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Microtrends in YA Fiction

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Last fall I did a post about microtrends in YA fiction, which talked about themes or topics that were popping up in a few YA books at the same time, even if the stories weren’t necessarily comparable or read alikes to one another. I thought it would be fun to revisit this post again, with a new crop of microtrends I’ve noticed in YA fiction over the last year.

All descriptions come from WorldCat or Goodreads.

Reality TV


Reality television as the backdrop or premise of a YA novel isn’t entirely new. But what’s been interesting is that a couple of the books here look at the effects of reality television on the main characters, rather than on the characters being involved with reality television as the story unfolds. 

Reality Boy by AS King (out in October): An emotionally damaged seventeen-year-old boy in Pennsylvania who was once an infamous reality television show star, meets a girl from another dysfunctional family, and she helps him out of his angry shell. 

Taste Test by Kelly Fiore: While attending a New Hampshire culinary academy, North Carolina high schooler Nora suspects someone of sabotaging the academy’s televised cooking competition.

You Look Different in Real Life by Jennifer Castle: Five teens starring in a documentary film series about their ordinary lives must grapple with questions of change and identity under the scrutiny of the camera.  (Okay, technically, this is a documentary film series but it plays out like “reality television” would).



Flash Point by Nancy Kress: Amy had dreams of going to college, until the Collapse destroyed the economy and her future. Now she is desperate for any job that will help support her terminally ill grandmother and rebellious younger sister. When she finds herself in the running for a slot on a new reality TV show, she signs on the dotted line, despite her misgivings. And she’s right to have them. TLN’s “Who Knows People, Baby–You?” has an irresistible premise: correctly predict what the teenage cast will do in a crisis and win millions. But the network has pulled strings to make it work, using everything from 24/7 hidden cameras to life-threatening technology to flat-out rigging. Worse, every time the ratings slip, TLN ups the ante. Soon Amy is fighting for her life–on and off camera.

Pizza, Love, and Other Stuff that Made Me Famous by Kathryn Williams: Although sixteen-year-old Sophie has grown up working in her family’s Mediterranean restaurant in Washington, D.C., she is not prepared to compete on the new reality show, Teen Test Kitchen, when her best friend Alex convinces her to audition. 

These aren’t the first reality show based YA novels, of course. Older titles, for those who love this storyline in their books, include: 

  • Reality Check by Jen Calonita
  • L.A. Candy series by Lauren Conrad
  • The Real Real by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
  • Stir It Up by Ramin Ganeshram

Eat, Pray, Love for Teens


Two books recently were either pitched as — or further compared to in some capacity — Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. In other words, these are female-led stories where the main character goes on some kind of adventure to find herself. I know that’s a pretty generic description, so I get why creating the comparison to Gilbert’s book actually says more about the story. But do teens get that reference? I’d be curious about that. 

Return to Me by Justina Chen: Always following her parents’ wishes and ignoring her psychic inner voice takes eighteen-year-old Rebecca Muir from her beloved cottage and boyfriend on Puget Sound to New York City, where revelations about herself and her family help her find a path to becoming the architect she wants to be.

The Year of Luminous Love by Lurlene McDaniel: Eighteen-year-olds Ciana Beauchamp, Arie Winslow, and Eden McLauren of Tennessee rely on their close friendship as they face serious problems the summer before they start college, from parents’ illnesses, to cancer, to two loving the same cowboy.

Physics


When’s the last time you read about physics for fun? That’s popped up a couple of times in young adult fiction this year. Either the main character likes physics or there’s a literary reason behind the use of physics in tying the story together in some way.

Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn: A lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy must either surrender his sanity to the wild wolves inside his mind or learn that surviving means more than not dying.

The Theory of Everything by Kari Luna: When fourteen-year-old Sophie Sophia journeys to New York with a scientific boy genius, a Kerouac-loving bookworm, and a giant shaman panda guide, she discovers more about her visions, string theory, and a father who could be the key to an extraordinary life.

Sticky Fingers


Who knew that kleptomaniacs were so abundant in YA fiction? I think this is an interesting thread running through recent titles, actually, and I think part of my interest is that it’s maybe a bit of an under-explored theme in YA fiction in recent years. 



Death of a Kleptomaniac by Kristen Tracy:  A sixteen-year-old girl with the uncontrollable urge to steal is trapped in limbo with three days before her funeral to find redemption and true love.

Life After Theft by Aprilynne Pike: Jeff is the new guy in school and the only one who can see Kimberlee, a ghost with a lot of (stolen) baggage. To help her move on, Jeff must return everything she stole when she was alive. But being Kimberlee’s accomplice turns into more than he bargained for when his crush and the cops get involved.

