Adults Are Cool Too, Right? 7 Adult Books for YA Readers

If The Catcher in the Rye is an adult novel, then why are so many teens obsessed with it? The distinction between YA and adult fiction can be as thin as to be unnoticeable to the casual observer. And such a petty thing as genre distinction will never hold back a teen who loves reading. More than that, YA author Robin Wasserman, in an excellent essay about Stephen King’s ability to write great teen characters, posits “There are some adult books that, for whatever reason, seem specially formulated to wend their way into teenagers’ brains and take root, and I think it’s because—like one of those high-frequency tones the rest of us are too old to notice—these books are whispering  secret truths certain teenagers need to hear.” These are some books that whispered to me as a teen. And then whispered again, and again, and again because I reread them so many times.

It by Stephen King

Here’s Robin Wasserman again: “What Stephen King reader didn’t fall in love with him a teenager?” I fell hard when I read It. But I didn’t reread It for the way it made me terrified to go to the bathroom or how I stayed up all night reading because I was afraid to turn out the light. I reread it because it’s about a group of friends who love each other, and how that love is the most powerful kind of magic. The young versions of the characters are just on the cusp of puberty. The book’s nostalgia for that age, as well as the late 1950s time period in which it is set, perfectly reflect a teenager’s nostalgia for their lost childhood, which seems to be an ocean of time away from their drastically different present. Also, you’re welcome for not using one of the terrifying clown versions of this book’s cover. I had the Tim Curry TV movie tie-in one, which had his picture on the spine, and I would hide it behind my other books so that he couldn’t see me. Eventually I just threw it away and bought another one, but I was still scared it was going to reappear on my bookshelf one night, Talky Tina–style. 

Lucid Dream: The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Listening to other people describe their dreams can be the most boring thing in the world. I know this. And yet I still can’t stop myself from telling people, “I had the craziest dream last night…” Dreams come straight from our raw emotional cores, which makes them a powerful experience that so colors the waking world that we need to share them with someone else just to continue our day. This also makes them extremely difficult to describe. “I saw this pink poodle, only it wasn’t a normal poodle, it was really scary,” doesn’t cover the visceral terror you felt when staring into the black, soulless eyes of a girly hell-dog. Dreams have unstable settings, as well as mysteriously vanishing and reappearing characters, and unresolvable plot holes. And yet Maggie Stiefvater’s The Dream Thieves, a book about dreaming, perfectly evokes the otherworldly feel of those nighttime phantoms while still maintaining a stable base of story.

Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan: I Promise I Won't Spoil the Ending

Sarah Rees Brennan is really good at endings. The conclusions of her Demon’s Lexicon books were good, with big reveals and thrilling battles. But she really perfected the art in Unspoken, the first Lynburn Legacy book, aka the novel with an ending that turned the internet into one giant shocked, crying animated gif. The ending of Untold is another doozy. But since I can’t talk about it here without majorly ruining the reading experience of those who have not yet read it, let’s discuss some other things that Sarah Rees Brennan is really good at: writing awesome dialogue and confounding narrative expectations.

Awkward Beauty: Real High School Romance in Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park

Most teen romance novels are complete fantasy. And that’s OK. Who doesn’t love a good fantasy once in a while? Especially when the alternative is the sweaty, awkward, or even nonexistent reality that most of us endured in high school. But Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park manages to use the standard romance format to tell a high school romance story that is realistic, in all its cringe-inducing glory, while still managing to be swoon-worthy.

To Coin A Phrase: Sloppy Firsts

Celebrating innovative use of language in YA.

Oprah-Chopra

A feeling, activity, or discussion topic that, despite causing pangs of shame in the participant due to being spiritual or inspirational in the style of talk show host Oprah Winfrey and physician and author Deepak Chopra, is nevertheless effective at spurring the participant(s) to happiness and positive action.

Original Usage: "After I don't know how many miles, I stopped thinking. I know this sounds all Oprah-Chopra, but everything got in synch: the beat of my breath, the flow of my feet, the rhythm of the road, the bursts of color blurring by."
-Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty
(2001. Crown Publishers, New York. p. 84)

The Diviners by Libba Bray

Libba Bray’s newest novel opens at a 1920s New York City party that, despite the presence of illicit booze, is not going well. The hostess, in an effort to liven things up, pulls out a Ouija board, which begins spewing terrifying messages: “I stand at the door and knock. I am the beast.” With that, Bray effectively sets a mood of terrifying foreboding that creeps around the edges of her character’s bright jazz age lives, occasionally rushing in to plunge them all into darkness.

