In 2020, I faced the scourge of the existence of each writer: a blank page, in an empty notebook. I was starting my first novel for adults for years, and I always find it difficult to find a path in history. Except that this time, I had a secret weapon in my back pocket: I had written three young adult novels, and you wrote so much – and I received a brand new lease to my pen.
Do not let anyone tell you that young adult books are easy to write. There is a huge challenge, for exactly the same reason that it has become so extremely popular among adolescents and many adults. There usually starts with a blow, and the rhythm does not let go. Each scene must bring history and relationships in advance, and prose must immerse you so deep in the perspective of the protagonists that you feel their joy and pain. The construction of the world in a novel YA is strongly defined and instantly recognizable, even if it is a fantasy or a future landscape of hell. Everything is reinforced and occurs right away – This is why so many books have a present narration.
When I plunged into the intense mother-daughter story that has become my next novel, “lessons in magic and disaster”, I brought all the skills and joy of writing that you had given me.
I don't remember when I discovered you. At the height of his boom, I was obsessed with books for young people by Madeleine l'Engle, Daniel Manus Pinkwater and Judy Blume. I remember the first time I read “The Giver” of Lowry Laws, published in 1993; It is a complex allegory on repression and social control, imbued with the heat of the central relationship between Jonas and the titular donor.
A young boss of the bookstore traveling an exhibition of “Hunger Games” books in 2012.
(Michael Hurcomb / Corbis via Getty Images)
After “The Giver”, there were a few other megahits who helped you put on the map. But a book felt completely seismic: “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. Its publication in 2008 launched an entire dystopian sub-genre and has become emblematic of the growing importance of teenagers. Surprisingly violent and full of nuanced beards on the mass media and propaganda, “The Hunger Games” contains an internal monologue so immersive that you feel the confrontation between the face that Katniss Everdeen must put for the world and his real emotions.
I bathed in the flow of Dystopias YA which followed “The Hunger Games” – some impactful, some relatively weak. But as much as I liked to see the young people fighting against oppression, I found myself continuing this voice: the urgent and conflicting narration of someone thrown too young in the center of a hellish storm.
Any author must suspend disbelief at least as much as their readers, and the key to writing for adolescents is to treat their experiences as valid and important. The world is full of voices by telling adolescents that they do not matter and understand nothing, so a good book there should not speak to adolescents or portray them as helpless. A huge challenge in writing for this audience is to create a protagonist who has a lot to learn, without ever letting the story judge this hero. It was probably the biggest lesson I learned from Ya: how to create imperfect characters whose perspective always seems to be encompassing.
Retrospectively, the peak of YA coincided with the golden age of the CW, which always seemed to have a dozen adaptations of novels there in development at any time. A handful of them looked: “Le 100”, “ “The Carrie Diaries”, “ “The secret circle” and, of course, “The Vampire Diaries”. These emissions also included complex worlds, intense relationships and protagonists whose burning emotions led the intrigue.
At some point, I started to run out of dystopias, but you then changed. Two lush and immersive fantasies struck my radar at the same time in 2012: “BitterBlue” by Kristin Cashore and “Seraphina” by Rachel Hartman. They presented a complex policy and monstrous bad guys, but also felt less oppressive: the eponymous hero of “Seraphina” is a musician rather than an archer, and the music is at the center of the book.
I saw more books ya that were fun adventures rather than desperate battles against a monolithic evil. The book that persuaded me to try to write to you was 2017 “Warcross” by Marie Lu, a stuffing tour on a teenage pirate participating in future esports and discovering a plot. More recently, “Legendborn” by Tracy Deonn crumples with hereditary privilege and racism, but also plays with the tradition of King Arthur skillfully and delightfully.
Eliza Taylor as Clarke Griffin in “The 100” on the CW, one of the many movies and television series to emerge from the boom from Ya literature.
(Colin Bentley / The CW)
In recent years, we have seen more successful books to block communities that have been excluded, including Color and Queer authors. “It was incredible to see LGBTQIA authors + extend the limits of what you can do,” said Aiden Thomas, author of “The Sunbeer Trials”. It is a scary moment for young LGBTQIA +, and a key goal of a lot of ya queer, says Thomas, is “how to face the monstrosities of the world without becoming monsters themselves-or, sometimes, what happens when they do it”.
Despite a recent reaction, the climb of Ya more inclusive felt just as a seismic change as “The Hunger Games” at the time. Books for adolescents are given new relevance and new energy.
Alas, sales of young adult fictions have been decreasing since 2021, partly due to efforts well organized to prohibit books. In 2024, sales fell 4.3% compared to the previous year. At the same time, sales of fantastic books have skyrocketed, motivated by a craze for “romantasy” – fantasy with a strong accent on romance.
My theory is that adult readers who used to choose there climbed to Romant, for many of the same reasons: they are thirsty for strong emotions and intense relationships, in an ornate world. Take “The Cruel Prince” from Holly Black, one of my favorite recent books, which is sometimes classified as a romant. “Ya popular and the popular romant are based on some of the same tropes and have characters that are often only a few years apart,” explains Black.
Even if there is on the decline, its influence is everywhere: it is rewritten in our way of thinking the stories. I am not the writer that I was before I started attacking you, and I couldn't be more grateful.
