You enroll in a Young Adult Literature class. Your professor requires that you read thirty YA novels in under four months. About half are specifically assigned, and the other half are up to you, as long as you pick a nice variety of genres and formats.
You start out thinking it will be fun--you'll get to dive into some of the titles that have been on your TBR list for a while. Then some of those novels turn out to be over four hundred pages, and you fall behind. You skim. You don't enjoy the process as much as you thought you would. But, you press forward anyway, determined to get through the required thirty so you can get a good grade.
Partway through the semester, you discover audio books. You always knew they existed, of course, but you haven't really tried them out until now (you're really picky about the narrators' voices). Luckily you find a few that you enjoy wholeheartedly, especially since you can multi-task while listening. You wish you had tried out audio books sooner, before you spent so much time reading thousands of physical pages.
At the end of the semester, you have read twenty-nine books. (Twenty-eight, if you're not counting the one that you almost finished but not quite.) You read a YA horror novel for the first time, and several fantastic verse novels that you hadn't heard of before. You enjoyed graphic novels, and regretted your disdain for them in elementary school. You even appreciated some realistic contemporary fiction that you would usually have ignored in favor of fantasy or sci-fi. And despite not finishing all thirty books, you still get a good grade. You take a moment to be impressed with yourself, because twenty-nine books is still quite the feat.
And then you take a nice long break, because you know you can read thirty novels in the course of one semester, but you also know that it's a lot more fun to take it slowly and savor them instead of blasting through like there's no tomorrow. So you create something, pick up a new hobby, spend time with your loved ones who may have felt neglected during the times when you prioritized your novel reading. You'll return to novels when you feel like it. And when you do come back you'll remember that branching out into other genres isn't all bad and that good novels can be found in many forms.
Here are my top five favorite novels from that YA Lit class. Happy reading!
1. Lovely War by Julie Berry - A fantastic WWI historical fiction written as if it were narrated by a host of Greek gods and goddesses. I give this full points for uniqueness, for character development, for the romance, and for not shying away from difficult topics like sexism, racism, and violence. The resolution is perhaps a bit idealistic, but I choose to see it as hopeful.
2. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness - The main character is young, but the main idea is very deep and insanely well-developed. I didn't know if the mystery element would pay off in a satisfying way but Ness really delivered! Anyone who reads this will feel something--sadness or empathy or a renewed appreciation for life and the people around them--because of how powerfully the story is presented.
3. The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White - My first experience with YA horror! I think people who have read the original Frankenstein by Mary Shelley will appreciate this novel the most, but anyone can still enjoy it if they don't mind a bit of gore and suspense. I would also recommend the audiobook; it was very well done.
4. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson - The audiobook of this novel is also fantastic, because it is read by the author herself! She adds a lot of emotion to the story as she recounts both happy memories and difficult experiences from her childhood. The downside of listening to it is that you can't see clever formatting of the verses themselves--sometimes reading the stanzas changes how I think about meanings and emphasis.
5. The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner - This is one of the only contemporary high-school YA stories that I have liked in a long time. Three friends in a small town are figuring out what they want out of life after graduation, and how to make big decisions when faced with pressure from friends and family. One huge theme is the toxic application of religion, or the effects of toxic beliefs and people, but also how everyone can discover faith for themselves despite past negative experiences.
