kidnapping, attempted murder).
- The twins always have money to buy things they want (especially when the item in question is relevant to the plot), despite only being paid in 1980s 12-year-old's allowance (sometimes without even doing their chores! WHAT KIND OF BIZARRO WORLD IS THIS), or else Jessica wants a new purple sweater and makes her parents/Liz buy it for her. In Super Chiller #1, The Christmas Ghost (confusingly both a Christmas story and a ghost story - a la Dickens - PICK A THEME HERE), Elizabeth wants a carousel horse statue (??? why) and Jessica decides she likes it too, and wants ALL THE PRESENTS so she convinces their parents that only she wants it and Elizabeth didn't like it at all. Then 3 Ghosts magically appear to tell Jessica that she's being a bitch, just in time for Christmas morning, so she reforms (but it doesn't last, obviously, because future books pretend like nothing happened/ Jessica is "reset.").
- Endless sixth grade year, with multiple Halloweens, Christmases, Spring Breaks, and even summer (they never say whether it's the summer before sixth grade or the summer after, weird). Endless school projects too, usually just in time to coincide with something similar happening to the twins outside of school, for a free Learning Experience.
- When things get dull at Sweet Valley Middle School, a New Student (or Prince/Movie Star in Disguise) always comes to shake things up. Depending on who it is, all future books must incidentally mention that person so we remember they go to this school now. It helps if one of them is friends with Our Stars, the twins. Or if it's a Super Edition/ Super Chiller, then they never have to be mentioned again. (GOOD we didn't like you anyway)
