This book is for anyone that grew up loving to read in the 80’s and 90’s. It was so fun to take a trip down memory lane and remember those old books I read! I had forgotten about most of them and was fun to see those book covers that reminded me of my middle school years! I would probably not have bought this book for myself, but I am thankful that NetGalley gave me the opportunity to read it.

"The Babysitters Club" was my childhood. I would go to my local library and get out stacks of the series, obsessively reading through them every chance I've got. Some scenes in particular really stuck with me and those books absolutely shaped my experiences growing up. So when I heard someone had written a history of teen fiction of that era, I had to read it.

Gabrielle Moss's style of writing is perfect, the right balance of fact and fangirling over what made us all love those books so much in the first place. I particularly enjoyed the interviews with key individuals in publishing in the period. Another highlight was hearing about series that I hadn't read (though now the issue is that I want to read them and copies are seldom available). A fantastic book, absolutely would recommend to anyone interested in YA fiction or 80s culture.

Paperback Crush is such a fun dive into the teen fiction of the 80s and 90s. While I sort of missed the curve with the seemingly endless installments of the Sweet Valley High series and the Babysitters Club, I did read several books from the younger version of the Babysitters Club as well as every single volume in the Star Wars Jedi Apprentice series, the Boxcar Children, and many Goosebumps titles. I love the concept of continuing series for readers, especially when you get involved with the characters and the stories. You as the reader want to continue going on adventures with them and seeing what other high jinks they get into.

I really enjoyed Gabrielle Moss's dive into the various forms teen fiction took between the 80s and 90s and how it developed. Her dives into the various genres that were popular were interesting, fun, and short. It's easy to devour this in a single sitting or read each section at a time. My only real quibble with the book is that it ends so abruptly. The rest of it flows like a well-structured essay, but it lacks a conclusion tying everything together and giving a little insight into where these popular series of the 80s and 90s took YA into the 00s and beyond.

And even though I read only a handful of the titles mentioned in the book, Paperback Crush makes me want to go back and revisit some of these series and take a trip down nostalgia lane.

Fun fact: Believe it or not, for my online speech course this summer, I actually wrote an essay on this very topic. 

Well, sort of. Mine was more of a short glimpse into the history of YA rather than focusing on a specific era, but still. What are the odds that less than two months later I get approved for an ARC of a book that goes more in depth into a topic I literally *just* researched?

Anyways, I would like start this review by first giving the author a huge round of applause for crafting an enjoyable textbook on the history of YA literature. Like, obviously she did a way better and thorough job on this than me, but seriously? This is the first time in a while (and I mean a while) that I actually found myself actually ENJOYING a NONFICTION BOOK! 

Kidding aside though, this was a seriously well-written book. Like if there was actually a class on the history of 80s-90s YA lit, this could totally suffice. (Also, side note, why aren’t there any high school classes that specialize in YA literature? GUYS THIS NEEDS TO BE A THING!**)

**Also, side note off of that side note: Did you guys know that Simmons in Boston actually offers a Master’s in Children’s/YA literature? Aaaaaannnndd that I’m hoping to eventually get that degree?

Buuuuuuuuuttttt anyways, instead of continuing and talking on and on about everything that I enjoyed, I’m going to tell you my favorite little tidbits of information that I learned from this! And just so you know, these are in no particular order :)

Top 5 Cool Things That I Learned

1. YA books with LGBTQIA+ characters actually existed back then. Honestly, I was a little surprised by this! I just figured they came along at the same time (or so I thought) society began to, which to me was like the 2000s, but it’s really awesome that they didn’t!

2. There were Choose Your Own YA Romances! They weren't actually branded as that specifically (but rather Dream Your Own Romance and Make Your Dreams Come True), but they were completely, 100% direct knock-offs of the Choose Your Own Adventure series. YA authors, if any of you happen to be reading this, PLEASE BRING THIS SUB-GENRE BACK INTO THE WORLD OF YA ROMANCE!!!

3. Apple Paperbacks (which later split off into divisions like Candy Apple, Poison Apple, Rotten Apple, etc.) actually originated in the 80s! These were honestly some of my favorite books growing up, and I think it’s beyond cool that they were actually around years before my time :D

4. On a similar point (and you’re going to get that pun really soon!), the Point imprint by Scholastic (and actually Scholastic books in general) also began in the 80s! I haven’t really read too-too many of them so far, but thanks to Nic Stone gifting me a free and SIGNED (!!!) ARC of Snow in Love (the imprint’s latest release) I DO have a review planned in December and am BEYOND excited to read it :D

5. Finally, probably my favorite one on this list: so, you guys all know Lois Lowry, the beloved author of the Giver series, and R.L. Stine, the infamous author of Goosebumps, right? Well, believe it or not, they actually authored YA (wait for it) CONTEMPORARY ROMANCES!!! Yeah, I totally didn’t see that one coming. Wonder why we've never heard about those books...

