There’s no one way to experience adolescence, and no one way to write about it. What’s fantastic about young adult lit is the way it documents all kinds of teenhood, from the more traditional high school paths to the less so; the cheerleaders to the misfits; the haves and the have-nots; and the ones who only seem […]
Mother-teen relationships are complicated enough in young adult lit, but perhaps even more frequently tenuous—if it exists at all—is the father-teen bond. Even more than their female parental counterparts, fathers are often depicted as the ones applying extreme pressure on their kids to succeed, or eventually leaving their wives for other women, or administering abuse…and […]
The close of Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars series with the release of the sixteenth and final book, Vicious, means the end of an era for contemporary YA. Though the TV show lives on, without the promise of new books, those who prefer charismatic deception in written form might feel they have nowhere to turn. […]