Allowance Busters: Sweet Valley High, Babysitters Club, and other YA serials

[andromeda331]

I love Lois Duncan too. Down Dark Hall, Summer of Fear, Stranger with my Face, and Don't Look Behind You (even if April is a bit stupid). I also really liked Locked in Time with Lisette and her teens passing themselves off as a new generation. Generation after generation. Gabe and Josie living forever and hating it. Because it mostly sucked for them. Lisette was really the only one who loved it. It had a great setting at Shadow Grove. I wish she never stopped writing but I can see why after what happened to her daughter. 

[Black Knight]

3 hours ago, Snow Apple said:

What happened? I never read the sequels.

Spoiler for the final Babysitter book:

Spoiler

The final "bad guy" was Jenny herself - all her continued ordeals had driven her insane and caused her to develop a split personality, that of the guy who had tormented her previously. She ends up being taken away in a straitjacket or something as her cousin looks on sadly.

Edited August 22, 2018 by Black Knight

[Black Knight]

Now that I'm home, I was able to check Wikipedia, and the list below was Pike's golden age. He'd written some books prior to this, but really hit his stride in late 1989 through early 1993. During this same period he also wrote another favorite of mine, a novel for adults called Season of Passage, in 1992. Then his writing devolved...

Remember Me (1989)

Fall into Darkness (1990)

See You Later (1990)

Witch (1990)

Whisper of Death (1991)

Die Softly (1991)

Bury Me Deep (1991)

Master of Murder (1992)

Monster (1992)

Road to Nowhere (1993)

[Snow Apple]

Did anyone else read the 80's series called Twilight and Dark Forces? They published standalone titles of YA horror. 

On the other end, I also used to love Sweet Dreams teen romances. I think I still have some. LOL

[Luciano]

I know that I loved reading Christopher Pike - I just don't remember much from him, though. Now I'm wanting to see if I still have any of his books in storage (along with the massive amounts of BSC, SVT, SVT, SVU, and VC Andrews that are there).

One thing that I do remember was a scene in his The Eternal Enemy where the protagonist dreams that her spine was being ripped out of her while she was awake and couldn't scream. That still makes me cringe.

RL Stone's Fear Street Saga was the best of those books, I thought. They made a thing about how the family's name was changed from Fier to Fear because of a curse involving fire and I guess 'Fear' was so much more optimistic?

Someone in the other thread earlier this month mentioned the twin of the Evil Twin/Margo in the Sweet Valley High books showing up after the initial saga. One thing I remember cracking up over was the fact that those twins got into an argument over who got to take over the life of Jessica because neither of them wanted to be Elizabeth. And they grumbled about it throughout the whole plot.

[andromeda331]

1 hour ago, Luciano said:

I know that I loved reading Christopher Pike - I just don't remember much from him, though. Now I'm wanting to see if I still have any of his books in storage (along with the massive amounts of BSC, SVT, SVT, SVU, and VC Andrews that are there).

One thing that I do remember was a scene in his The Eternal Enemy where the protagonist dreams that her spine was being ripped out of her while she was awake and couldn't scream. That still makes me cringe.

RL Stone's Fear Street Saga was the best of those books, I thought. They made a thing about how the family's name was changed from Fier to Fear because of a curse involving fire and I guess 'Fear' was so much more optimistic?

Simon somehow thought by changing his name the curse would be broken. Then again he also took a look at his family's tragedy his parents and sister murdered and decided the lesson to be learn was his family was too nice instead of being cautious about opening your doors to strangers. Nope, Simon was convinced evil was the only way to go. Those were my favorite books too. The regular Fear Street were good but the Saga was just really good. Simon and Angelica seemed like soul mates in their evilness. I liked Daniel coming back to murdered the doctors and burn down the asylum Nora was in so she and their son could escape. I liked William going after Benjamin and Matthew after they murdered his family. Oh, and the book where Simon and Angelica try to bring their daughters back to live. It also explained the story that had been told a few times in the regular series that their daughters were found or buried without their bones. That book finally explained why. 

