Bruce Patman is actually in love—with someone other than himself. He's fallen for Regina Morrow, the rich, beautiful new girl, who is a recent cover model and the most inspirational of all the inspirationally disabled girls. (In case you've forgotten, she's deaf, but can read lips and speak perfectly. A nice, non-confronting disability that doesn't inconvenience anyone but her.) Now that he and Regina are together, Bruce has changed. He's opening car doors for Regina and buying her expensive jewellery and even inviting her to the Patman mansion for dinner. (He still wears a teeny-tiny bathing suit, though, so it's not like everything has changed.)

Regina's in love too. She's never so much as kissed a boy before Bruce, and now she's head-over-heels. But just as she gets her first boyfriend and starts to really feel like she's a part of the Sweet Valley crowd, her family drops an amazing bombshell on her: there's a doctor in Switzerland who should be able to give her the ability to hear. The downside is that she'll have to move there for an entire year, leaving behind Bruce and the first time she's felt like a ~normal~ teenager.

Regina, being a teenage girl, decides that staying with Bruce is more important than being able to hear. Her family try to convince her otherwise, even bringing a former patient of the doctor to stay with them to show Regina what she'll be missing out on (and to enable a brief mistaken identity side plot in which Todd, yet again, suspects Liz of cheating on him and no one thinks that perhaps it could be an identical twin sister situation).

Meanwhile, Jess is trying to break Regina and Bruce up, because she has a term paper bet going with Lila that they'll be over before the charity carnival the SVH students are putting on. She just happens to let it slip that Ken thinks that Bruce is only dating Regina to boost his popularity in order to become president of the centenary committee. Now that is a dedicated campaign tactic.

It's Sweet Valley, so of course Bruce and Regina have a massive bust-up due to their complete failure to communicate. Regina decides to go to Switzerland for treatment after all and it's left to Liz to explain to Bruce why Regina was so upset with him. The new Bruce is loving and selfless, so of course he puts Regina's health before his own selfish desire to be with her, and ensures that she goes abroad anyway.

It's all so sugary, I have a toothache.

As much as I prefer the real Bruce to the lovestruck changeling he was replaced by as soon as Regina walked into his life, this is actually one of the better-written books, I think. The inspirationally disabled trope gets really old really quickly when it comes to Regina (especially when she manages to read lips that she can't even see), but she and Bruce are actually a likeable pairing and I do appreciate the fact that Regina's health and future are shown to be more important than her brand-new high school romance.

Moral of the Story? Love turns cheating players into crying pussycats.

[re-read. previously read around 2 times]