Young adult versus new adult/adult genre; this one will be more of my own personal realizations I had this past year.
When I start bookstagram I was a dominantly YA reader. Honestly, I only read YA fantasy and nothing else. Since then I have started reading other genres like Sci-Fi and some contemporary, but the biggest change was when I started reading adult series and not YA. Now I read pretty much only adult series and seem to have dropped YA all together for the most part, which has been very hard for me since my audience and most of the book community I have come into contact with are YA readers.
What caused this? I had to think about it for a long time but finally, I realized the answer was just me. I caused this change as I started to grow up and my life changed.
The reasons I read YA was pretty simple, I love reading, it is a form of escape for me, but when I was younger I wanted different things out of books. I wanted romance and emotion, I wanted an easy story and a happy ending.
As I grew up I started reading the heavier side of YA, I remember reading Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone trilogy and loving it for the ending alone. That ending was nothing how I wanted it to be but somehow I loved it more for that. I read A Court of Mist and Fury while I was leaving an abusive relationship and it helped me through that. I started reading heavier topics and heavier emotional stories and I wanted more. Other YA books couldn't keep up with what I wanted.
Then came Nevernight by Jay Kristoff and my world changed. This was what I wanted, I didn't want just a good guy and a bad guy, I didn't want black and white stories. I wanted confusion and crazy and unknown, just how my life had gotten. I didn't' want romance anymore I wanted character development and independence. I jumped into adult full throttle after that and I haven't been able to turn back.
How my changing affected what I wanted from a book:
When I was younger I wanted a happy relationship, I filled that void by reading books with romance-driven plots.
Once I no longer needed that, I wanted to focus on growing myself, I started wanting characters that were doing the same.
Also as I grew up and started having more stresses in my life and more risk added to my potential failures, I wanted the same from my characters.
So in reality, as I grew up I wanted my characters to grow up too and reflect the changes I had in my own life.
So for me, I am officially reading new adult/adult books with a random YA thrown in there but when it comes to YA vs NA, that is just a reflection of you.
Tell me your YA vs NA thoughts, and as always happy reading!
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