Review: "Jessica's Cookie Disaster" by Jamie Suzanne (created by Francine Pascal)

Jessica's Cookie Disaster by Jamie Suzanne (created by Francine Pascal)
First published 1995
★★

Jessica's infallible luck strikes again: In Jessica's Cookie Disaster, Jessica accidentally makes cookies so good that she's invited to be on a television show...except, oops, she has no idea how she's done it. Will she come out on top, or will her cookies be a flop?

(Spoiler alert: Jessica always comes out on top.)

Now, the way Jessica goes about trying to recreate these miracle cookies is a bit...questionable...because I guess it doesn't occur to anyone that there wasn't even a hint of pineapple or liquorice in the miracle cookies, or that those things were unlikely to have been at Jessica's cooking station when she had her successful disaster. Also questionable: the fact that the secret ingredients turn out to be (spoiler!) variations on vanilla and almond, and everyone involved acts like they have never had a cookie with these things before. Now, granted, this is Sweet Valley, one of the whitest and most middle-class places known to 80s America, so it's possible...but oh dear. Someone get these people some flavor in their lives.

Perhaps more notable: Jessica makes the honor roll for the first and perhaps last time in her life, so her parents all but throw her a party. Elizabeth sighed again—she couldn't help it. Since Elizabeth was always on the honor roll, no one made a big deal of it anymore. She'd been on the honor roll since second grade, so she didn't get taken to dinner at La Maison Jacques. (31) Elizabeth really gets shafted in these books, doesn't she? She feels guilty if she does anything than be her goody-two-shoes-honor-roll self, but Jessica gets all the attention whether she's creating chaos or toeing the line.

(Actually, when I was in junior high, I remember my parents being really enthusiastic about my sister's four-Bs-and-two-As report card, while sort of shrugging at my two-Bs-and-four-As report card. I didn't learn until much, much later that my sister—who was generally a very rule-abiding, non-boundary-pushing kid—had gone through a phase, at that time, of arguing against homework. Possibly this report card represented a perking up of her grades and they were pleased about it. As an adult I get it, but as a tween I remember feeling quite insulted.)

Elizabeth saves the day, of course, which means that Jessica gets to shine (of course). If I remember correctly, somewhere in the universe—in the Sweet Valley High series, I think—there's a book in which Elizabeth wishes that she'd never been born, and then she sees a sort of alternate-universe version of Sweet Valley in which Steven is deep in trouble, and maybe her parents have split up, and so on and so forth, and it's all because they desperately needed an Elizabeth to save the day...and I guess it all started with things like cookies.