Even if you’re not in school anymore, summer still feels like the time when you can get away with reading complete trash. If you’re not up for diving into War and Peace or something “deep,” try one of our suggestions. Trust us, you won’t strain your brain doing so.

During my junior high/early high school years, I consumed young adult series like my life depended on it. Maybe in a way, it did. I read obsessively about my favorite characters and their packed weekend social schedules of dances, pool parties, tropical vacations, exciting dates, beach parties….trouble was that I was spending my weekend nights reading about these events. The conundrum is that the girls reading these books were the bookish, indoor type—not the ones out and living this life.

My books were my only clues to how to meet and talk to boys. In my endless pawing over my glossy-covered series, my impressionable mind sensed some distinct themes.

Whoa. We totally just found our favorite new blog (besides The Frisky, of course!)—a San Francisco writer named Casey is rereading and recapping the entire Sweet Valley High series. On the off chance a few of you readers weren’t fans of the series, it was the book series for tweens growing up in the ‘80s and provided loads of thinly veiled sexual innuendo that overwhelmed our sense of what life would be like once we got our period. The series followed identical twins (twins were a big thing in the ‘80s) Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield around their totally perfect town in California. Both of the twins were blond, with green-blue eyes and size-six figures, which permanently imprinted in our brains that a six was the size to be if we were going to be popular in high school.