I fell in love with these books when I was twelve, and even then, I held no illusions about the quality of what I was reading. The SVH books have always the Sour Patch Kids of YA fiction - there's no nutritional quality, but you know what you're getting into when you rip the bag open and dive in, so it's always exactly what you're expecting. They're brain candy, and sometimes there's nothin' wrong with that. When 12-year-old me cracked open a brand new SVH every month, it was a given that there were going to be ridiculous plot twists, lots of infidelity, wacky misunderstandings, Jessica behaving like more of a psychopath than Crazyface Margo yet incurring no consequences, and the sort of prose that makes you say "Christ, I've read fanfic more elegant than this."
So by all rights, I should have known what I was getting when I cracked open SVH Confidential. But the nostalgia was high, and I was dying to see where all these characters ended up. "How great," I thought, "that Francine Pascal was willing to do this for the fans."
About fifty pages in, it became painfully, upsettingly obvious that this book wasn't written for the fans at all. Please make no mistake: it was written to make ol' Francine a quick buck, and almost zero care was put into every aspect of it. Look, I'm totally aware it's kind of stupid to be mad about the quality of an SVH book, but to wit: there are TONS of typos in this book. Glaringly. Obvious. Typos. Either the copy editor spent that day napping or he's got a job at St. Martin's because he's somebody's nephew.
There are so many canonical details that were wrong, when researching the details is the sort of thing that would have taken about twelve seconds on Google. When anyone involved with this project could have asked ANY 90s SVH fan for the right details. Not to mention canonical errors that are flat out contradicted IN THE SAME BOOK: for example, in chapter one, Jeffrey French is married, and by the last chapter, he's "enjoying his unmarried single life."
Elizabeth spends 95% of her time in this book interacting with brand new characters, which is a shame, because we don't spend nearly half as much time with any of the OLD ones. Sure, we're TOLD what's become of them, but we never really spend any time SEEING what's going on with them. I didn't pick this book to meet Liam Will RandomIrishSurname-Whatshisface, I picked it up to catch up with Lila Fowler and Bruce Patman, Ken Matthews and Mr. Collins, Olivia Davidson, hell, even Crazyface Margo!
And HERE COMES THE SPOILER ALERT, if you want to skip it:
Come on, lady, KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE a little: Nobody's waited fifteen years to hear about what song plays at Todd and JESSICA'S wedding.
I also enjoy Steven's super unenlightened thoughts on his newly discovered gayness, particularly when he sits down and thinks about how funny it is that his "homosexual" relationship is just like his "heterosexual" one! OH MY GOD, DO YOU MEAN THE GAYS ARE PEOPLE, TOO?!?!?!?!?! How groundbreaking.
Overall, a huge disappointment. Should have let the ghostwriter handle this one.
