Spent some time in Barnes & Noble this past weekend, and finally got a chance to see the gorgeous books everyone's been drooling over on Instagrams like @blueyedbiblio.
When I saw these books, it was like a child seeing these:
(Image: tophdart.com)
But when I crack the covers, I'm disappointed.
Don't get me wrong. I think today's YA is fabulous and diverse and tackles some really tough issues, but. The prose in a lot of YA slides off me somehow; it's slick. Words are terse, characters suspiciously likable, plots, no matter how dark they get (and they get dark), end with a predictable beacon of hope.
I'm sure I will read more YA in my life: heck, reviews for Seraphina and The 100 are coming up. But I guess, for all the tackling of bigger issues and diversity and imagination, YA for the most part is focused on being easy and enjoyable to read. This is not true of all YA, for example, Kristin Cashore's books have plenty of character complexity and imperfectly resolved plots. And it's not a bad goal, nor a bad reason to read. But I'm in a reading mood for something that challenges me differently.
Do you have any suggestions for more challenging books to read? Can you recommend a YA book that doesn't fit this trend? Let me know in the comments!
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