Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Sweet Valley (1993), 352 pages
Description
Will Margo win the final battle? Margo's monstrous plan is complete. She came to Sweet Valley to find a new life, and discovered identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield and their "perfect" family. If only Margo can get rid of one of them, she can take her rightful place in the Wakefield home. Now the moment Margo has been waiting for has arrived. The twins aren't speaking to each other. Sweet Valley is in chaos. Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield are out of town. Margo has just enough time to do what she needs to do. Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield are in mortal danger. The final episode in the explosive six-part miniseries. Will Sweet Valley ever be the same?
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User reviews
LibraryThing member Impy
The Evil Twin pretty much marks the end of traditional SVH. Or maybe it's actually the start of the mini series, but it's easily the most memorable of the entire series.
Margo finally makes her move in her attempt to take over Elizabeth's perfect life. The twins are estranged, so Margo sends their
I know I can't be the only one who wondered two things:
1) Why didn't Margo choose Jessica? Her impersonations of Elizabeth always left people feeling like she was Jessica anyway. Was it that she wanted to be the good girl, but with bad girl benefits and didn't see Jessica as good enough?
2) What if she'd actually managed to kill Elizabeth? How awesome, and disturbing, would that have been?
Margo finally makes her move in her attempt to take over Elizabeth's perfect life. The twins are estranged, so Margo sends their
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parents out of town to further alienate them. I know I can't be the only one who wondered two things:
1) Why didn't Margo choose Jessica? Her impersonations of Elizabeth always left people feeling like she was Jessica anyway. Was it that she wanted to be the good girl, but with bad girl benefits and didn't see Jessica as good enough?
2) What if she'd actually managed to kill Elizabeth? How awesome, and disturbing, would that have been?
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LibraryThing member Heather19
Why have I not reviewed this before now? This is an awesome book!! I've read (on Amazon) some people say that this storyline was too unbelievable and stupid, but I thought it was wonderful. This book is the conclusion of the mini-series in which a young woman named Margo becomes obsessed with
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taking over Elizabeth's life... by killing Elizabeth! The plot is awesome, as is the final showdown! Show Less
LibraryThing member eurohackie
All miniseries long, I've been waiting for the Christmas season to hit, and boom! Here it is. Chapter one, the twins are dressing for their last day of classes before the winter break. They are both musing over the disaster that was the Jungle Prom, Sam's death, and their estrangement ever since.
There is another great early canon touch with the Secret Santa candy canes given out during the last day of school, though Margo has slipped some nasty anonymous messages to both Jessica and Elizabeth. Margo has started regularly impersonating both twins - at school, at home, with friends, etc. Margo thinks she's doing a fabulous job of pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, but in reality, everyone she's with knows that she's not Liz, at least if their interaction is more than a few words. She has an easier time impersonating Jessica, and even contemplates switching her murderous ire to the feisty twin for awhile, but ultimately can't shake her ultimate desire to take over Liz's life. She has a countdown clock running, too: she's going to murder Elizabeth at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve.
The Wakefields have a strained Christmas celebration (with Margo watching from the shadows), and then the parents are off on their wild goose chase in San Francisco that Margo had arranged in the previous book. Margo has figured out how to sneak into the Wakefield home from a basement window, so she starts coming and going with great regularity. She sneaks into Liz's room, reads her diary, lays in her bed, and even hides in her closet when Liz arrives home unexpectedly. It's really creepy. Liz sees her room in disarray and blames Jessica. She's still mad about Jess hiding the note from Todd, but she can't understand "Jessica's" strange behavior in rifling through her things.
Meanwhile, Margo is making dates with Todd, who is having weird flashbacks to his earlier fling with Jessica, and is also wondering what "Jessica" is trying to pull by impersonating Liz. He doesn't trust his instincts (until its too late). Only Enid looks at Margo-playing-Liz and tells her outright that she doesn't believe its Liz she's talking to; she, too, suspects Jessica, though she doesn't understand the motive.
Margo is also impersonating Jessica, especially around Lila. Lila and her family are off to Paris for Christmas, but are returning just in time to throw a huge, formal ball for New Year's. Margo worms her way into Fowler Crest by pretending to be Jessica, and makes plans to kill Liz at the ball and bury her in the woods behind the pool house.
Jessica is wracked with guilt about spiking Liz's punch at the Jungle Prom, but can't quite bring herself to come clean. James has suddenly dumped her, and she has no idea why. He calls one night and asks her to meet him so he can explain, but unfortunately Margo intercepts the call - and the meeting - and pushes James off a pier.
