In her book review of “Sweet Valley Confidential”, Roxane Gay uses a number of creative writing tools to draw the readers to accept her personal view of the book. Gay begins by speaking of Vanessa Williams as an inspiration of hers that made her think that she could be “beautiful”, since she was not particularly so and was often teased and bullied in school by other kids who believed they were more so than her. With this particularly long introduction before the book is even reviewed it helps the reader understand Gay’s point of view after reading the book. She understands that she simply loved the books ten years prior because they resembled her situation and because she wished she could be like the perfect twins in the book. However, after maturing and becoming a woman and then reading the new book she understood that the writing was not very good (now being a published author), and that the book itself was not very good with many incoherencies and fallacies within the plot. However, Gay does come to acknowledge that for a young girl, when she first read the books they were particularly powerful in that they became friends to her when she had none and she even felt as if she was part of them. Yet, she admits, that “Sweet Valley Confidential” could never have been as good as the original books because the “expectations” and “nostalgia” that had built over the years were too powerful. She concludes the review by stating how the Sweet Valley books appealed to any girl because at the end of the day they were all the same no matter where they lived or where they were from; which was the case during her childhood.
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