Author’s long-running high school book series sold more than 200m copies and led to a hit TV show
Francine Pascal, creator of the long-running Sweet Valley High book series, has died at the age of 92.
According to the New York Times, the author died in New York City as as result of lymphoma. The news was confirmed by her daughter Laurie Wenk-Pascal.
Continue reading...Fans of the YA After series should find something amid the tangled mess of plot, daytime-soap acting and inanimate passion – everyone else should look away
If you don’t identify as an Afternator or recognise the hashtag #Hessa, a short explanation is necessary. After is a clutch of bestselling YA romance novels once described as “Fifty Shades of Grey for teens”. US author Anna Todd started writing stories as fan fiction for the boyband One Direction and Harry Styles is the inspiration for broody-eyed bad-boy Hardin Scott; he’s the on-off boyfriend of bookish virginal college student Tessa Young. This film is the stupendously wooden and humourless third in the series. It’s heading straight to Amazon and should come with a warning to viewers: contains extremely boring sex.
If you’re new to the franchise, don’t even bother trying. The script works on the basis that everyone watching has read the books, seen the previous movies and bought the T-shirt (sloganned versions available on Etsy: “Mentally dating Hardin Scott”). No attempt whatsoever is made to introduce us to the tedious tangle of relationships. That said, all you need to know about Tessa and Hardin is that they can’t live without each other.
Continue reading...Young TikTok users are sharing their passion for books with millions – bringing titles they love to life online and reshaping the publishing world, all in under a minute
In August 2020, Kate Wilson, a 16-year-old from Shrewsbury, posted on the social media video platform TikTok a series of quotes from books she had read, “that say I love you, without actually saying I love you”. Set to a melancholy soundtrack, the short video plays out as Wilson, an A-level student, holds up copies of the books with the quotes superimposed over them. “You have been the last dream of my soul,” from A Tale of Two Cities. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” from Wuthering Heights. “Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own,” from Jane Eyre. It has been viewed more than 1.2m times.
Wilson’s TikTok handle, @kateslibrary, is among the increasingly popular accounts posting on #BookTok, a corner of TikTok devoted to reading, which has clocked up 9.6bn views and counting, and has been described as the last wholesome place on the internet. Here, users – predominantly young women – post short videos inspired by the books they love. Those that do best are fun, snappy takes on literature and the experience of reading. “Books where the main character was sent to kill someone but they end up falling in love,” from @kateslibrary. “Things that bookworms do,” from @abbysbooks. “When you were 12 and your parents caught you crying over a book,” from @emilymiahreads.
Continue reading...The actor is about to hit the TV big time as a girl with special powers in Netflix’s new young adult fantasy. And the internet is in a frenzy
Jessie Mei Li currently inhabits a weird stratum of celebrity. At 25 years old, her biggest screen credit to date has been a single episode of the Channel 5 docudrama Banged Up Abroad. She hasn’t worked for a year. And yet, at the same time, a growing portion of the internet has become borderline hysterical about her.
Search for her name and you’ll get the idea. There are tweets declaring things like “Jessie Mei Li you have my whole heart” and “I believe in Jessie Mei Li supremacy”. There are more than a dozen Jessie Mei Li stan accounts on Instagram – fan-based accounts dedicated to a particular celebrity – many of them shrieking their obsession in frenzied all-caps captions several times a day. Tumblr, as you might expect, is an almighty mess.
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