 

Quote

Someone in the other thread earlier this month mentioned the twin of the Evil Twin/Margo in the Sweet Valley High books showing up after the initial saga. One thing I remember cracking up over was the fact that those twins got into an argument over who got to take over the life of Jessica because neither of them wanted to be Elizabeth. And they grumbled about it throughout the whole plot.

That was my favorite part! Along with their major disappointment that Elizabeth's never had sex despite dating Todd for so long, I guess if your going to go through the effort to murder someone and taken over their identity you want to make sure its someone who's going to have sex. I kind of wished there had been a spin off about what happened if Margo been successful. The other funny or creepy part was how many people Margo and Nora fooled. If someone its trying to impersonate you, you really do hope your family and friends would be able to tell. In the SVU series I was always really disappointed that Margo was dead and never got to meet William. Somehow I think they would have gotten along.

[Black Knight]

Margo and Nora should have just realized that they could go the MAJOR MOVIE SPOILER HERE

Spoiler

The Prestige route. Take turns as Jessica. 

 

Another funny thing I remember is one of them killed the other but everyone thought it was Jessica who had been killed. Elizabeth found "Jessica's" body, and then, the amusing part - "Jessica's" funeral drew a ludicrously high number of people. Does anyone remember the exact number? I want to say it was over a thousand (the corner of my mind actually keeps insisting that it was THREE thousand, but would even the SVH writers have been that ridiculous?) - I wouldn't have raised my eyebrows over hundreds, which isn't at all a hard number to get to considering that most SVH students and parents would come if only for the can't-miss-this factor.

Edited August 23, 2018 by Black Knight

[andromeda331]

26 minutes ago, Black Knight said:

Margo and Nora should have just realized that they could go the MAJOR MOVIE SPOILER HERE

  Reveal hidden contents

The Prestige route. Take turns as Jessica. 

 

Another funny thing I remember is one of them killed the other but everyone thought it was Jessica who had been killed. Elizabeth found "Jessica's" body, and then, the amusing part - "Jessica's" funeral drew a ludicrously high number of people. Does anyone remember the exact number? I want to say it was over a thousand (the corner of my mind actually keeps insisting that it was THREE thousand, but would even the SVH writers have been that ridiculous?) - I wouldn't have raised my eyebrows over hundreds, which isn't at all a hard number to get to considering that most SVH students and parents would come if only for the can't-miss-this factor.

Not to mention how many girls boyfriends she stole and people she generally treated like crap. I can't imagine they showed up unless they really wanted to make sure Jessica was dead. Three thousand or a thousand is still ridiculous for a teenager. Of course the ridiculous part was Margo not killing Jessica. There's no way Margo wouldn't have just killed her and took over her life. Nora, maybe because I don't think she had murdered anyone yet. But Margo who had murdered her way from New York to California? Who ran over a woman for her catering job? 

[dargosmydaddy]

On 8/13/2018 at 2:26 PM, Melgaypet said:

I may not have known about those, but I remember a non-BSC Martin book I really liked. Ten Kids is Enough, and it was about a family with, you guessed it, ten kids, who moved to the countryside from NYC. The kids, like the Pikes, were stairstep kids, a year apart, (except for a set of twins, not triplets) and their mother, who had an organizational system for everything, named them in alphabetical order out of a baby name book - the oldest kid had the first A name in the book, the second had the second B name, etc. So there was some weird names. I think the oldest boy was Bainbridge. The shy Mary Anne-esque girl was named Calandra, which I remember thinking was very pretty. ANYWAY, each kid had a POV chapter, and the throughline was that they all wanted a pet, which their mom wouldn't allow, because see the title. Eventually:

  Hide contents

the mom gets pregnant again and the kids all argue that she (and their dad too I guess, but he was basically a non-entity in my memory) broke the rule and so they should totally be allowed to get a pet! And she agrees! Yay!

