The top 5 trashiest teen reads

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No top list of teenage reads could be complete without mention of the Thoroughbred series or if nothing else the The Saddle Club! Im sure I wasnt the only 12 year old obsessed with Ashleigh Griffi...

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Words: Heidi Maier

Let's face it for all the hours even the geekiest of lit-kids wiled away reading serious and respectable classical and contemporary literature audemars piguet danae replica paypal they spent just as much time indulging in what’s probably best described as ‘teen trash.’ You know them – those books that are utterly lacking in literary creditability or substance but are nonetheless oh-so-pleasurable to read.

Inspired by news that six new Sweet Valley novellas will be published next month here are five favourited trashy teen reads:

5. Sweet Valley High by Francine Pascal: As a teen I owned more than 100 of these books and throughout the late 80s and early 90s eagerly awaited the monthly publication of a new Sweet Valley High novel. In early 2011 a long-time-coming new volume which explored the lives of identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield 10 years after their high school graduation was published entitled Sweet Valley Confidential. It was pretty appallingly written but curiously engaging – rather like catching up with long-lost friends after a long time spent apart. Sure I tired of constantly being reminded that the twins were gorgeous California blondes with trim size six figures sparkling blue eyes and personalities that made them chalk and cheese but I never tired of visiting the soapy gossipy world of Sweet Valley the twins their family and their friends.

4. The Babysitters Club series by Ann M. Martin: I began reading these in grade three at the age of eight and frankly should’ve given them up many years before I actually did. I knew I was reading books that were way too young for me but over the course of more than 100 books club members Kristy Mary-Anne Claudia Stacey Dawn Mallory and Jesse came to feel a little bit like sisters. Disentangling myself from their lives was something I did reluctantly and though the babysitters would today be almost 40 fake franck muller watches I’ll admit to recently being delighted to hear the series is back in print. I especially loved the long-form Super Specials that followed them on vacations and holidays. Also appealing was the way the club members dissected their lives at weekly meetings and kept detailed journals documenting their exploits and adventures.

3. Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene: What can I say? I’ve always been a sucker for a good mystery story and though I discovered the exploits of prodigious girl detective Nancy in primary school I also read the novels well into my teens because again Nancy was a friend I wasn’t quite ready to bid farewell to. The series ghostwritten and published under a pseudonym has been around since the late 1930s and ceased publication only in 2003. Sure the storylines were often quaint dated and preposterous as was the scenario of a girl graduating high school early and successfully following her dream of becoming a detective but they were also pulpy mischievous mysterious fun.

2. Fear Street by R.L. Stine: I got my real horror kicks reading genre master Stephen King but my best friend and I also loved Stine’s supernatural series set in the fictional town of Shadyside. He wrote more than 50 of the novels all of which focused on Shadyside’s teenage residents and the paranormal encounters they experienced or mysteries they uncovered. As a teenager breitling bentley watches I enjoyed anything Stine or Caroline B. Cooney wrote; namely dark murderous mysterious paranormal tales of intrigue. Stine has said he “likes scaring young readers” and his 50-plus Fear Street novels were pseudo-horror trash of the best sort: eminently readable and plot-wise often every bit as strange and unsettling as their author intended them to be.

1. Virginia Andrews’ Dollganger Family series: Embarrassing as it is I spent an awful lot of time as a teen reading my way through the vast canons of both Andrews and her contemporary Danielle Steel. Circa 1992 or so my best friend I were pretty obsessed with Andrews’ Dollganger Family novels. The series famously includes Flowers in the Attic and its four tawdry dark and compulsive sequels focussing on the four Dollganger children – Chris Cathy Cory and Carrie. Andrews unravelled the story of how they were imprisoned in an attic on the vast family estate by their deranged mother and grandmother. She wove in all the stuff truly trashy fiction needs: dark family secrets and the innocence of youth corrupted. The first two books Flowers in the Attic and Petals on the Wind are trashy reads par excellence – the sorts of books that made me want to hole up in my bedroom and ignore the world until I guilty and disappointed turned the very last page.

What were some of your favourite trashy teen reads?

Images via goodreads.com