It’s Halloween in Sweet Valley and all of the kids in Mrs. Otis’s second grade class are excited about the upcoming jack-o-lantern competition and costume parade. Elizabeth and Jessica have grown out of their matching clown costumes from the previous Halloween, so Alice buys a box of new costumes from a yard sale. Two are the right size for the twins: a witch costume and a princess costume. The trouble is, they both want to be the princess.

Meanwhile, Steven is doing his best to show his Halloween spirit by scaring his younger sisters with a rubber spider. When he teases them for being chickens, Jessica warns Steven that they’ll get back at him.

The twins struggle to decide which of them will get to be the princess. Finally, Jessica comes up with the perfect plan: Elizabeth will wear the princess costume for the school parade and Jessica will wear it for trick-or-treating.

Mrs. Otis’s class win the pumpkin costume, Mrs. Otis herself wins best teacher costume in the parade and the twins take turns to scare Steven while dressed in the witch costume. All up, not a lot happens, but it’s an enjoyable Halloween.

This has to be the most boring book in the series so far, which doesn’t make sense at all when Halloween is such a great event to play with. There’s very little conflict in here at all, and no real stakes, even in seven-year-old terms. Even at 71 large print pages, it dragged.