God, I can't believe I remember all that.

Anyway, I liked books about huge families when I was a kid. As an adult, it sounds like a complete fucking nightmare. I mean this poor lady was pretty much continually pregnant for a decade!

There was a sequel, too-- Eleven Kids, One Summer. Same set-up with the one chapter per kid. The only one that I remember is that one of the kids (Ira, I think) was terrified of getting Lymes disease, and then ends up getting it!

The baby's name was Keegan.

[Spartan Girl]

Any fans of The Princess Diaries series? The books were WAY different than the books, particularly in terms of Mia's relationship with her grandmother, but they were so good. As an awkward neorotic teenager, I could definitely relate to Mia, and even when I thought she was being irrational, I was still on her side.

[Snow Apple]

I don't remember much details about the Princess Diaries but I remember Mia did *not* become smooth and beautiful. And Grandmere was *not* lovely and gracious like Julie Andrews.

[Spartan Girl]

3 hours ago, Snow Apple said:

I don't remember much details about the Princess Diaries but I remember Mia did *not* become smooth and beautiful. And Grandmere was *not* lovely and gracious like Julie Andrews.

Yup. And Lilly was an even bigger bitch than she was in the movies.

[andromeda331]

3 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Yup. And Lilly was an even bigger bitch than she was in the movies.

I think that was surprised me the most. Lilly was such a bitch in the movies it was hard to imagine she could be even worse in the books. And yet she was.

[Spartan Girl]

24 minutes ago, andromeda331 said:

I think that was surprised me the most. Lilly was such a bitch in the movies it was hard to imagine she could be even worse in the books. And yet she was.

Seriously. I know she went through a lot, being cruelly dumped by a guy for a guy that was just using her to get to Mia. I could even understand her being mad at Mia for supposedly "stealing" him, even though that was far from the truth. But all that sympathy went out the window when she made that horrible website about Mia. That was unforgivable.

Though to give her credit, she did help Mia out in the end by telling the truth about what happened and stopped Mia from having sex with him. And she was a lot nicer in the Royal Wedding sequel.

[andromeda331]

1 hour ago, Spartan Girl said:

Seriously. I know she went through a lot, being cruelly dumped by a guy for a guy that was just using her to get to Mia. I could even understand her being mad at Mia for supposedly "stealing" him, even though that was far from the truth. But all that sympathy went out the window when she made that horrible website about Mia. That was unforgivable.

Though to give her credit, she did help Mia out in the end by telling the truth about what happened and stopped Mia from having sex with him. And she was a lot nicer in the Royal Wedding sequel.

I agree the horrible website was unforgivable. That was a horrible thing to do to your best friend. She was a lot better in the sequel. It was easier to see why they were friends in that one then in the first movie. 

[starri]

I don't know if anyone listens to The Worst Bestsellers, but their episode this week focuses on Sunset Island, a melange of SVH and BSC that I've never heard of.  It went on for a shockingly long time.

[Lovecat]

On 8/21/2018 at 4:42 PM, Snow Apple said:

My ultimate favorite was Lois Duncan. Sadly but understandably, she lost her passion after what happened to her daughter.

 

On 8/21/2018 at 7:06 PM, andromeda331 said:

I love Lois Duncan too. Down Dark Hall, Summer of Fear, Stranger with my Face, and Don't Look Behind You (even if April is a bit stupid). I also really liked Locked in Time with Lisette and her teens passing themselves off as a new generation. Generation after generation. Gabe and Josie living forever and hating it. Because it mostly sucked for them. Lisette was really the only one who loved it. It had a great setting at Shadow Grove. I wish she never stopped writing but I can see why after what happened to her daughter. 

I loved Lois Duncan, too.  Down A Dark Hall was just made into a movie which is apparently out right now, but in such limited release I can't find it playing anywhere near me.  Audience reaction was...less than favorable (only 52% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), so I guess I'm not missing anything by waiting for it to hit Netflix.

