YMMV / Sweet Valley High

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Elizabeth a responsible and caring Nice Girl or a nagging hypocrite?
  • Is Jessica a mischievous but lovable brat or a complete sociopath? It's worth noting that back in the day, she was considered entertaining by young readers (see Draco in Leather Pants), and the "sociopath" thing is more of a recent interpretation of modern reviews, as some of her schemes are not seen as forgivable anymore (like spiking her sister's punch to sabotage her chances to become prom queen, or bullying a girl to the point that she's Driven to Suicide).
• Anvilicious: The TV series was not exactly the most subtle when it came to projecting its morals, especially in the darker installments.
• Archive Panic: The main series and the spinoffs consist of a total of 451 different books. If you read one every other day, you still won't be finished for more than two years.
• Broken Base:
  • Some laud the Junior High and Senior Year series for showing a more realistic portrayal of teenage life, while others condemn the series as being boring, compared to the earlier series. Still others think that they might be perfectly fine YA series on their own, but with a lot of the major characters from the original series gone, and a whole host of new characters (who would never show up in any of the later series), they just weren't Sweet Valley anymore.
  • Sweet Valley Confidential also has broken the base, since its revelations about the current status of several major characters (most notably Winston and Todd/Jessica) was not what most fans wanted to see happen.
  • The TV series. Either it's an entertaining (if wacky) adaptation of the book series, or it's a goofy Saved by the Bell clone with none of the charm that made the books popular.
• Designated Hero: The Wakefield siblings don't come across as great people sometimes.
  • Elizabeth is purported to be the good twin who is nice to everyone - but, more often than not, she comes off as a meddling, sanctimonious hypocrite. As such, many find her to be even worse than the allegedly bad twin, Jessica. In fact, she pulls several stunts that are just as cruel as anything Jessica has ever done, yet it's somehow okay because it's Elizabeth doing it.
  • Meanwhile, Jessica's cruelty and self-interest often descends into outright pyschopathy, but gets laughed off as "Jessica being Jessica". Like getting angry at a girl she bullied into an eating disorder and suicide attempt for not showing up at cheerleading practice. Or organising a bullying campaign against the first girl on the football team for the crimes of not wanting to join her sorority and thinking cheerleading was silly.
  • Big brother Steve isn't much better. He's frequently a complete jerk to Cara, incredibly cruel at times—publicly humiliating her on several occasions—without any provocation or justification and cheats on her twice with girls who are the spitting image of his dead girlfriend Tricia Martin. Adding insult to injury, this is the only reason he's interested in them. But this all supposed to be OK, because, "Poor Steve, he just loved Tricia and misses her so much."
• Designated Villain: Conversely, Jessica is often portrayed as the "wrong" one, even on the rare occasions she actually has a point. Elizabeth blasts her for being horrible to Winston Egbert and not giving him a chance, but Jessica has made it abundantly clear that she does not reciprocate his feelings for her. And instead of accepting this and moving on, he persists in pursuing her. Who wouldn't be annoyed at that?
• Draco in Leather Pants: Even the writer was amazed at how much fans preferred the "bad twin" Jessica (who fans saw as more understandable and interesting) to "good girl" Elizabeth (who fans saw as hypocritical and self-righteous).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Lila Fowler and Winston Egbert fans are quite plentiful.
• Escapist Character: Both twins are repeatedly described as blonde, gorgeous, and popular, and in different ways, they represent what young readers wanted to be. Every girl would have loved to be like Elizabeth (a sweet and smart Class Princess with a Lovable Jock boyfriend) or like Jessica (a confident and fashionable cheerleader who always gets all the boys she wants).
• Fanon Discontinuity: The Sudden Downer Ending resolutions to Regina and Winston's final arcs are angrily disregarded by some fans who see them as cheap shock value character assassinations.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Emily's stepmother Karen is the epitome of a "Karen", 30 years before the phenomenon became well known.
• One True Pairing: Fans were thrilled to see Lila and Bruce finally get together in the Sweet Valley University series and hail them as the funniest and most compatible couple of the franchise.
• Unintentional Period Piece: From the clearly dated technology (Liz types her column on a typewriter; there are no apps or internet, or even anybody using a computer or mobile phone), to the descriptions of what people wear (then very hip and fashionable, now ridiculously dated), to some Values Dissonance (school teacher Roger Collins frequently hangs out one-on-one in a room with his students and even sometimes gives Liz a hug to comfort her—nowadays schools have rules against teachers and students being in a closed room together, let alone initiating physical contact), the books are extremely 80s. The series was made in The '90s, and actually set in that decade so more modern compared to the books, but from the clothes everybody wears and just about every male character sporting a mushroom cut, the show screams "mid-90's!"
• Values Dissonance:
  • The series' mocking attitudes toward overweight characters can be uncomfortable to read nowadays, as a result of the public backlash against fat-shaming in the 2010s.
  • Winston's crush on Jessica (that never really goes away even after he gets a girlfriend) is portrayed as the usual "sweet nerdy guy in love with the Alpha Bitch" and the reader is clearly supposed to empathize with and root for him. Rather than what it really is—"Guy won't take "No" for an answer".
  • Melissa Fox in the Senior Year series shows strong signs of undiagnosed mental illness: She has a deeply unhealthy attachment to her unfaithful boyfriend Will, she's content to destroy other people's lives to get her own way, and she makes two suicide attempts by the age of 17. Unfortunately, Parental Neglect ensures that her condition is improperly handled in both instances, and she herself rejects counseling in the belief that Will is all the help she needs. After she's released from the hospital following the second attempt, the series drops any discussion of her psychological well-being and designates her as a complete Jerkass.

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