Other Growing out of YA Fiction

[Jean Otus]

It's happened to me and many others, at some point books which gripped you throughout middle and high school and maybe even college just make you roll your eyes. From then on new YA books seem more and more ridiculous with each new series. If you can remember it, when did this happen to you? What do you as completely nonsensical now that entertained you when you were younger? What do you see the youths liking nowadays that is completely foreign to you?

 

[Torack]

I don't even remember when I grew out of YA books. It happened so long ago, the last one I read, I think, was the Artemis Fowl series and from then on I just naturally moved on. The first non YA book that I read though, I think, was Name of the Wind and from there I just never looked back.

 

[Sibelle Grey]

I can't say I've grown out of it. I'm holding out hope that there's still stellar YA out there, and if I do come across a book in the future that seems great, I certainly will pick it up. If my favorite YA author comes out with a new book (fingers crossed) I will most definitely buy it, but it's not my primary sort of fiction anymore.

But the books that had me fed up with the genre a couple of years ago were Cassandra Clare's and everything that resembled them. The self-inserting. The unnecessary love triangles, with the blatantly horrible hyper-masculine-with-a-mushy-and-broken-center angle clearly winning out from the start. I was just reading about these shadowhunters and rolling my eyes faster than I could turn the pages. And I used to sigh over this sort of skewed triangle when I was younger. Seven years back, I would have had the biggest crush on Will/Jace/doesn'tmatterthey'rethesamecharacter. If a male character was 50% sarcasm (read: actual disrespect, because that's what budding love is all about) and 50% hidden turmoil, I was there. But now, I can't stand to read about these tropey male characters. It only takes one to ruin the book for me, and unfortunately, they're everywhere.

I do like fantasy/sci-fi YA is better than your typical high school situation, so this is the subset I have faith in. That said, I feel like both of those categories have been pumping out some pretty terrible books, so nothing and no-one is safe.

but everyone go read Kristin Cashore thank you

 

[Abendrot]

I don't dislike YA just because it's YA, but I do dislike some of the tropes that are unfortunately seen a lot, especially in 2010-2015 YA (e.g, "I'm not like other girls", truckloads of paranormal love triangles, the overwhelming heteronormativity of the genre, "My parents suck" but with a little critical thinking on part of the reader, they'll see that the protagonist is the annoying one.)

That said, there's a lot of YA that doesn't have much literary value, but there's still a lot that do. But really, to each their own. YA is something I've mostly stepped away from, but I don't mind if other people still enjoy it. I really shouldn't judge people's tastes. Not gonna sit here and pretend I don't read corny fanfictions for funsies.

 

[Hige]

The last YA fiction I read was hunger games, when I got into high school / college i just didn't have time to read for leisure. After getting my BA I was at a reading level that made YA fiction unenjoyable so that's how I got out of it.

 

[Jean Otus]

One thing that always gets me is when an author who is very much not a young adult tries very hard to pander to young adults, which usually ends up being terribly awkward and can grind the action to a halt.

 

[KindOfStupid]

When I read The Hunger Games and Divergent in third/fourth grade. Both showed potential but got awful halfway through their first books. Sad, I know.

 

[ShiyaRose]

The past few years I've been going crazy over YA books and there are some really really good ones out there that aren't cringey. But I feel like I'm just getting tired of books that are focused on romance in general (which are most YA books, lol). Like they just all feel the same after a while.