[starri]

16 minutes ago, Lovecat said:

 

I loved Lois Duncan, too.  Down A Dark Hall was just made into a movie which is apparently out right now, but in such limited release I can't find it playing anywhere near me.  Audience reaction was...less than favorable (only 52% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), so I guess I'm not missing anything by waiting for it to hit Netflix.

It’s available to rent on Amazon. 

[Snow Apple]

The only Lois Duncan movie adaptation I liked was based on Summer of Fear and starred Linda Blair. It's pretty close to the book except the dog was replaced by a horse in the movie.

[JAYJAY1979]

On 8/21/2018 at 7:23 PM, Black Knight said:

Now that I'm home, I was able to check Wikipedia, and the list below was Pike's golden age. He'd written some books prior to this, but really hit his stride in late 1989 through early 1993. During this same period he also wrote another favorite of mine, a novel for adults called Season of Passage, in 1992. Then his writing devolved...

Remember Me (1989)

Fall into Darkness (1990)

See You Later (1990)

Witch (1990)

Whisper of Death (1991)

Die Softly (1991)

Bury Me Deep (1991)

Master of Murder (1992)

Monster (1992)

Road to Nowhere (1993)

 

My favorite of these listed was Die Softly...I was a kid and was surprised at how dark it went..and the ending was satisfying.

But my favorite of Pike's books was Chain Letter (hated the follow up..which was much darker and kind of regressive in terms of men and women).

I liked the earlier books of Fear Street when it was a combination of ghosts and mystery.

R.L stine struggled with standalone books...though I recall the first babysitter book was good.  I did a book report on Curtains..and it wasn't satisfying and poorly written.

 

There was a short lived YA series I liked called The nightmare club..where there was an under 18 dance club for the high school students to hang out.  There were three schools in the town..a public high school, an all girls school and an all boys school.  One story I recall was about an average girl that finds. Mirror and everything she wishes for comes true including beauty. But there is a price to pay.  Another one involved a girl that was being sexually harrassed by guys at her school..and a mysterious killer is killing the harassers off one by one.  

[Black Knight]

6 hours ago, JAYJAY1979 said:

My favorite of these listed was Die Softly...I was a kid and was surprised at how dark it went..and the ending was satisfying.

"At least I'm not a wicked boy." That line from the ending always stuck with me. And yeah, Pike was never shy about going dark or killing off characters, but that book is one of his darkest for sure.

[Brn2bwild]

On 8/22/2018 at 6:36 PM, Luciano said:

I know that I loved reading Christopher Pike - I just don't remember much from him, though. Now I'm wanting to see if I still have any of his books in storage (along with the massive amounts of BSC, SVT, SVT, SVU, and VC Andrews that are there).

Literally the only thing I remember about his books was a character who ran track, but could eat chocolate mini doughnuts before a race and be fine, and who also was a marathon love-making machine.  Anyone know the name of the book?

[starri]

7 hours ago, Brn2bwild said:

Literally the only thing I remember about his books was a character who ran track, but could eat chocolate mini doughnuts before a race and be fine

In fairness, John Belushi presented that as a viable training regimen back in the 70s.

[Black Knight]

I've been scanning through some of Snark Valley's recaps of the Sweet Valley books, and was quite surprised to discover that book #75 of SVH, Amy's True Love, has a subplot where Tom McKay realizes he may be gay when he's attracted to Enid's visiting gay cousin after he and his girlfriend break up due to not having any passion. Now I'll have to keep going through these recaps to see if this was ever developed further.

Also, Amy Sutton. As a kid I read the SVT books first and when I started on the SVH books, I was quite startled at how different she is with no explanation as to why. Sure, people change, but she was like a 180.

[starri]

13 hours ago, Black Knight said:

I've been scanning through some of Snark Valley's recaps of the Sweet Valley books, and was quite surprised to discover that book #75 of SVH, Amy's True Love, has a subplot where Tom McKay realizes he may be gay when he's attracted to Enid's visiting gay cousin after he and his girlfriend break up due to not having any passion. Now I'll have to keep going through these recaps to see if this was ever developed further.

