The funny thing is, I was thrilled to be reading it. I would gleefully hang out in the YA section of the bookstore and collect a stack of glossy, intriguing novels that I couldn’t wait to read. It hadn’t occurred to me to shop in the Teen section for years, except when I was checking to make sure Robin McKinley didn’t have a new book out. But now that I had a Serious Purpose, (reading YA was research after all, and research is work!) I quickly developed a YA habit.
I recently suggested to a friend of mine on Twitter that she blog about what it is she likes about speculative YA (because speculative is her thing). After reading her post, I began thinking about why I like YA, and I came to realize that really what I was thinking about was why I like YA as an adult. I’m not alone in this preference either; I keep reading how more and more adults are reading YA. Perhaps it began with Harry Potter (although technically some of Harry Potter is MG (middle grade) fiction, but I’m splitting hairs), and perhaps it continued with Twilight. But it hasn’t stopped there. (There are many articles about this subject. Here’s a sample.)
So here is my list of reasons I like to read YA (hooray, a list!):
1. Close POV: I love reading in close POV. I really enjoy first person, but I also like close 3rd. As a reader, I don’t tend to like head-hopping and massive numbers of POVs quite as well (although there are exceptions, if well done). Most YA these days is in close POV, and the majority in first person. (Granted, some of it is in first person present tense, of which I wasn’t such a fan, but I’ve gradually become more accustomed to it.)
2. Pacing: Generalization alert! While not always true (unfortunately), I’ve found that on the whole YA authors pay more attention to pacing issues in their novels. They’re exciting, they’re suspenseful, I want to find out what happens next, and the chapters end on a rise that makes it hard to put the book aside and go to sleep.
3. Plot Tropes: I enjoy many of the common plot tropes featured in YA. I’m also a fan of John Hughes, so there you go. I like reading about the social dynamics of high school because I still find them truly fascinating (it helps that I’ve spent a lot of time with teens in the past several years so high school doesn’t feel so far removed from my life). I am generally fond of dystopias, which are hot hot hot right now in YA. I also like love triangles, budding romance, forbidden love, and family conflict, other staples of the genre. And I haven’t yet gotten tired of coming-of-age stories.
4. Life as Discovery: I love seeing the world (whether our modern-day world, the future, or another world altogether) through the eyes of a teenager. I love watching as they experiment, question, and explore what it is to be alive. I love the ambiguities and moral dilemmas they face. I love how even the most cynical teenage character doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does. I love the potential, that this character is still at the outset of his life and so many things are possible for him. The teenage years (and early 20s) are a time of big change and discovery for most people, and I love to read about it and watch the characters unfold.
5. Kick-Ass Female Protagonists: More YA is directed towards females than males. I hear this fact bemoaned time and time again, because we want to be encouraging male teens to read too, etc. etc. And I don’t disagree. But I love the female protagonists of so many YA books. They aren’t kick ass in a way that seems really far removed from my life (see some adult urban fantasy); they’re kick ass while struggling and staying real. If they have a special talent, they usually don’t have complete mastery over it. They make bad decisions, they’re swayed by their feelings and prejudices, sometimes they’re even just plain petty. It’s such a relief to read about these flawed teenage heroines, who are brave and silly at the same time. Because I am brave and silly at the same time too.
I could probably think of several more reasons I enjoy YA, but now it’s your turn. What aspects of YA do you most enjoy?
The Practical Free Spirit 
YAY YA!
I also love the close POV. I would say that’s the number one draw for me. I also like that a lot of the times I find these books more relatable. Even if they’re fighting dragons and developing new abilities, I remember what it was like to be in that time of discovery as a teen. A lot of scifi and mainstream fiction books I read have older protags who are dealing with issues I’ve not yet encountered. While I’m usually intrigued, I don’t always “get” it.
I pretty much always can sympathize with YA protags, and I love that feeling, of being so involved with a story.
What, you don’t have real-life dragon fighting experience??? 😉
I really do enjoy being right in a character’s head. I know that first person limited has many restrictions, but from a reader’s perspective, I enjoy it so much!
I don’t read YA (or much fiction) but I do think that many POVs tends to distract from developing individual characters and encourages bloat. Bloat is evil. It’s hard to pace a novel that’s 700 pages long and part 2 of a trilogy. As someone with limited time I prize content per page.
Also as someone working on satire, which can’t be bloated, I found that any idea with both multiple POVs and close POVs wouldn’t fit. Switching to one POV also sped things up because I find creative ways to deal with events the POV character can’t actually see, rather than switching to someone who can see them. More suspense that way too.
You know, I usually stick to one POV per story/novel/what-have-you, but lately I’ve been tempted to branch out a bit more. Maybe not so much for a short story since there’s just not as much space, but in a longer work, if done properly, I think it can add something. However, I think it is fiendishly difficult, both due to bloat and other technical issues.
It’s kind of cheesey but YA fiction takes me back to that time in my life where I was a lot more naive, believed that anything was possible, and that you found true love once and it lasted forever. I’m too jaded and cynical as an adult, but it’s nice to take a mental vacation from realism occasionally.
Seriously! Mental vacations are sometimes much needed.
[…] trying to get a handle on the phenomenon of adults reading YA I came across this blog post giving 5 reasons why one adult reader loves YA and started to realise why this particular fashion just doesn’t do it for me. The blogger […]
[…] about YA too, but I’m going to save them for another post.) I have blogged about why I like to read YA, but not why I like to write it. One of my first reactions was that I don’t necessarily prefer […]
I am a huge fan of reading YA, and I don’t prefer one over the other with POV, I like first and third, but when it comes to writing it, I find I tend to do third.
I am currently still working on my novel, and after a bit more research realise, the amount of POV’s I have is to many, four to be exact. One of them is easily dropped, as he only had one chapter. The main one is of course is to be kept, but the male lead, well should I shouldn’t I do these two POV’s. Plus I have one character who I felt needed a POV to show my readers why she is the way she is. Am I wrong or right?
Well I have rambled on enough here…thanks for listening…or should I say reading.
It’s so tricky to figure out POVs, isn’t it? I have to think about it a lot too.
I’ve read that in the romance genre, it’s very, very common to have two POVs, one from each side of the romance. So I bet that could work well in a YA romance too. No idea about the third character though….