Josh Smith is still dogging Margo's trail, and when she realizes it, she leads him directly to James, and leaves it looking as if he was the one who killed James instead of her, so he's neatly removed from her plans by being arrested for the murder. After all, who arrives just after but the Wakefield twins and Todd, and who do they see but Josh, standing on the pier looking over?
James's sudden death plunges Jessica into pretty deep despair. Margo, being a sociopath, does not have real emotions and goes on impersonating both twins, though each set of friends finds it incredibly odd that "Jess" and "Liz" are so chirpy and talkative. Nobody really puts two and two together though, which is pretty frustrating. Especially since Margo's interactions with everyone are not convincing - if these people had exchanged notes more regularly, they would've figured out what was going on way before the end of the book.
But alas. The Wakefield parents make it to San Francisco and find nothing is as they thought. The letter Mr Wakefield received is confirmed as a forgery by the company, and they decide to return to Sweet Valley early. Mrs Wakefield is beside herself with worry about her children; every time she calls home she speaks with "Liz" (aka Margo), who assures her that everything is fine, but her mother's intuition keeps telling her something is wrong.
Playing against everyone is the fact that it's apparently the storm of the century in southern California, raining seven straight days from Christmas through New Year's, with plenty of electrical storms and fog. It slows the Wakefield parents' return to Sweet Valley, and obscures the actions going on at the New Year's ball.
Margo finagles the dresses that she and Liz are wearing to the party; when Todd arrives to pick Liz up, he has to look and her long and hard to make sure that she really is Elizabeth. He's determined to stick to her like glue for the entire evening, but of course Liz has to go to the bathroom at some point, and that's when they are separated. Todd thinks he finds her in a dark room at Fowler Crest, but instead he realizes that he's with Margo and she knocks him out with a brass statuette (the tiny picture on the bottom left of the stepback).
Jessica goes to the party alone, for once wearing a completely different outfit from her sister. Steven and Billie are at the Wakefield homestead, watching movies/making out to celebrate the new year. Everyone hears the news when Josh breaks out of the county jail in one last attempt to stop Margo, and everyone is fearful that because he knows Todd and the twins, that he'll be gunning for them.
Jessica goes looking for Liz at Fowler Crest and sees her going into the pool house; she follows her and finds Margo standing over Liz, about to kill her. Todd has regained consciousness and is stumbling around; Steven and Billie have raced to Fowler Crest to check on the twins after finding the phones down; Enid spots Josh Smith near the pool house and sends as rescue party to stop Josh in his tracks.
Meanwhile, Jessica, Liz, and Margo are struggling for the butcher knife. Jess and Liz have both had the prophetic dream about the "twin" with dark hair and the butcher knife at Secca Lake, so they immediately understand what's going on. Jess gets the knife in hand at one point and points it at both girls in pink, unable to figure out which one is which. This is the moment that sticks with me, even thirty years later. Jessica realizes which one is Liz a split second too late; Margo grabs the knife and threatens them both. Mercifully, Jess throws herself over Liz, and Josh slams into the pool house at just the right moment, to knock Margo off the twins, through the plate glass window, and onto the patio below. Margo is killed when a slice of glass cuts into her carotid artery and she bleeds to death.
Josh is telling his story to the police, who believe him now that there's a third "twin" dead nearby. Neither Elizabeth nor Jessica can understand it, but they are so thankful to be alive that they immediately forgive each other, and rush into their mother's arms.
This is certainly a thriller, and it works on every level. It's also a standalone; you don't have to read A Night to Remember or #95-99 in order to understand what's going on here - all of the relevant info is recapped. Margo has finally put all of her plans into motion, and while she is clever, she's not nearly as clever as she thinks. No one that she interacts with for any length of time believes that she's Elizabeth, not even Mrs Wakefield or Todd. If anything, she'd have had an easier time slotting herself into Jessica's life, but she thinks Jess is weak and pathetic.
Reading this as an adult, I kinda felt sorry for Margo. She's absolutely insane, but she's also deluding herself for thinking that she'd get away with it. Her answer to not getting her way is to kill, and what makes her think that even if she did successfully off Elizabeth and take over her identity, and anyone would believe that Liz would kill as easily and as often as Margo did? Sure, she was on trial for involuntary manslaughter for Sam's death, but she was acquitted. Only someone who was totally bananapants beyond-the-bend would think that was a good cover for committing murder.