For 1991, that's nothing short of astonishing.

Sweet Valley Senior Year had an actual gay couple.  That was 1999, and even that seemed pretty envelope-pushing.

My respect for Francine Pascal and her ghostwriters has really gone up.

[Stenbeck]

I was in elementary in the mid 1990's, so I was a big fan of the Jr. version of these series:

• Baby Sitter's Club Little Sister
• Sweet Valley Kids

The Boxcar Children was my absolute favorite.

[Silver Raven]

I guess I can put this here.

There's a big controversy over a book called Handbook for Mortals. It suddenly jumped to number one on the NYT YA best seller list from a previously unknown author from a previously unknown publisher.  And now it appears that its numbers are due to the fact that the author bought up all of the available copies The reviews of the book are pretty well universally bad, as in "the worst thing I ever read" bad.

[Minneapple]

That was last year, I think. It was the book that knocked The Hate U Give from the top of the bestseller list and other YA authors immediately smelled a rat.

[Black Knight]

2 hours ago, Silver Raven said:

I guess I can put this here.

There's a big controversy over a book called Handbook for Mortals. It suddenly jumped to number one on the NYT YA best seller list from a previously unknown author from a previously unknown publisher.  And now it appears that its numbers are due to the fact that the author bought up all of the available copies The reviews of the book are pretty well universally bad, as in "the worst thing I ever read" bad.

Yes, it was last year. 

Jenny Trout just completed her chapter-by-chapter recap of Handbook for Mortals (lots of people know her for the ones she did for 50 Shades) and it's hilarious...not to mention an excellent primer on how not to write.

The best part was when Lani Sarem herself showed up in the comments to one of the chapter recaps posing as an Olympic champion circus performer who wanted to refute some of the things Trout had said. Trout then put up another post and tore her to absolute shreds.

[starri]

53 minutes ago, Black Knight said:

Jenny Trout just completed her chapter-by-chapter recap of Handbook for Mortals (lots of people know her for the ones she did for 50 Shades) and it's hilarious...not to mention an excellent primer on how not to write.

God, those recaps were bright spots in some incredibly bleak weeks.  I know I've mentioned Worst Bestsellers before, but their episode is definitely worth a listen.

1 hour ago, Black Knight said:

The best part was when Lani Sarem herself showed up in the comments to one of the chapter recaps posing as an Olympic champion circus performer who wanted to refute some of the things Trout had said. Trout then put up another post and tore her to absolute shreds.

That was one of the best moments of Internet Catharsis I've had in a long, long time.

Particularly when she stuck this stinger onto her response to the "Olympic champion Cirque star":

Quote

PS. When you’re trying to stage a fake picture of your book in a bookstore, Sarem doesn’t fall alphabetically between Lowry and Lieu.

[Black Knight]

On 9/10/2018 at 6:12 PM, starri said:

God, those recaps were bright spots in some incredibly bleak weeks.  I know I've mentioned Worst Bestsellers before, but their episode is definitely worth a listen.

That was one of the best moments of Internet Catharsis I've had in a long, long time.

Particularly when she stuck this stinger onto her response to the "Olympic champion Cirque star":

Indeed. In fact, I'm going to link to this masterpiece here: An In-Depth And Formal Reply To An Actual Vegas Performer

[Snow Apple]

*snort* I was at the library today, glanced down, and saw a familiar cover. It was Handbook for Mortals! I wouldn't have noticed it if it wasn't for this thread. I was tempted to borrow it since it was free but decided I didn't even want the author to get borrowing points (if there's such a thing). I glanced at it though and the writing was very childish from what little I read.

