Sweet Valley High is a young adult novel series about identical teenage twin sisters Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield. It’s set in Sweet Valley, California, an idyllic Los Angeles suburb where the girls live a cushy, sun-soaked life. The books were written by Francine Pascal and a team of ghostwriters, and were published from 1983 into the early 2000s.

While the twins have a great relationship, they are quite different from each other. Elizabeth is the practical, rule-following sister focused on school and extracurricular activities. Jessica is the outgoing rule-breaker who loves fashion and her school’s social scene. The family is rounded out by their father Ned (who is a lawyer), their mother Alice (an interior designer), and their kind older brother, Steven.

Their prominent schoolmates included Enid Rollins, Elizabeth’s best friend who had a difficult past and is now a straightlaced student. Lila Fowler is Jessica’s best friend (sometimes frenemy) who started out as a snobby rich girl, but became more well-rounded as the series continued. Todd Wilkins is Elizabeth’s on-again/off-again boyfriend, captain of the basketball team, and all-American boy. Winston Egbert is the class clown who crushes on Jessica and Bruce Patman is a rich snob that torments most of his classmates.

The series totaled over 180 books in the main series, and it featured multiple spinoffs set during different periods of their lives. The Sweet Valley Kids series was about the elementary aged twins, Sweet Valley Twins was set during middle school, and Sweet Valley Junior High followed them through eighth grade. Following the main series timeline were Sweet Valley Senior Year, Sweet Valley University, then Sweet Valley Confidential and The Sweet Life were set during adulthood.

The book series was adapted into a TV show starring Brittany and Cynthia Daniel as Jessica and Elizabeth, respectively, that ran for four seasons from 1994 to 1997. There were many tie-in products like a board game, audio versions of the books, puzzles, dolls, calendars, trivia books, and a soundtrack for the TV show.