This week’s video is rather long, but this is what happens when I talk about something I’m extremely passionate about. In response to some thoughts Michaela had about YA in her review of Eon by Allison Goodman, I had some thoughts of my own. Well. A lot of thoughts. Reading is a passion I’m lucky enough to share with one of my younger brothers, but … well … YA doesn’t exactly create a lot of common ground of interesting stories for us. This is one part recommendations of books my brother and I have both read, one part life story of my experience trying to share YA with my brother and one part impassioned speech about how YA needs to include more stories for boys. It barely scratches the surface of my thoughts, so I look forward to continuing the conversation with you!
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My Life is a Notebook 
I really enjoyed listening to this! I’ve gone through the similar “skip the YA and go straight to adult books and classics” route, even though I’m a girl… I avoid romance like the plague, and have always enjoyed more of the “boy” sorts of stories anyway, so really none of the YA stuff stood out to me during high school.
I was looking back over some of my GR shelves of grade and middle school books, and so many of them have platonic friendships, or siblings, as the MCs so any reader–girl or boy–can relate to the book. But it seems like once you switch over to YA, platonic friendships go out the window and it can ONLY be love triangles. The same characters could be in a MG and YA series and go from platonic neighborhood friends, to angsty love triangles and the stereotype of “omg you’re in high school/YA ground now, you must find loooooove” is ridiculous.
And then when YA books do sound really interesting and the synopsis seems to put the romance on the back burner (I don’t mind romance if it’s a subplot), but then 60% of the book ends up being romance (Night Circus, I’m looking at you).
I honestly didn’t mind skipping over YA and to adult books, because I knew I would want to switch over to adult books at some point anyway, but as someone who loves to read and try new genres/authors, I just didn’t feel like I could do that with YA, and have moved to some sort of weird bookish cave because I don’t/haven’t read a lot of this stuff.
I completely understand. I’ve made it some sort of weird mission to track down every actual acceptable YA book I can find because I love the genre so much, but there is SO MUCH romance and love triangles and other nonsense to wade through that it’s honestly depressing sometimes. There is more to life, strangely enough. 😛 I’m really sad to hear that about Night Circus, as well. It’s on my have but need to read list … and the fact that it’s a lot of romance doesn’t help sell it up the list. 😛 Thanks for listening and commenting!