I've never heard of the novel, but I've always liked the idea of Xander and Willow meeting shallow-Buffy. Especially since in the first ep where Cordelia's insulting Willow, the look on Buffy's face seems to say "Was I like that? Really?" .

I thought of it after I watched the Angel episode where they all lost all their memories from adulthood onwards. I thought that would be an amusing episode for the Scooby Gang as well.

Putting Shy Willow, High School Xander, Shallow Buffy and Ripper Giles in the same room together would be interesting. Probably hilarious if poor Xander got to keep his memories and had to deal with the other three.