Armchair BEA: Children's Books to YA (Genre Discussion)

I have a confession to make.

I’m an adult that reads YA.

Okay. You already knew that. Duh.  Seriously though, I didn’t read a lot of YA until I was nearly out of my teens. I already went through that discussion earlier this week so I won’t go all repetitive on you or anything. The majority of my favorites list nowadays consists of YA books and I’m always recommending them to everyone I know—not even caring how old someone else may be. And when they give me some cray look about the material, I just tell them “trust me.” But why do I like YA so much? IMO, there’s a really fine line in recent YA that seems it’s not quite for just teens anymore like it used to be. Now it touches on topics that are easily relatable to even my age group and older. I find myself drawn to these characters and the stories are good. I shouldn’t have to restrict myself from a good book just because of my age anyway.

This is going to be hard but I’m going to narrow down my top five favorite YA books/series here*:

Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Vampire Academy/Bloodlines by Richelle Mead

 

*Not including the obvious Hunger Games and Harry Potter—which would automatically be put on all my lists anyway.

 

Ah. And my youngest stepdaughter (age 11) says she HIGHLY recommends in MG:

The Dork Diaries

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Monster High

I really quite enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s MG The Graveyard Book, but she didn’t like that one. To each their own. Haha!

What are some of your favorite YA and Children's books?