Review: "The Older Boy" by Jamie Suzanne (created by Francine Pascal)

The Older Boy by Jamie Suzanne (created by Francine Pascal)
First published 1987
★★

You know what's wild about this? Lila is the voice of reason. Lila! Who until I started rereading some Sweet Valley books I thought was the proverbial mean girl of the books! But it turns out that Lila is actually pretty dull (just rich), and Jessica is the hyperpsychobitch of the series. It's Lila who first points out that a twelve-year-old should not set her sights on a sixteen-year-old: Lila still couldn't believe it. "He's too old for you," she objected. "I'm telling you, Jess. The second he finds out you're still in middle school, he'll skate off into the sunset" (2).

I remember sympathizing more with Elizabeth than with Jessica when I read these books as a kid, but as an adult I can't decide what to think. On the one hand Jessica is a self-obsessed, overdramatic, self-serving, gaslighting mess. On the other hand...Elizabeth is really pretty boring, isn't she? She tells us in one breath that she's bailed her twin out of her chores too often that week already (35) and then in the next breath agrees to help again even though she ordinarily...wouldn't have been so generous (35). And then not long thereafter she lets Jessica gaslight her into apologizing when (as usual) it's Jessica who's gone off the rails, and Jessica of course feels not the slightest bit of remorse. (Elizabeth, kiddo, it's time to grow a spine. And a bit of self-awareness.) The rest of the family is similarly bewitched—when Jessica thinks she'll be missing a trip to the circus because she has out-of-town plans (which, to be clear, she doesn't: she has plans for a secret date), her parents are like "oh, poor thing, going to a lake house for the weekend, we'll have to make it up to her by taking her on a special trip by herself".

Anyway. The short version is that Jessica gets caught but not as caught as she should be; she gets off almost scot-free, because Jessica and consequences don't mix; and dear god, a sixteen-year-old should be able to tell that a twelve-year-old is too young for him (even one who's claiming to be fourteen—which is also too young for him).

The more of these I reread, the more I think that it's never actually been a double-heroine series—Jessica is the heroine, or as close as we get to one, and Elizabeth is her not-terribly-sharp foil.