Overall Rating:
5 stars! Definitely a must-read - would highly recommend if
you're looking for a fun nonfiction book! (or if you, like me, are using this to meet the 1 nonfiction book per quarter requirement at school 😂)

Girls of the 70s, 80s, and 90s who have read ya fiction or visited the school books sale will enjoy a trip down memory lane with Paperback Crush. Reliving all the old series that were an integral part of childhood was a great way to pass a winter's day. I will be looking for a couple of these books so I can read them again as an adult. This would also be a great reference for a children's librarian.

As a millennial, I grew up devouring the Babysitter Club and Sweet Valley High books (not to mention the Fear Street and Goosebumps series), so naturally, a book all about 80's and 90's teen fiction is right up my alley. Moss does a great job giving background on why these books were so popular and how they worked to influence the juggernaut of publishing that YA books have become. She also includes a perfect snarky tone that helps steer this book away from having too serious of an attitude. Not only did this book spark tons of nostalgia for me, but it also has inspired me to check out some of the popular books that I missed from that time period. Plus, I loved all of the pictures of the book covers and the rad graphics throughout the book. This was such a fun read - can't wait to recommend it to my fellow 90's babies!

I loved this book! Of course I'm a sucker for this sort of thing anyway (I even co-host a podcast about 90s teen horror; Point Horror, Nightmare Hall, Goosebumps, Christopher Pike – yes please) so I was predisposed to enjoy it. The balance here is just right. There's the nostalgia of the plotlines, characters and issue; the soft watercolour covers of the 80s into the neon geometrics of the early 90s into the edgy black-and-white covers of the late 90s; the humour and wit of Moss's writing voice. But there's also a decent level of analysis going on. Moss doesn't allow it to be a pure nostalgia-fest; although she clearly loves these books, she re-rereads them with a critical modern eye. This would be a great Christmas gift for a bookish 30-something friend – or for yourself.

Really enjoyed this look at books that were often dismissed wholesale because their readers were young women.

Moss surveys mass-market paperbacks for kids and teens from the 1980s and 1990s. This is a topic that has not been very thoroughly researched, so this is a good start. The account is entertaining, but Moss would have done better to limit her scope. As it was, many books or series received only a few sentences, while only Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High (which have been written about elsewhere, and so did not need the extra space devoted to them) were given more than a page. There were some surprising omissions; for example, Moss mentions several of Cherie Bennett's series, but doesn't mention the Pageant series when she talks about pageant books.

As an 80's Baby, 90's teen, this book definitely resonated with me.
You will have some flashbacks for sure, but event if you were an teen in either decade, the transition and the issues discussed give insight to what people of the era cared about,and has candid reviews of the books that were published during that time. Its also bright, snarky, sarcastic, serious, and Really funny in parts.

Are you Kristy or Claudia?! That was the question growing up in the 90s if you read ANY of the Baby Sitter's Club books. In the mid 80s and early 90s, Young Adult novels - like BSC and Sweet Valley High- took the book world by storm. Every kid my age was devouring them in some aspect.
When I first came across this title, I was intrigued. Anything that takes my back to simpler times is a win for me. Add in a detailed analysis of the genre, the topics and why they were so beloved? YES PLEASE!

Paperback Crush was a mix between hilarious quips and insight into the stylized writing, trends and topic (babysitting, boarding school, after school adventures) and even those topics that were more sensitive (underage (teen) pregnancy, AIDS or LGBT stories).
I devoured the book in literally 2 hours. Gabrielle Moss is not only incredibly insightful, she has a sharp wit that seeps into everything she writes.

Through out the book, Moss tackles many cultural, sexual and religious expectations and backlash. She drops reminders for us that young adult fiction has always been vital to the lives of teens. It's poignant and purposeful with Moss connects the topics from to the topics that teens were current social issues .

This book was akin to have a good gossip session with your bestie, while arguing over which book series was the best. Moss breaks it down on a basic and invested level, never leaving any one out of the conversation. It was refreshing, quite honestly.

My biggest critic of the book was that the series were not all in the same genre or age range. Some of the titles were small children's series and some of them were romance. I would have preferred her focusing on only the YA genre, and maybe picking just one sub genre to talk out, instead of being so wide spread. I felt like at times, the stamina was lost because it jumped around from so many different genres and sub-genres.

