Criticism
The series has come under much negative criticism from readers and reviewers, who described Sweet Valley as an unrealistic, almost Utopian setting, and its characters as unlikable and one-dimensional. Criticisms include:
- The twins and a majority of their high school peers being unrealistically beautiful, and physically perfect, without suffering from greasy hair, body odor, weight issues, acne and other typical teenage problems. Robin Wilson was fat. Peter De Haven was described as having acne, and Betsy Martin definitely had greasy hair.
- The implication that happiness cannot exist in a single parent family, as evidence with Lila Fowler, whose father emotionally neglects her.
- Alice Wakefield being mistaken for the twins' sister, despite her children being in college and high school, making her at least into her mid- to late-forties.
- Sweet Valley High constantly holding dances and proms throughout the school year.
- Jessica deliberately spiking her own sister's drink simply to ensure Elizabeth will not be voted prom queen.
- An obvious lack of ethnic groups in Sweet Valley, as a large amount of the characters are white.
- The murderess Margo Black looking like Elizabeth to the point where Alice Wakefield cannot tell the difference between her own daughter and another girl.
- Olivia Davidson died in the earthquake that ended Sweet Valley High - yet she is at the Christmas Dance when the twins are at university. (However, #8 Home for Christmas - the Sweet Valley University book in which Olivia Davidson is briefly mentioned was published before the "Earthquake" Sweet Valley High mini-series.
Read more about this topic: Sweet Valley High
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ... and so on. He said the dedication should really read: To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harpers instead of The Hardware Age.”
—Brenda Ueland (18911985)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (18991961)