Books From My Teen Years I Must Revisit

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and The Bookish. This week’s theme is:

Top Ten Books From My Teen Years I Must Revisit

I was really looking forward to this topic! I love to wax lyrical about my favourite books from my childhood/teen years. I even have an original feature (which has been sorely neglected of late) dedicated to re-reading the young adult books I loved from the 80’s and 90’s.

Suffice it to say, I love discussing past favourites! I have already posted at length about my favourite childhood books so today I am going to concentrate on books I loved in my teenage years that I wouldn’t mind reading again.

1. Sweet Valley High series by Francine Pascal

This series was a pretty obvious choice! I devoured these books as a teen and they had a rather large impact on my life (for better or worse). Last year I decided I was going to buy the series – I managed to get ahold of books 1-100. Now it’s just finding the time to re-read them (you can read my review of Double Love #1 here, if you are so inclined). 😉

2. Sweet Dreams series by various authors

Another pretty obvious selection. I used to love these books when I was younger. They were like the teenagers version of Mills and Boon, romantic froth with very little angst (except for the pains of first love). I own some of these books (though I did give away a lot of them to my younger cousin) so I will certainly give them a re-read at some point.

3. Point Horror series by various authors

I loved Point Horror as a teenager. I read a lot of adult horror novels at the same time (the likes of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Saul, James Herbert etc.) but the Point Horror books still managed to be absolutely addictive (even if they weren’t quite as scary as the ‘grown-up’ horror novels). I read nearly the whole series (although there were some I missed out on – was very much reliant on what my local library ordered). I bought some of this series last year with a view to re-reading them – will really need to get round to that!

4. Night World series by L.J. Smith

I read just about all of L.J. Smith’s teen series (such as the Vampire Diaries, the Forbidden Game etc.) but this one was my favourite and was probably what got me into the vampire/paranormal genre to begin with. This 9-part series is well worth checking out again (now if only that pesky 10th book could be released)!! 😀

5. Terror Academy series by Nicholas Pine

Not nearly as famous as Point Horror, this series was a really well-written and memorable one for me. I searched for ages to find this. I have a really terrible memory for author names and book titles but my visual memory is pretty solid – I always remember the covers (which to be frank, does not help me if the covers change or that most series I have been looking for have different versions across the US and UK covers – and the US covers are far more prevalent). There is a group on Goodreads which helped me find this series called What’s The Name of That Book??? – it’s a great resource for finding these hard-to-remember titles and series.

6. The Stepsisters series by Tina Oaks

This series was pretty memorable for the fact it had two fighting step-sisters – neither of which were particularly likable! For all that, it was a really entertaining series – one that I wouldn’t mind reading again (and I already bought the first book to do just that!) 😉

7. Making Out series by Katherine Applegate

I didn’t really like the main character of this series Zoey (she was a bit of a damp squib) which did bring my enjoyment of this series down a bit, especially as so many of the books were focused on her, but I really loved the other characters. Nina and Ben were my favourites. This was a bit of an eye-opener for me – it dealt with quite a lot of serious issues such as sexual abuse and drink and drug problems. The characters were pretty flawed but it was a great series overall.

8. Lois Duncan – all books

I loved, loved, loved Lois Duncan as a teen. Her books had just the right balance of thriller, horror, and coming-of-age elements that I was looking for. Although most of her books were set before I was born (in the 70’s and early 80’s) I really related to the struggles of the protagonists and the fact that most of her books had a supernatural slant was just icing on the cake. I definitely need to re-read her books.

9. Hotline series by Carolyn Meyer

This would probably seem a little dated now since the main characters set up an after-school teen hotline after the suicide of a popular student. It has been re-released but has been modernized which I am a little disappointed about (I am not sure how well that would work). Still, if I could get ahold of older copies of this series I would definitely re-read this.

10. Christopher Pike – all books

Last, but certainly not least, is the grand-master of teen horror Christopher Pike. I loved his books when I was a teenager. I read them all multiple times. I literally couldn’t get enough of his writing. I am not sure how well they would stand up to the test of time, but I would really like to do a re-read of his books. All of them.

What books would you like to revisit from your youth?

for more top ten tuesday posts, click the below link:

Related Posts

Subscribe to Blog via Email