Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from Quirk Books.

Today’s post is on Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction by Gabrielle Moss. It is 256 pages long and is published by Quirk Books. The cover is a picture of three girls on a bed with a horse poster behind them reading a book. The intended reader is someone who is interested in the history of young adult books and publishing or someone who read and loved those books as a teen and tween. There is some mild foul language, talk of sex, and no violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- A hilarious and nostalgic trip through the history of paperback pre-teen series of the 80s and 90s.
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. Readers will discover (and fondly remember) girl-centric series on everything from correspondence (Pen Pals and Dear Diary) to sports (The Pink Parrots, Cheerleaders, and The Gymnasts) to a newspaper at an all-girls Orthodox Jewish middle school (The B.Y. Times) to a literal teen angel (Teen Angels: Heaven Can Wait, where an enterprising guardian angel named Cisco has to earn her wings “by helping the world’s sexist rock star.”) Some were blatant ripoffs of the successful series (looking at you, Sleepover Friends and The Girls of Canby Hall), some were sick-lit tearjerkers à la Love Story (Abby, My Love) and some were just plain perplexing (Uncle Vampire??) But all of them represent that time gone by of girl-power and endless sessions of sustained silent reading.
In six hilarious chapters (Friendship, Love, School, Family, Jobs, Terror, and Tragedy), Bustle Features Editor Gabrielle Moss takes the reader on a nostalgic tour of teen book covers of yore, digging deep into the history of the genre as well as the stories behind the best-known series.

Review- I read Paperbacks from Hell and loved it so much. It was funny, the history about the books was interesting, and the writing was engaging. Quirk Books did it again with Paperback Crush. Moss starts in the 1880’s with the first book about a young adult and moves forward to the 1990’s. The book is broken up by genre like jobs, family, taboo topics, and of course teen slasher novels. Within the sections Moss discusses quirks of the particular genre like troublesome siblings or ghost boyfriends, the covers and what made them so unique to the YA field, and the writing style as it changed from very realistic to vampire boyfriends. The only sex talk is very basic and is just covering what is in the books themselves without being sensational. This was a wonderful romp in some of the best and worst YA fiction and I highly recommend it.

I give this book a Five out of Five stars.