White Cat by Holly Black

At the start of Holly Black’s White Cat, 17-year-old Cassel is anxious to let us know that he is not a good guy. He comes from a family of curse workers and has grown up learning how to con everyone he encounters. And, most chillingly, he killed the one girl he ever loved.

He can’t remember much about it. His brothers won’t talk to him about it, and his mother, who is in prison for working a wealthy man, tells him to do what his brothers say. For some time that has meant attending a boarding school and trying to stay out of trouble, which, since Cassel is the only member of his family without worker abilities, isn’t difficult. But when Cassel wakes up at the top of a school building’s tower with no idea how he got there, his safe life begins to crumble. As he tries to solve the mystery of his sleepwalking, dreams of a white cat intersect with his memories of Lila, the girl he killed, the mobsters that his brothers work for, and a knot of family secrets and lies.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Early in American Born Chinese, a graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang, a teacher introduces young Jin Wang to his new third-grade class: “I’d like us all to give a warm Mayflower Elementary welcome to your new friend and classmate Jing Jang!” She then proclaims that Jin came “all the way from China.” Wrong again. Jin’s parents are from China; Jin was born in San Francisco. This is just a taste of the casual and often deliberate racism that Jin will face at his new school. Yang’s bright and cheerful artwork contrasts nicely with the complex effect that this treatment has on Jin’s own sense of himself and, in turn, on his own treatment of the people he cares about.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynn M. Valente

I have encountered several books in the past year that I was sure—before I read them—would become my new favorites. They each rode in on a wave of print and internet acclaim and had titles and concepts that seemed designed to appeal especially to me. But they all fell flat for one reason or another. And in a book you are prepared to love, that can be even more disappointing than when a regular book that you had no expectations attached to turns out to not be very good. This is all to explain why I avoided reading Catherynn M. Valente’s The GirlWho Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making for so long.

Lady-Centric Sword and Sorcery Fantasy

So Game of Thrones ended its season, not to return until 2013, and you’re fiending for more epic fantasy. You’ve read all five books, so those are out of the question, and besides, that’s not exactly what you’re in the mood for right now. You’ve been watching rapings and killings for months. You know that George R.R. Martin has been praised for his willingness to let awful things befall his main characters, which is a rarity in mainstream fantasy, but still, you wish things would work out once in a while for the characters you have grown to know and love. You know that Martin is just attempting to be faithful to the Medieval-type society he has created when he puts his female characters in such powerless fixes, but still, you just want to read something where the ladies have some control over their destinies. Well you’re in luck, because I have compiled a list of fantabulous lady-centric sword and sorcery fantasy, especially for you! 

Opening Lines: Chime by Franny Billingsley

Franny Billingsley’s Chime is a whirlwind of beautiful prose and chilling imagery, and the opening lines are no exception:

“I’ve confessed to everything and I’d like to be hanged.”

Castle Waiting and Beasts of Burden: Comics Don’t Have to Be Dark to Be Good

Sometimes I feel like books and comics have to be filled with unhappy characters with depressing problems in order to be considered serious adult literature by whoever decides these things. But it doesn’t have to be like that! Yes, friends, it is possible for comics to have a buoyant tone, a happy ending, and cute animals and still be excellent works of art and literature. And two books I recently read, Castle Waiting by Linda Medley and Beasts of Burden written by Evan Dorkin, art by Jill Thompson, are excellent examples.

The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller

My one-sentence review of this book: the delicious fun of a prep school novel and the impeccable punch of a great literary work. 

My love of prep school novels (PSNs) has been well documented (by me). So well documented, in fact, that Jennifer Miller herself found my blog post about this topic, friended me on Goodreads, and suggested that I try her PSN when it came out. The short note she sent me was humble, witty, and charming enough that I actually bought this book, braving the Kindle new release prices instead of picking it up from the library. 

Hey, I figured, what can it hurt? 

Turns out, this is one of my favorite books of the year so far. 

