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If you remember the later years of the Sweet Valley High series — or even if you've ever perused the list of book titles — you know that, at some point, things in Sweet Valley get nuts. Instead of semi-annual kidnappings and occasional deaths, these later books offer non-stop action, murderers, the infamous evil twins, and these Fear-Street-style plotlines sometimes span several volumes. Looking back, it's hard to pinpoint a single book that marks this shift into Crazytown. One candidate is "Double Jeopardy," the first Sweet Valley Super Thriller.
So what's so thrilling about this one? It still features a boy-crazy Jessica, precocious bordering on sociopathic. Elizabeth is still focused and annoyingly levelheaded. But this time, instead of hanging out at school, the twins are busy doing an internship at Sweet Valley News. Oh, and there's a murderer.
The mere presence of a murderer isn't thrilling enough for you? Wait, there's more! The murderer has killed the girlfriend of one of Steven Wakefield's buddies, Adam, who happens to be staying with the Wakefields for the summer. He then put the body in the trunk of Adam's car, so everyone thinks Adam's a murderer! The one person in Sweet Valley who knows the truth is Jessica: she actually saw the murderer carrying his victim's dead body through a parking lot. But no one believes Jessica's story, because she's been lying her ass off to impress some boy! AND the murderer knows Jessica saw him, so he's probably going to come after her, too!
My latest on Sweet Valley Diaries, the first entry in a while, as I'm working on a new site.