Lastly, while the book was easy to read and fairly fast paced, the ending was very lack luster. I expected it to more thoroughly compare to today's titles, or even talk about how the different stylized writing of today brought on an entirely new slew of rapid YA fans. The book was divided into chapters, and it felt as though there was content missing towards the end.

I used this book in my classroom, helping the students to connect social issues and trending topics. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys a trip down memory lane, or some one younger who really would love to get to know how the YA boom began. I give this a 3.5 (rounded up to 4) stars!

Paperback Crush takes a look into the history of American YA from the 80s and 90s. Gabrielle Moss takes us through the different tropes that were prevalent at the time and some that are still going strong. It turns out unavailable parents, bury your gays and racist stereotypes predated time.

Gabrielle Moss’ open and easy-going writing make reading Paperback Crush feel like you’re going through a stack of your old books with a friend. I absolutely loved reading this book. Recognising some old favourites within the pages of Paperback Crush was amazing. Books were always a way for me to escape my boring reality and delve into a more interesting existence. Not much has changed

Based on the number of friends who’ve added this to their Goodreads list just after seeing it cross my feed, Gabrielle Moss has a blockbuster on her hands. It only makes sense: people have *feelings* about series like The Baby-Sitters Club and authors like Lurlene McDaniel.

Surveying the era between Judy Blume and J.K. Rowling (as Moss points out, for all her ubiquity in the ’80s, Blume had published most of her iconic books by the end of the ’70s), the author strikes just the right note of affectionate tribute and clear-eyed skepticism regarding the books’ often rote plots and rampant stereotypes. At the same time, Moss traces progressive threads through the era; you wouldn’t call it woke, but the many thousands of teen titles published in the last two decades of the 20th century encompassed a richer variety of experiences than you might remember.

Despite its gender-neutral title, the cover of Moss’s book tips its hand: Paperback Crush largely covers books aimed at female readers, featuring girls as leading characters. As a boy bookworm born in 1975, I certainly read a lot of those books, but I also scored some boy-forward teen titles, and if you were, like me, a fan of the Not Quite Human series (about an adolescent male android) or William Sleator’s strange science fiction, be aware that Paperback Crush is not going to go there. Sequel?

I definitely went on an eBay hunt for all the my pre-teen favs after reading this book. It was a very specific and recognizable time in middle grade/teen lit and it’s very well covers and discussed in this book. It made me feel nostalgic and I laughed out loud in a few places. Definitely a recommend for 80s and 90s pop culture fans, and fans of the books covered. Honestly, I would guess most women from ages 30 to 45 would appreciate this

Raise your hand if you spent your tween/teen years binge reading everything from Babysitters Club to Sweet Valley High. If so, then this book is for you. This is a hilarious look back at all the paperback teen series of the 80s and 90s. Broken down into seven affectionate yet snarky chapters, Moss covers everything from friendships to love to the stalker story-line craze of the 70s and 80s. This is the perfect mix of nostalgia, humor and history. Moss does a really great job of delving into the history of this widely loved genre, and even dug up a few books I totally forgot about (Hey, The Face on the Milk Carton, I forgot how paranoid you made me as a youngin'). There were even comments and interviews with some of the major authors who brought these series to life. It is such a well-researched walk down memory lane, it's funny and informative and didn't take itself too seriously. I'd definitely recommend picking this up if you were a fan/grew up on these types of books.

I am crushing on this book and it totally deserves it. It is not only a nostalgia book of my childhood paperback collection, but an indepth look at the various things that made 80s and 90s YA tick. It is broken down into sections like romance, jobs, family, mystery and horror. And for each page i turned there was another books where i was screaming “I read that book”! Plus, while I managed to never read a Sweet Valley High book while I was a teenager, I now feel like I missed out on something, and will be scouring thrift stores looking for coveted entries in the series. The author has quotes from authors, and those influenced by the authors, and opened my eyes to all sorts of things I didn’t already know. For example, RL Stine wanted to write joke books, but also wrote some family/romance titles, or that Lois Duncan was a YA romance writer before she decided to scare the pants off her readers. I cannot say enough awesome things about this book. Even if you didn’t grow up in the era of the books they author is talking about, i am sure you will find something to interest you, or at least a ton of titles to add to your TBR.

Paperback Crush is a fascinating and funny look at American teen fiction from the gap between Judy Blume and Harry Potter. Moss divides up the books by themes, and looks at how areas such as romance, friends, school, and fear sparked off a whole range of books aimed at the young adult and middle grade market. There's plenty of focus on how well the books actually dealt with big (and small issues), but Moss writes with a witty, light-hearted tone too, combining nostalgia, light mocking with hindsight, and some actual analysis of how the trends worked and fitted into the framework of young adult fiction that came before and afterwards.

