Join the read-along!
Oct. 3rd, 2020 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyThe ever lovely luxken27 had the brilliant idea to do a read-along of the SVT Frightening Four miniseries to get in the spooky season. :D Here's her info post about it!
I don't think I've read these books since I picked them up at K-Mart back in the day. I'm 100% sure they were KMart buys because I'd kill time while Mums picked up stuff in the food or pharmacy section by wandering through the book section and I remember stopping dead in my tracks when I saw the cover for one of the first three and thought, "wait, what?" While I never fully escaped either SVH or BSC proper (obviously), I did check out of SVT around the time they spun off the Unicorns and even then I didn't keep up with that once it became clear that character development was going to get flushed down the toilet. But the moment I saw this mini series? I was suckered back in. I devoured them even though I could not tell you a damn thing beyond haunting the Kmart that season as I waited for the next one to appear. That was a fun summer.
So I look forward to rediscovering the weirdness from my past!
This morning I found out that the miniseries had a different name in the UK and the covers are both somehow better and infinitely worse and I have so many questions about UK coverart in general (basically- why are you like this?) but yeah. Bigger and better versions can be found at Sweet Valley Online but since that site always triggers my malware browser warning (legit or do they just not want me to see the UK cover oddities?), I'm using the ones yanked from Goodreads. Also, I am very carefully NOT reading any reviews prior to the great re-read.
If those don't terrify you into joining us, I don't know what will. Seriously though, I always forget that "If I Die Before I Wake" is a legitimate SV title every time I see it on a list and this cover is giving Evil Elizabeth a run for her creepy cover art throne.
luxken27 had the brilliant idea to do a read-along of the SVT Frightening Four miniseries to get in the spooky season. :D Here's her info post about it!I don't think I've read these books since I picked them up at K-Mart back in the day. I'm 100% sure they were KMart buys because I'd kill time while Mums picked up stuff in the food or pharmacy section by wandering through the book section and I remember stopping dead in my tracks when I saw the cover for one of the first three and thought, "wait, what?" While I never fully escaped either SVH or BSC proper (obviously), I did check out of SVT around the time they spun off the Unicorns and even then I didn't keep up with that once it became clear that character development was going to get flushed down the toilet. But the moment I saw this mini series? I was suckered back in. I devoured them even though I could not tell you a damn thing beyond haunting the Kmart that season as I waited for the next one to appear. That was a fun summer.
So I look forward to rediscovering the weirdness from my past!
This morning I found out that the miniseries had a different name in the UK and the covers are both somehow better and infinitely worse and I have so many questions about UK coverart in general (basically- why are you like this?) but yeah. Bigger and better versions can be found at Sweet Valley Online but since that site always triggers my malware browser warning (legit or do they just not want me to see the UK cover oddities?), I'm using the ones yanked from Goodreads. Also, I am very carefully NOT reading any reviews prior to the great re-read.
If those don't terrify you into joining us, I don't know what will. Seriously though, I always forget that "If I Die Before I Wake" is a legitimate SV title every time I see it on a list and this cover is giving Evil Elizabeth a run for her creepy cover art throne.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-03 04:40 pm (UTC)Your reaction to seeing this miniseries in the store was exactly how I reacted to the Evil Twin miniseries in SVH. I was still reading the series but the new covers and crazy summaries sucked me in with zero resistance. It was such a masterstroke way to transition from the regular series to the mini-series arcs and I still thinking very highly of the Evil Twin arc for those reasons (plus it was so batshit crazy insane, LOL - tho that ruined the post #100 books for me).
I'd definitely dipped out of SVT before this miniseries came along the first time around. I think I stopped reading around #85 or wherever it was that the cover design changed. I have clear memories of "Elizabeth the Seventh Grader" but nothing really after that.
Those UK covers are definitely creepy. I hate that the logo takes up 75% of the cover, so much potential wasted!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-10-04 12:00 pm (UTC)Based on the cover art, I'm guessing I checked out fully around The Gossip War or maybe The Great Boyfriend Switch, which is odd since I kept collecting the Unicorn books til #17 and that was years later. Huh.
Oooh, to come across The Evil twin arc in the wild must've been fun! It was nifty enough reading the little blurb in the Scholastic flier and waiting impatiently for the books to arrive in class but to stumble across them? Fantastic!
Seriously, the perfect way to end a series or, y'know, attempt a serious revamp. Why, oh why, did they lead with the Club Meh series right after though? People were primed for insanity not...that.