Anyway. Margo is a sad, mad, awful, evil person, but knowing that she'd never get away with it - when she hesitates to kill Elizabeth at the end - takes away some of the suspenseful feeling. Also: no one is as dumb as pretty much everyone acts here, and no way is Josh the only person on Margo's trail throughout all of this.
Other disappointing factors: that Josh never explains how he put together Margo's murderous past; and that Jessica never tells Elizabeth about spiking the punch at the Jungle Prom (supposedly Liz 'intuits' it from a series of dreams, where her subconscious magically allows her to see Jessica doing it, and why she did it).
But, this is rightly considered the best book of the entire SVH series, and it definitely holds up as such. There was no going back to the slim, white-spined, early canon series after this, and indeed, SVH quickly goes off the rails in increasingly dramatic and idiotic ways, but damn. What a helluva way to celebrate reaching a milestone series number!
Unfortunately, one of the terribad books that follows this is an actual sequel to the Evil Twin, which is so OTT that I remember being angry that they even attempted to pull it off. Hopefully I will find it less anger-inducing this time around, as we close out our re-read (and this year)!
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Both twins have premonitions that something bad is going to happen, but they are so mired in their anger and sadness that they can't really tell if its a true feeling or not.There is another great early canon touch with the Secret Santa candy canes given out during the last day of school, though Margo has slipped some nasty anonymous messages to both Jessica and Elizabeth. Margo has started regularly impersonating both twins - at school, at home, with friends, etc. Margo thinks she's doing a fabulous job of pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, but in reality, everyone she's with knows that she's not Liz, at least if their interaction is more than a few words. She has an easier time impersonating Jessica, and even contemplates switching her murderous ire to the feisty twin for awhile, but ultimately can't shake her ultimate desire to take over Liz's life. She has a countdown clock running, too: she's going to murder Elizabeth at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve.
The Wakefields have a strained Christmas celebration (with Margo watching from the shadows), and then the parents are off on their wild goose chase in San Francisco that Margo had arranged in the previous book. Margo has figured out how to sneak into the Wakefield home from a basement window, so she starts coming and going with great regularity. She sneaks into Liz's room, reads her diary, lays in her bed, and even hides in her closet when Liz arrives home unexpectedly. It's really creepy. Liz sees her room in disarray and blames Jessica. She's still mad about Jess hiding the note from Todd, but she can't understand "Jessica's" strange behavior in rifling through her things.
Meanwhile, Margo is making dates with Todd, who is having weird flashbacks to his earlier fling with Jessica, and is also wondering what "Jessica" is trying to pull by impersonating Liz. He doesn't trust his instincts (until its too late). Only Enid looks at Margo-playing-Liz and tells her outright that she doesn't believe its Liz she's talking to; she, too, suspects Jessica, though she doesn't understand the motive.
Margo is also impersonating Jessica, especially around Lila. Lila and her family are off to Paris for Christmas, but are returning just in time to throw a huge, formal ball for New Year's. Margo worms her way into Fowler Crest by pretending to be Jessica, and makes plans to kill Liz at the ball and bury her in the woods behind the pool house.
Jessica is wracked with guilt about spiking Liz's punch at the Jungle Prom, but can't quite bring herself to come clean. James has suddenly dumped her, and she has no idea why. He calls one night and asks her to meet him so he can explain, but unfortunately Margo intercepts the call - and the meeting - and pushes James off a pier.
Josh Smith is still dogging Margo's trail, and when she realizes it, she leads him directly to James, and leaves it looking as if he was the one who killed James instead of her, so he's neatly removed from her plans by being arrested for the murder. After all, who arrives just after but the Wakefield twins and Todd, and who do they see but Josh, standing on the pier looking over?
James's sudden death plunges Jessica into pretty deep despair. Margo, being a sociopath, does not have real emotions and goes on impersonating both twins, though each set of friends finds it incredibly odd that "Jess" and "Liz" are so chirpy and talkative. Nobody really puts two and two together though, which is pretty frustrating. Especially since Margo's interactions with everyone are not convincing - if these people had exchanged notes more regularly, they would've figured out what was going on way before the end of the book.
But alas. The Wakefield parents make it to San Francisco and find nothing is as they thought. The letter Mr Wakefield received is confirmed as a forgery by the company, and they decide to return to Sweet Valley early. Mrs Wakefield is beside herself with worry about her children; every time she calls home she speaks with "Liz" (aka Margo), who assures her that everything is fine, but her mother's intuition keeps telling her something is wrong.
