March 11, 2021
Welcome to the Trash Vortex, the entertainment black holes that never fail to suck you in and won’t let go until the trashy, so-bad-it’s-good end.
Trashy Young-Adult Novels
As much as we all love good literature, we also crave that trashy drama to really immerse ourselves in. Here are the Driftwood staff’s picks for Trash Vortex YA novels:
Anna and the French Kiss: Anna is perfectly content with her life in Atlanta, where she has a cool job, an amazing best friend, and a crush who’s just starting to show signs of liking her back. Then, Anna’s whole world is turned upside-down when her estranged father decides to enroll her in a Parisian boarding school for her senior year of high school. At first, Anna is less than thrilled about the move, and she struggles to fit in in her new environment, plagued by her inability to speak French, but things start looking up after she meets a great group of companions who help Anna see everything Paris has to offer. One of those friends—the kind, handsome, and incredibly charming Étienne St. Clair—forms a particularly close bond with Anna. The two share a sizzling mutual attraction, but Étienne already has a girlfriend, and Anna’s got her crush back home. Will the stars align for them to have a happily ever after in the City of Love? You can tell based on the cringey title that Anna and the French Kiss is a doozy, but it’s addicting! Despite this book being a little stupid and really clichė, it’s also so magical and romantic. Since seventh grade, I’ve read it more times than I can remember, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop.
—Mallory Allen
My Life with the Walter Boys: Young Adult books are always jam-packed with horrible drama that never really adds up if you sit and think about it. Wattpad.com is a way for everyone to become a writer, making for some pretty amazing cringe. Wattpad is most known as a platform that holds an ungodly amount of fan fiction, or fictional stories based on celebrities and existing film/novel characters, but it’s also a platform where people who want to be authors can post their work, without having actually published a book. In the simplest of terms, it’s a starting point for creative writers. Ali Novak first uploaded her book My Life with the Walter Boys to Wattpad in 2009, and the book gained so much attention that she was able to publish it in 2012.
My Life with the Walter Boys follows Jackie Howard, a girl who used to have life made in New York City. She was part of a wealthy family, was well-known in her school, and had everything she ever wanted. *Cue dramatic cliche* Until she didn’t. Tragedy strikes Jackie’s life when her parents die in a car accident, and she’s forced to pack her things and move in with the Walters. The Walters have 12 children, and 11 of them just happen to be boys. Jackie must let go of the life she used to live as she meshes with the chaos of a teenage boy-filled house, and falls in love with their familial atmosphere. Follow along as Jackie adjusts to this new life, and of course, since it is a young-adult romance, she finds herself in a love triangle with two of the boys.
—Kira Doman, Entertainment Editor
Austenland: It’s been a long time since I was a teen, so the book that would have been my pick for a so-bad-it’s-amazing YA novel I loved back in the day is now out of print. That said, if you can get your hands on a used copy of Kiss Me, Creep by Marian Woodruff, it’s a trashy mess of a good time. Barring that, you might consider Austenland by Shannon Hale. This book has all the clean sweetness of a YA romance, but it is technically a New Adult read, meaning our heroine is somewhere between the ages of 18-24. (I also recommend the film version starring Keri Russell and J.J. Feild.)
Jane Hayes has a problem: Her life is so dull that she’s taken to fantasizing about Jane Austen’s most popular hero, Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. No man can measure up. So when her aunt dies and leaves her one ticket to Austenland, she only hesitates for a moment before she packs her Regency-era gowns into her I Heart Mr. Darcy tote bag and jets off to England. Austenland is a living history resort experience, where guests immerse themselves in an early 1800s manor-house lifestyle, complete with good-looking and oh-so-proper Regency hosts to act as dance partners and dinner companions.
Jane finds herself repeatedly snubbed by witchy owner Mrs. Wattlesbrook, due to the fact that she can only afford the bottom-tier experience, and the economic injustice of it all sparks her rebellious side. She flirts with the off-limits gardener, sings a raunchy hiphop number at the pianoforte when forced to participate in a recital (in the film version, anyway), and constantly butts heads with Mr. Henry Nobley, one of the hosts who is all-too like the rude, misanthropic Darcy from the first part of Austen’s best-known work.
Will Jane manage to enjoy herself despite the odious Mrs. Wattlesbrook and equally infuriating Mr. Nobley? Will she find romance with Martin the gardener—or someone else? Find out by reading and/or watching Austenland, which is, for me, a close second to Kiss Me, Creep in terms of ridiculous fun.
—Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, Driftwood Advisor