Sweet Valley High: Senior Year Books In Order

Publication Order of Sweet Valley High: Senior Year Books

Sweet Valley High: Senior Year is a sequel to Sweet Valley High, a series of novels about beautiful twins living in Sweet Valley, California. The books follow the exploits of characters from the Sweet Valley High series as they begin a new life as seniors at Sweet Valley High School.

+The Story

The Sweet Valley High series was a big deal when it first came out. And for many a reader, it was the best literary fiction Francine Pascal ever produced. However, it has been argued that the Sweet Valley High: Senior Year series managed to eclipse the quality of the Sweet Valley High Books.

Sweet Valley High followed the exploits of Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield. Jessica and Elizabeth are twins. And they are identical in every way, at least physically. And while they used to be best friends, practically doing everything together, a rift developed between them in Middle School.

Jessica began to seek her independence. She wanted to stand out from her sister, to create her own identity separate from that of her twin. And that decision saw her take a dark turn. She lost her kindness and innocence, instead taking on a mean persona and growing obsessed with the notion of attaining popularity at all costs.

Her sister Elizabeth initially tried to walk Jessica’s path, determined to maintain their close bond. But she eventually accepted the fact that the two of them were simply too different. Elizabeth continued to nurture a personality that was warm, loving and accepting.

And by the era of Sweet Valley High, the twins’ relationship was highly antagonistic. Sure, they loved one another. But Jessica had no qualms about hurting her sister to get what she wanted. And Elizabeth was constantly fighting to keep her sister’s selfishness from hurting her friends. It was a fight she was uniquely equipped to win because she knew Jessica best.

The Sweet Valley High: Senior Year series was the result of Francine Pascal finally deciding to take her characters to the next stage of their lives. So she promoted Jessica, Elizabeth and all their friends and enemies to their senior year at SVH.

There they proceeded to face a whole slew of new challenges and obstacles. The Senior Year books have been commended for elevating the quality of storytelling of the Sweet Valley literary franchise.

Sweet Valley High, for all its entertainment value, was often ridiculed for being too melodramatic. The books were essentially soap operas for teenage girls. They featured ludicrous storylines and predictable cliffhangers.

One wonders whether Pascal wrote the Sweet Valley High: Senior Year series because she knew her audience was growing up and she wanted to provide them with reading material that more appropriately matched their sense of maturity.

The final Sweet Valley High books dealt with the plot of an earthquake that not only tore through Sweet Valley but also destroyed El Carro High school. Students from El Carro transferred to SVH to finish their education, thus allowing for an injection of new characters into the Sweet Valley High world.

Sweet Valley High: Senior Year picks up with that story. The presence of students from El Carro brings a whole new dynamic to the SVH landscape. The old cast is forced to deal with a more mature crop of problems.

Elizabeth and Jessica, the central protagonists of the series, must adapt to the opportunities that getting older brings. Elizabeth, for instance, has to learn to take risks. She puts her studious outlook aside and begins to experiment.

She collects new experiences, loses old friends, makes new ones and goes through a number of tumultuous occurrences in her love life.

Jessica finds her position as the most popular girl in school threatened. She begins to cast doubt on the loyalty of the friends she has known for years as many of them show a willingness to turn against her the first opportunity they get.

The Sweet Valley High: Senior Year series acts as a bridge between Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley University. Francine Pascal uses the books to show how her characters transition from high school to university.

The idea is to ensure that change in the personalities of the SVH characters doesn’t seem so drastic when they get to University.

+The Author

Francine Pascal, who was born in 1938 in Manhattan, made a fortune from the Sweet Valley High series despite the fact that most of them were written by ghostwriters. The decision made sense to Pascal at the time.

After trying her hand at writing young adult fiction, when Pascal came up with the idea for a series of novels set in high school and aimed at teenagers, she didn’t think her writing style would appeal to that age group of readers.

More importantly, Pascal couldn’t relate to teenagers, so she brought onboard ghostwriters who could better get into the minds of young readers. The approach did wonders. Teenagers in the 80s and 90s couldn’t get enough of Sweet Valley High, and the author’s decision to take her readers back all the way through middle school and elementary school, and to also reach forward into the senior and college years earned her even more fans.

Francine Pascal’s husband died in 1981. By then, the journalist had worked with Pascal on a number of writing projects for television and the theater. Francine Pascal has imputed a lot of her success to John Pascal who, she says, acted as a mentor to her.

Pascal was involved in the creation of a television series in the mid-1990s based on Sweet Valley High. But she hated the adaptation because none of her suggestions were taken.

+Can’t Stay Away

When an Earthquake rocked Sweet Valley and destroyed El Carro High, many of its students were forced to transfer to Sweet Valley High. One such student is Connor McDermott, and as her senior year gains momentum, Elizabeth is finding it more and more difficult to stop thinking about Connor.

Say It to My Face

Jessica Wakefield was looking forward to her senior year. It should have been her time to reach new heights of popularity and fame. However, she’s off to a rocky start. People are spreading rumors about her and a boy at El Carro High.

The rumors are suggesting that she did things she would never dream of doing with him. Even worse, her friends are starting to believe those rumors.