Published 1993
★★★
Well. I've jumped back in eighty or ninety books down the line, because I remember this mini-series about Margot the Psychopath (as opposed to Jessica the Sociopath), and...I don't have a lot of readerly self-control. So here we are. Spoilers below, if you're worried about, you know, spoilers for book 95 of a series published thirty years ago.
The Morning After opens not too long after a terrible prom-night car accident that may or may not have taken place in a previous book. (I can't find mention of it in the previous books' descriptions, but you never know—Sweet Valley is absolutely enough of a soap opera setting that it's possible that a new-stepsister-for-a-side-character could be a main plot and a car accident that kills Jessica's One True Love could be the B plot.) It's not entirely clear what happened, just that Elizabeth might or might not have been driving, and now Sam is dead, and Jessica blames Elizabeth wholeheartedly...even though Jessica knows things about that night that even Elizabeth doesn't know.
No, Jessica told herself. Don't think about Liz. Elizabeth had been driving the Jeep that night. What happened before they got in the car didn't make any difference. It was Elizabeth who killed him. (107)
Guys. Jessica does not even speak up to tell the truth when Elizabeth is arrested for manslaughter. Partly because she's scared of the consequences, but also because she's still mad at Elizabeth for "stealing" Jessica's boyfriend—read: for leaving the dance with him. Is there any evidence that Elizabeth and Sam were romantically involved? Nope. Would anyone who's ever met Elizabeth reasonably think her capable of trying to "steal" Jessica's boyfriend without perishing of guilt? Nope. Would anyone, including Elizabeth, doubt that trying to do so anyway would result in Jessica promptly shoving Elizabeth into a busy highway? Nope. Has Jessica repeatedly tried to steal Elizabeth's boyfriend? Of course. (Elizabeth's boyfriend Todd, incidentally, is as usual inclined to believe the worst of Elizabeth and has been avoiding her instead of, oh, showing any sympathy for the fact that she was just in a deadly car accident and may or may not have been behind the wheel.)
Anyway. Side plots abound: Lila is still very traumatized from attempted rape in what looks like book 90, but when she is further traumatized, the general opinion at school is...well. Bruce suspected she had made the whole thing up; Lila had always been a tease (9). Honestly, the slut-shaming and trauma-shaming in this series is unreal; later, when Amy hears who Bruce is "in love" (in the most 1990s teenaged sense of the word) with, this is her reaction: "Do I know her? Everybody knows Pamela, if you know what I mean!" She winked at Maria, who rolled her eyes (93). This is extremely on-brand for the series (remember book 1, when Jessica let everyone think that Elizabeth had gone out with a Bad Boy and come home in a police car, and everyone—including Todd—decided Elizabeth was a slutty slut who deserved every bad thing that came her way?), but good god. Never mind that Bruce is perfectly happy to sleep around himself, or that he has only been on about two dates with this girl—when he hears that she's not pure as driven snow, he casts her off as another slutty slut and spends the rest of the book (and at least half of the next one; stay tuned) feeling butt-hurt about it.
Sigh.
And then we get Margot. Margot, who is a pretty minor part of the book but the whole reason I am rereading this little mini-series. I'd actually forgotten that the A plot here is about Elizabeth being arrested for manslaughter—what I remember is Margot smirking as she encourages her foster sister to dig a butter knife into the toaster and thus set the house on fire. This is not a girl you want to mess with, because Margot wants what she wants...and she's willing (nay, happy) to kill to get it.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.