PAPERBACK CRUSH SC

Every twenty- or thirty-something woman knows these books. The pink covers, the flimsy paper, the zillion volumes in the series that kept you reading for your entire adolescence. Spurred by the commercial success of Sweet Valley High and The Babysitters Club, these were not the serious-issue YA novels of the 1970s, nor were they the blockbuster books of the Harry Potter and Twilight ilk. They were cheap, short, and utterly beloved. Paperback Crush dives in deep to this golden age with affection, history, and a little bit of snark. Some were blatant ripoffs of the successful series, some were sick-lit tearjerkers à la Love Story, and some were just plain perplexing. But all of them represent that time gone by of girl-power and endless sessions of sustained silent reading.