As someone who is both British and too young for these books' heyday, the real selling point was the 'Terror' chapter, as I was a great lover of first Goosebumps and then, even more intensely, Point Horror (Moss' point that the students at Salem University from Diane Hoh's Nightmare Hall series should've just dropped out felt like a 'oh, right, they should have' moment, because I did not think that at the time of reading them). However, the whole book was an enjoyable read, a quick look through a kind of book that shaped a lot of people's lives and have had an impact on the young adult fiction of today. Moss' tone makes it funny and engaging, but Paperback Crush is also an interesting look at how these often flawed books did deal with topics that some may assume only modern YA does. Plus, it has a lot of pictures of hilariously bad paperback teen novel covers with witty commentary.

If you were the type of reader in the 80's or 90's that devoured book titles as fast as your local bookstore or library could carry them, and if to do this day you can still remember by name almost every single child the babysitters club ever looked after, then Gabrielle Moss' Paperback Crush is the book you've been waiting for.

I really enjoyed this blast from the past that highlights so many beloved books from my teen years, a lot of which I'd honestly forgotten all about. And while this book may start out as tribute to the many, many titles that were published for teen and tween girls in the late eighties and early nineties, it goes a step further in addressing many of the social issues that were solely lacking from so much of the literature aimed at teens during this time period.

Gabrielle Moss had me laughing out loud right from the introduction, and also had me wanting to scour ebay till all hours of the night to find many of the beloved books that she highlights throughout, like the lovely Sleepover Friends. While I may not have always had the same opinions as she does on the many books she talks about, and I did end up wishing that more of my favorite series had been included, I really did love this trip down memory lane. I came out of it with a deeper appreciation of these beloved books, and the many strides that has been made in the young adult market in the days sense.

I also loved the random tidbits of information thrown in for good measure, like the interview with the gentlemen that designed the covers for the original Baby Sitters Club books, and I still can't believe that the BSC was only originally contracted as a four book series.

Gabrielle Moss has provided a fun, snarky way of remembering fondly the many series of ya's past, and recognizes how so many of these books provided an escape for teen girls who weren't quite yet prepared for the many challenges that adulthood would bring with it. While my favorite chapter was definitely the one on friendship, I honestly enjoyed it from start to finish, and I can't recommend it enough. I will definitely be picking up a physical copy of it once it releases, as I can't wait to see the full color pages of the many amazing covers featured throughout.

Final Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐


Thanks so much to Quirk Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to advance read this!


I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. I was not required to give a positive review.

This book was a lot of fun! Although I can see why it's marketed towards women who grew up back then, it's not all about the Sweet Valley Highs and love stories...there's major sections that appeals to guys who grew up reading back then, as well, Seeing the old covers and remembering the thriller books I read growing up was a fun flashback to the old Scholastic Book Ordering system I remembered felt like a lifetime to get my books in! There were many titles I forgot about, many titles I remember seeing in those pamphlets, and several that I still own to this day. Thanks for the stroll down memory lane, Gabrielle Moss! I WILL be recommending this book when it hits the shelves later this month!

Somewhere between the YA ‘problem’ novels of the 1970s and the record breaking premiere of Harry Potter, publishers targeted tweens with a very specific kind of book. They were often short paperbacks with flashy covers and sometimes ridiculous plots. In Paperback Crush, author Gabrielle Moss has written a beautiful celebration and critique of these massively popular tween paperback series.

It should be noted that though this book is detailed, it isn’t encyclopedic. There are simply too many books from this time to devote serious discussion, and readers should be aware that their personal favorites might not be included. However, Moss deserves an award for the sheer volume of works she’s able to thoughtfully examine. Obviously, she has her own favorites, and her many references to Sweet Valley High will please a lot of fans. But her look at many less popular series, including The B.Y. Times and The Girls of Canby Hall, is spot-on.

Moss’s success rests on two facts. One, her analysis of these series is interesting. She approaches it from a sociological perspective, considering these books within the context they were written and how they related to tweens. She doesn’t shy away from the more problematic themes in many books, especially race, and these moments are particularly poignant. Two, Moss is just funny. There were multiple times I had to pause and share a section to someone because I was laughing so much.

One of the biggest problems with books about other books is they always add to my to-be-read pile. Paperback Crush is no exception. Some I remembered, some I didn’t, and many I had never heard of before. Gabrielle Moss, for good or bad, makes them all sound like fun.