Quiet YA Reads

The primary reason almost any book is specified as YA vs adult comes down to marketing. ADSOM is interesting because it was bought by a publishing imprint and editor that COULD do YA, but it was put in the adult section. This also means it costs more (adult hardcovers typically retail around $28.99 in the US while YA hardcovers retail around 18.99) and changes where the advertising focuses are.

There’s also the actual story reason, which is character arc. YA is considered to be a coming of age story arc, where the character’s learning about themselves and their identity. Adult is more about figuring out what your identity means in the world. This is a grey area in books, so definitely not a clear cut way to separate age categories in books. Some people also claim the content of a book can make it YA vs adult - YA can get pretty dark or feature wax scenes, but it would never get as graphic as adult books - but I don’t think ADSOM has enough violent or sexual content for that to have been a factor in the decision.

Your mod is very on edge because ya know....the world. While scrolling for posts, I saw like five posts complaining about different books as bad YA books and they aren’t....even YA books.

So, here’s a list of books that are not! YA books!

Crescent City/House of Earth and Blood ACOTAR (this one’s debatable, but it was originally sold as New Adult) The Winternight Trilogy The Love Hypothesis/the Reylo fanfic book Red, White and Royal Blue One Last Stop The Poppy War Ninth House Pretty much every book by Colleen Hoover From Blood and Ash The Night Circus The Starless Sea For the Wolf Uprooted The Wolf and the Woodsman The Song of Achilles The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue A Darker Shade of Magic

It’s totally cool to read them if you consider yourself a YA reader, but that doesn’t make these books YA. Most of the authors being women does not make the books YA. Some of the authors having published YA books does not make THESE books YA books. Popular books are not equivalent to YA books. And not liking YA books or thinking it’s so overdone doesn’t make you cool.

Let people like things. But let’s please label these things properly.