Reading the Adolescent Romance

Francine Pascal's 'Sweet Valley High' series of romance novels for older girls and young adults was one of the most protracted and successful of the twentieth century. In spite of its cool reception by teachers and librarians, the series developed a large fan base of young readers whose purchasing power pushed one volume of the series to a position on the New York Times list of best selling paperback fiction--a first for a young adult novel. 'Sweet Valley High''s association with a...
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Francine Pascal's 'Sweet Valley High' series of romance novels for older girls and young adults was one of the most protracted and successful of the twentieth century. In spite of its cool reception by teachers and librarians, the series developed a large fan base of young readers whose purchasing power pushed one volume of the series to a position on the New York Times list of best selling paperback fiction--a first for a young adult novel. 'Sweet Valley High''s association with a contested form of youth literature—series fiction—and its relationship to the romance genre and popular reading practices has kept the series from critical consideration; however, the success and subsequent ubiquity of 'Sweet Valley High' and Pascal's literary domain deserves attention. An examination of the series' content, structure, and readers allows us to investigate an influential marketing and literary phenomenon and to interrogate the intersecting influences of history, audience positioning and readability that allowed 'Sweet Valley' to flourish and that contribute to the successes of subsequent series for girls.