Playing against everyone is the fact that it's apparently the storm of the century in southern California, raining seven straight days from Christmas through New Year's, with plenty of electrical storms and fog. It slows the Wakefield parents' return to Sweet Valley, and obscures the actions going on at the New Year's ball.
Margo finagles the dresses that she and Liz are wearing to the party; when Todd arrives to pick Liz up, he has to look and her long and hard to make sure that she really is Elizabeth. He's determined to stick to her like glue for the entire evening, but of course Liz has to go to the bathroom at some point, and that's when they are separated. Todd thinks he finds her in a dark room at Fowler Crest, but instead he realizes that he's with Margo and she knocks him out with a brass statuette (the tiny picture on the bottom left of the stepback).
Jessica goes to the party alone, for once wearing a completely different outfit from her sister. Steven and Billie are at the Wakefield homestead, watching movies/making out to celebrate the new year. Everyone hears the news when Josh breaks out of the county jail in one last attempt to stop Margo, and everyone is fearful that because he knows Todd and the twins, that he'll be gunning for them.
Jessica goes looking for Liz at Fowler Crest and sees her going into the pool house; she follows her and finds Margo standing over Liz, about to kill her. Todd has regained consciousness and is stumbling around; Steven and Billie have raced to Fowler Crest to check on the twins after finding the phones down; Enid spots Josh Smith near the pool house and sends as rescue party to stop Josh in his tracks.
Meanwhile, Jessica, Liz, and Margo are struggling for the butcher knife. Jess and Liz have both had the prophetic dream about the "twin" with dark hair and the butcher knife at Secca Lake, so they immediately understand what's going on. Jess gets the knife in hand at one point and points it at both girls in pink, unable to figure out which one is which. This is the moment that sticks with me, even thirty years later. Jessica realizes which one is Liz a split second too late; Margo grabs the knife and threatens them both. Mercifully, Jess throws herself over Liz, and Josh slams into the pool house at just the right moment, to knock Margo off the twins, through the plate glass window, and onto the patio below. Margo is killed when a slice of glass cuts into her carotid artery and she bleeds to death.
Josh is telling his story to the police, who believe him now that there's a third "twin" dead nearby. Neither Elizabeth nor Jessica can understand it, but they are so thankful to be alive that they immediately forgive each other, and rush into their mother's arms.
This is certainly a thriller, and it works on every level. It's also a standalone; you don't have to read A Night to Remember or #95-99 in order to understand what's going on here - all of the relevant info is recapped. Margo has finally put all of her plans into motion, and while she is clever, she's not nearly as clever as she thinks. No one that she interacts with for any length of time believes that she's Elizabeth, not even Mrs Wakefield or Todd. If anything, she'd have had an easier time slotting herself into Jessica's life, but she thinks Jess is weak and pathetic.
Reading this as an adult, I kinda felt sorry for Margo. She's absolutely insane, but she's also deluding herself for thinking that she'd get away with it. Her answer to not getting her way is to kill, and what makes her think that even if she did successfully off Elizabeth and take over her identity, and anyone would believe that Liz would kill as easily and as often as Margo did? Sure, she was on trial for involuntary manslaughter for Sam's death, but she was acquitted. Only someone who was totally bananapants beyond-the-bend would think that was a good cover for committing murder.
Anyway. Margo is a sad, mad, awful, evil person, but knowing that she'd never get away with it - when she hesitates to kill Elizabeth at the end - takes away some of the suspenseful feeling. Also: no one is as dumb as pretty much everyone acts here, and no way is Josh the only person on Margo's trail throughout all of this.
Other disappointing factors: that Josh never explains how he put together Margo's murderous past; and that Jessica never tells Elizabeth about spiking the punch at the Jungle Prom (supposedly Liz 'intuits' it from a series of dreams, where her subconscious magically allows her to see Jessica doing it, and why she did it).
But, this is rightly considered the best book of the entire SVH series, and it definitely holds up as such. There was no going back to the slim, white-spined, early canon series after this, and indeed, SVH quickly goes off the rails in increasingly dramatic and idiotic ways, but damn. What a helluva way to celebrate reaching a milestone series number!
Unfortunately, one of the terribad books that follows this is an actual sequel to the Evil Twin, which is so OTT that I remember being angry that they even attempted to pull it off. Hopefully I will find it less anger-inducing this time around, as we close out our re-read (and this year)!
Show Less
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1993-12
Physical description
352 p.; 6.75 inches
ISBN
0553298577 / 9780553298574