What A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Taught Me About Early 20th Century New York City

As someone who gets her history from the novels she reads, I was paying close attention while reading Betty Smith’s wonderful A Tree Grows in Brooklyn so that I could pick up some juicy historical tidbits. (OK, that’s an exaggeration; I read history books too, just not nearly as many as novels. History just makes more sense to me when it’s in story form! Me and most other people in the country, I guess, which explains why Devil in the White City, a non-fiction book that reads like a novel, is so popular.)

1) People in Olden Times Had Sex

I know this shouldn’t be shocking, considering the continued presence of man on earth, but there is a tendency in the popular narrative to view earlier times as much more innocent, where there was no crime and everyone frolicked naked in the garden without shame. Literature from earlier eras often bears out this view, essentially cutting to the fireplace in lieu of the good stuff, leaving blank empty space in its wake which, nine months later, is filled by a delightful and clean infant.

Truly Terrifying YA Books

 We’ve all been there: sitting up in bed at three in the morning, novel clutched in our hand, the words shivering through us as our heart beats faster and faster, unable to stop reading, partly because the book is so good that we have to find out what happens and partly because we are too afraid to turn out the light. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just try reading one of the books on this list. Each one of these Truly Terrifying YA books inspired me to pull the blanket just a little bit tighter around me and wonder: Could there be something out there in the darkness?

Graphic Novels of Note: I Kill Giants

I Kill Giants, written by Joe Kelly and drawn by JM Ken Niimura, tells the story of Barbara, a fifth-grader who wears rabbit ears and carries a heart-shaped purse named Coveleski. She lives with her brother and an older sister who takes care of them both. And she kills giants.

Barbara doesn’t have many friends, and the school psychologist takes a special interest in her. But not just because of her avowed giant killing. Something has happened to Barbara, something so upsetting that she refuses to talk about it.

Rather than drawing excitement from the question of whether Barbara’s giants are real, the true tension comes from the slow revelation of the devastating real-life tragedy that Barbara is escaping by subsuming herself in fantasy. And the reader doesn’t get to find out what it is until Barbara is ready to admit it to herself.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Part of the reason I didn’t date in high school is that I wanted the kind of 17-year-old boy who appears in YA books: sensitive, kind, and desiring of a committed adult relationship. But even teenage me knew the truth: no 17-year-old boy is ready for an adult relationship. (Or 17-year-old girl, for that matter. I certainly wouldn’t have known what to actually do with one if I came across it at that age.) However, Augustus Waters, the love interest in JohnGreen’s The Fault in Our Stars, is ready for that kind of love because he has to be. He’s a 17 year old with cancer; if not now, there may be no when.

The End of the Chapter: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The opening lines of a novel establish tone, mood, voice, and a whole mess of other things, as well as being responsible for pulling the reader into the story. The closing lines of a novel have the job of summing up the story, providing closure, and making readers feel a simultaneous joy at the ending and sorrow that their reading experience is over. But what pulls the reader through their journey from the excitement of a beginning to the bitter sweetness of an ending?

As each chapter ends, the desire to put the book down in order to go to the bathroom, go to sleep, or get going to work may come over the reader. Smart authors avoid this by making the ends of their chapters so fantastic that the reader has no choice but to continue on their literary journey, uninterrupted. Some do this with thrilling cliffhangers, others with painful emotional reveals. Regardless of the technique, the end of the chapter has a certain feel to it, a teasing look that says, “Sure, this part of the story’s over. But don’t you want to find out what happens next?

The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

I have been listening to Heart nonstop for the past two weeks, and it is all thanks to The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour. I have always liked Heart, but I have been on a serious love binge, which has helped introduce me to some songs I never knew I loved and reintroduce me to songs I had forgotten I loved. But The Disenchantments is about much more than Heart (even though it does feature a loving tribute in the form of a road trip sing-along that gives this one and this one a run for their money). The Disenchantments is about friends, music, and finally graduating high school only to realize just how terrifying the freedom you longed for actually is.

Dreamland Social Club by Tara Altebrando

 True story: my senior year of high school, I did a presentation about the history of Coney Island. This presentation began with my friend and I singing a commercial jingle for the now demolished Astroland amusement park at Coney Island:

Remember Coney Island, and how it used to be

now it’s everything it ever was AND MORE!

we’re gonna rock, ROCK

we’re gonna roll, ROLL

we’re gonna bop, BOP

and lose control

(That was where we stopped because we couldn't remember the rest.)