1983. Maybe you remember it as the year Return of the Jedi was released. Maybe you don’t remember it at all. I know it as the year of my birth, but something else was born in 1983: Sweet Valley, CA and its idyllic populous, not the least of which were Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield of Sweet Valley High.

          When, a few years later, the “Sweet Valley Twins” spin-off was spawned, I was totally on board for the lamer, tamer version of the Wakefield saga. But I’ll be upfront with you. As a pre-teen, I was more of a Babysitters Club kind of girl. As an adult, I’m more of a Dostoyevsky kind of girl. Yet, somewhere in between, there’s a place in my heart for the obscenely dramatic and disturbingly saccharin, a place for Sweet Valley High. Call it a morbid curiosity; I’m about to start one hell of a gapers block.

        Let the diaries begin!