[Black Knight]

On 8/22/2018 at 8:11 PM, Black Knight said:

Another funny thing I remember is one of them killed the other but everyone thought it was Jessica who had been killed. Elizabeth found "Jessica's" body, and then, the amusing part - "Jessica's" funeral drew a ludicrously high number of people. Does anyone remember the exact number? I want to say it was over a thousand (the corner of my mind actually keeps insisting that it was THREE thousand, but would even the SVH writers have been that ridiculous?) - I wouldn't have raised my eyebrows over hundreds, which isn't at all a hard number to get to considering that most SVH students and parents would come if only for the can't-miss-this factor.

I just moved and am in the process of unpacking all my books, and I came across Return of the Evil Twin! Of course I immediately flipped through to check on the number of people that attended "Jessica's" memorial service. It was "over two thousand people," and Elizabeth of course thinks about how Jessica had touched so many people's lives for the better. HA!

[andromeda331]

5 hours ago, Black Knight said:

I just moved and am in the process of unpacking all my books, and I came across Return of the Evil Twin! Of course I immediately flipped through to check on the number of people that attended "Jessica's" memorial service. It was "over two thousand people," and Elizabeth of course thinks about how Jessica had touched so many people's lives for the better. HA!

Well, she was always delusional when it came to her sister. No, Elizabeth, those were all her victims and girls who's boyfriends she stole coming to make sure the bitch was dead. 

[starri]

4 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

Well, she was always delusional when it came to her sister. No, Elizabeth, those were all her victims and girls who's boyfriends she stole coming to make sure the bitch was dead. 

Like the funeral scene in Charade!

[anna0852]

I was really into The Face on the Milk Carton series. I always felt so awful for Janie. That reunification was just completely bungled. At 15, forcing her into another home and even answering to another name was taking it too far. It's terrible for the Springs what happened but nobody is thinking of Janies best interest. And Stephen and Jody were just the worst! They treated her like absolute crap and nobody reigned them in at all. Everyone's acting like it's Janie's fault for being kidnapped in the first place.

[Snow Apple]

4 hours ago, anna0852 said:

I was really into The Face on the Milk Carton series. I always felt so awful for Janie. That reunification was just completely bungled. At 15, forcing her into another home and even answering to another name was taking it too far. It's terrible for the Springs what happened but nobody is thinking of Janies best interest. And Stephen and Jody were just the worst! They treated her like absolute crap and nobody reigned them in at all. Everyone's acting like it's Janie's fault for being kidnapped in the first place.

I hated the Springs too even though I can still feel sorry for them at the same time. Keeping Janie away from the Johnsons was terrible.

And then when the Springs mellowed out in the next books, Stephen got himself a girlfriend who I wanted to slap. Calling Janie "kidnapee." Bitch.

[andromeda331]

10 hours ago, Snow Apple said:

I hated the Springs too even though I can still feel sorry for them at the same time. Keeping Janie away from the Johnsons was terrible.

And then when the Springs mellowed out in the next books, Stephen got himself a girlfriend who I wanted to slap. Calling Janie "kidnapee." Bitch.

I felt bad for them too.  What happened to them was so horrible. Then to finally get your child back. I can't imagine that feeling wanted her home and to go back to normal. But she's fifteen, she has a name that they didn't pick out and considers the Johnsons still her family because they raised her. They can't just go back to normal. They should have been a lot more understanding to Janie and tried work out a better solution.  

[Constant Viewer]

Did anyone else ever read the Sunfire romance books? They were always titled with the name of the heroine who lived during a historical era and always had to pick between two guys. I never actually bought them but checked them out form the library like crazy.

[Dr.OO7]

14 hours ago, Constant Viewer said:

Did anyone else ever read the Sunfire romance books? They were always titled with the name of the heroine who lived during a historical era and always had to pick between two guys. I never actually bought them but checked them out form the library like crazy.

I LOVED those! 

Oddly, I only bought the "Josie" and "Renee" books. Everything else I got from the library, but I thought they were wonderful.

