Teen Romance

Teen Romance

Hey Everyone!

I was answering some questions for an interview I'm doing next month on another blog (Squeee - I'm the one being interviewed!) and it got me reminiscing about the books I read when I was younger.

When I was about 14, I started noticing boys. Thinking about boys, daydreaming about boys, looking at boys, but I was way too shy to talk to boys, let alone kiss one (That didn't happen until I was 16 - yes, I was a sweet sixteen and never been kissed). To get my romance fix, I read teen romance novels. They weren't called YA romance back then. They didn't deal with deeper issues or have a dark side like many of the YA novels do these days. They mostly dealt with highschool drama, first love and small conflicts. There was no sex, drugs or alcohol. They were clean and sweet, so sweet in fact that the series was called Sweet Dreams.

The Sweet Dreams series had over 230 stand alone teen romance novels from different authors. They were published between 1981 to 1996. I remember sitting on the floor in the corner of the local second hand book shop and systematically working my way through the box of Sweet Dreams novels, looking for the ones I hadn't read yet. I wish I still had some, but over the years they got traded in for the Mills & Boon and the Silhouette Special Edition's.


Did you read these books too? What was your favourite YA/teen fiction?