Maria Slater

Maria Slater is a key character in the Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley Twins book series.

Character
Pretty and outgoing, Maria is a friend of protagonists Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield. She arrives in Sweet Valley following her career as a successful child star. Unconventionally beautiful, Maria has striking features and long black hair with red tips. She is easily one of the most distinctive and talented girls in the school. On occasion, she clashes with the other girls in her class due to her popularity with her male classmates.

Maria's interests focus on the performing arts. She excels at ballet, tap dancing, baton twirling, and ventriloquism. In the Sweet Valley Twins books, she and Jessica are rivals for the starring role in the spring ballet recital.

She is ‘strikingly’ pretty, with light ebony colored skin, black curly hair, and wide, almond brown eyes.

Sweet Valley Twins
In the series, Maria first appears in the novel, Jessica and the Secret Star. Jessica had planned to win the school talent show with a rhythmic gymnastics routine and feels intimidated by Maria's dance skills. After Jessica threatens to spread rumors about Maria should she participate in the show, Maria drops out and the two become friends. She joins The Unicorn Club, an elite, all girls club that only accepts the most popular girls in the school. Lila Fowler and Ellen Riteman are also members of the club.

Sweet Valley High
Maria makes her first appearance in the series at a Montana Sleep-away performing arts camp called Camp Echo Mountain. She is one of the plot devices that Elizabeth Wakefield and Nicole Banes fight over. She moves back to Sweet Valley from Los Angeles for her junior and senior years.

Sweet Valley Senior Year
Maria's dramas for senior year consist of acting and boys. She begins acting in plays becoming closer friends with Jessica in the process. She has two main romances with Conner McDermott; whom she deluded herself into thinking it was a relationship when really it was a tamed version of a hookup. Her next relationship is with Ken Matthews; which becomes a on-again-off-again  relationship for the remainder of the series.