Top Notch YA Lit for Adults

It seems increasingly clear that more and more adult readers are rediscovering the appeal of Young Adult novels. I certainly know that among the staff at the library, there are a large number who are big fans of teen lit. These are adult readers who read widely and are very well informed, yet they always make time for their favourite YA authors.

Readers often cite the engaging and intelligent characters, emotionally resonant storylines, and the high quality of the writing. If you are looking for a different reading experience, why not consider a YA novel from your favourite genre? Listed below are a few starting points to help you find a great YA to adult crossover novel.

The Atlantic Wire website is a great source of YA reading suggestions for adults.

Library Journal suggests the following 2012 titles as great YA to adult crossovers:

Ask the Passengers (M)
by A.S. King

"Astrid Jones copes with her small town's gossip and narrow-mindedness by staring at the sky and imagining that she's sending love to the passengers in the airplanes flying high over her backyard. Maybe they'll know what to do with it. Maybe it'll make them happy. Maybe they'll need it. Her mother doesn't want it, her father's always stoned, her perfect sister's too busy trying to fit in, and the people in her small town would never allow her to love the person she really wants to..." - Publisher

The Diviners (M)
by Libba Bray

"Seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill is thrilled when she is exiled from small-town Ohio to New York City in 1926, even when a rash of occult-based murders thrusts Evie and her uncle, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult, into the thick of the investigation." - Publisher


The Drowned Cities (M)
by Paolo Bacigalupi

"In a dark future America that has devolved into unending civil wars, orphans Mahlia and Mouse barely escape the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities, but their fragile safety is soon threatened and Mahlia will have to risk everything if she is to save Mouse, as he once saved her." - Publisher


The Brides of Rollrock Island (M)
by Margo Lanigan

"On remote Rollrock Island, men go to sea to make their livings--and to catch their wives. The witch Misskaella knows the way of drawing a girl from the heart of a seal, of luring the beauty out of the beast. And for a price a man may buy himself a lovely sea-wife. He may have and hold and keep her. And he will tell himself that he is her master. But from his first look into those wide, questioning, liquid eyes, he will be just as transformed as she. He will be equally ensnared. And the witch will have her true payment." - Publisher