[HazelEyes4325]

15 hours ago, Constant Viewer said:

Did anyone else ever read the Sunfire romance books? They were always titled with the name of the heroine who lived during a historical era and always had to pick between two guys. I never actually bought them but checked them out form the library like crazy.

Oh, I absolutely adored these books!  I remember tearing through each one as they were released, but I actually remember very little of the stories all these decades later.  I'd love to revisit these (and probably be aghast, but whatevs).

[littlewonder]

My people!

I'm a massive BSC fan.  I started reading them as a pre-teen and am now in my mid-30s with an almost complete collection (including California Diaries, Mysteries, Super Specials and that weird BSC Encyclopedia that has an absurdly detailed map of Stoneybrook.)

My favorite baby-sitter was Abby.  She only joined in book 90(ish) but was funny, athletic and the only person to stand up to Kristy.

When reading the aforementionned encyclopedia, I noticed that Jessi never really had a personality.  She is a ballerina, she's Black, and she likes the same stuff as Mallory.  Her section had no information.  Sad.

[Annber03]

I remember that encyclopedia and the map! It was fun to get a proper layout of the town like that, and see what all their homes looked like and stuff. 

[starri]

Someone from Penguin Random House was reading this thread.

And one early Festivus present coming right up.

[Annber03]

Ooooh, I'll be on the lookout for that one. 

[scarynikki12]

I bought it Sunday.  It references a lot of teen books I didn't read, a lot I'd never heard of, and many references to Jessica's sociopathy.  It's glorious. 

[starri]

The part that I’ve been able to read thus far referenced both Jessica and Elizabeth’s sociopathy. 

[andromeda331]

I'll definitely have to get that book. I can't wait to see what it says about them and other YA.

[starri]

It's actually seriously impressing me.  I was just expecting a nostalgia-fueled trip back to the Waldenbooks.  It's certainly that, but it's also got some pretty sophisticated analysis as well.  I was expecting some dancing around issues of diversity, but it actually tackles them head-on, and mentions some series that I've never heard of from African-American owned publishing houses, and a few books about Asian and South Asian girls.  There are even mentions of queer characters, which I definitely didn't think would come up.

The chapter on the BSC made me realize how talented Ann M Martin really is.  All of the other middle-grade series they talk about seemed to have been made from the same set of Legos, and yet AMM caught lightning in a bottle the way in a way no one else did.  And I don't think the author is wrong when she draws a line between Kristy Thomas and real-life entrepreneurial Millennial women.  And she quotes an interview with AMM where it was revealed that she actually didn't give a fig about Mallory.

Also, there was a mention of Baby-sitting is a Dangerous Job, and that book ruled.

I'm hoping there's a chapter on the supernatural coming up, because I have a favorite that I want to see mentioned.

[starri]

Ah, there it is.  Mary Dowling Hahn's Wait Till Helen Comes.  I think I could probably read it as an adult and be thoroughly entertained, but on the off chance that I'm wrong, I'm not going to risk it.

I had completely forgotten the runner-up, Betty Ren Wright's The Dollhouse Murders.  Aside from being a good, spooky story and focused only on three female characters, it does a good job of portraying the main character's frustrations at having a sister with special needs without being ableist.

I had never heard of Christopher Pike's The Midnight Club, about a group of terminally ill teens in a hospice that get together at night to tell scary stories as a way of dealing with their knowledge of their mortality.  However, I'm pretty sure I'm going to try and find a copy, just because it sounds like a fascinating book.  Also quite remarkable is that one of the characters, Spencer, is a closeted gay boy dying of AIDS and guilt-ridden about possibly having passed HIV to his boyfriend.  I don't know if I would call a character dying of AIDS totally progressive for 1994, but it apparently also deals with the realities of being a gay teen in the mid-90s.

All in all, Paperback Crush is well worth a read.  The only real oversight that I can think of is that I can't remember a single mention of any of Cynthia Voight's books.  And there was only one mention of VC Andrews, although one could make the argument that she wasn't really writing YA.