Trinkets by Kirsten Smith: When three Lake Oswego High School girls from different social groups, good-girl Elodie, popular Tabitha, and tough Moe, meet in a rehabilitation group, they discover they have much more in common than shoplifting.

Want a few older books featuring teen shoplifters? 

  • Living on Impulse by Cara Haycak
  • Klepto by Jenny Pollack
  • Blonde of the Joke by Bennett Madison
  • Crimes of the Sarahs by Kristen Tracy

Wandering Mothers


I’ve read many books this year where the mother just sort of disappears. But these books are a little more specific in how they’re disappearing. For two of the stories, it’s about never wanting to settle and taking the child on the road with them from an early age. For one of the stories, it’s about abandoning the family to find herself (which happens later in one of the other stories, too, just when you think mom has figured out how to settle).

Friday Never Leaving by Vikki Wakefield (September 10): Friday Brown and her mother Vivienne live their lives on the road, but when Vivienne succumbs to cancer, 17-year-old Friday decides to search for the father she never knew. Her journey takes her to a slum of orphans and runaways, ruled by a charismatic leader named Arden. 

Meet Me at the River by Nina de Gramont (October 15): Stepsiblings Tressa and Luke, close as children, fell in love as teens, and neither the disapproval of those around them nor even Luke’s death can keep them apart as long as Tressa needs him.

September Girls by Bennett Madison: Vacationing in a sleepy beach town for the summer, Sam is pursued by hordes of blonde girls before falling in love with the unusual DeeDee, who compels him to uncover secrets about the community’s ocean-dwelling inhabitants.

Emily Dickinson is the new Jane Austen


Where once we couldn’t go through a publisher’s catalog without stumbling across an homage to Jane Austen (okay, we still can’t), now it seems that Emily Dickinson has become a hot commodity in YA fiction. 

And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard (January 2014): Sent to an Amherst, Massachusetts, boarding school after her ex-boyfriend shoots himself, seventeen-year-old Emily expresses herself through poetry as she relives their relationship, copes with her guilt, and begins to heal.

Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia by Jenny Torres Sanchez: Struggling to come to terms with the suicide of her crush, Andy Cooper, Frenchie obsessively retraces each step of their tumultuous final encounter and looks to the poetry of Emily Dickinson for guidance.

Emily’s Dress and Other Missing Things by Kathryn Burak: A new girl in Amherst, Massachusetts, comes to terms with her mother’s suicide and her best friend’s disappearance with the help of Emily Dickinson’s poetry–and her dress.

Nobody’s Secret by Michaela MacColl: When fifteen-year-old Emily Dickinson meets a charming, enigmatic young man who playfully refuses to tell her his name, she is intrigued–so when he is found dead in her family’s pond in Amherst she is determined to discover his secret, no matter how dangerous it may prove to be.

The Cold War Kids

I’ve talked extensively about books set in the 80s for no particular reason, but there’s a few that have come out or are coming out shortly that are set in the 80s because of one specific reason: the Cold War. The bonus of this setting — which is, at times also the drawback — is that it allows the story to be set abroad. It’s a bonus since it’s always great to have more books set outside the US but it’s a drawback because if the historical background isn’t complete enough in the book, it can easily distance the reader (remember that today’s teens likely don’t get much in their history classes beyond World War II, so the context and heft of the time period can be harder to understand).

Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy by Elizabeth Kiem: After a harrowing defection to the United States in 1982, Russian teenager Marya and her father settle in Brooklyn, where Marya is drawn into a web of intrigue involving her gift of foresight, her mother’s disappearance, and a boy she cannot bring herself to trust.

The Boy on the Bridge by Natalie Standiford: It is 1982 and nineteen-year-old Laura Reid is spending a semester in Leningrad studying Russian, but when she meets Alyosha she discovers the dissident Russia–a world of wild parties, underground books and music, love, and constant danger.

Going Over by Beth Kephart (2014): In the early 1980s Ada and Stefan are young, would-be lovers living on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall–Ada lives with her mother and grandmother and paints graffiti on the Wall, and Stefan lives with his grandmother in the East and dreams of escaping to the West.

The Cold War is a less-explored time frame within YA fiction, but it’s not entirely new, either. A couple of older titles include:

  • Rose Sees Red by Cecil Castellucci
  • Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet (at least one of the timelines is during the Cold War)

Have you noticed any other microtrends over the last year? Others I’ve seen include schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder, as well as books set on islands (which I’ve written about before but may revisit since it’s continued to be a popular setting). Or maybe can you think of other books out in the last 12 months which might fit any of the trends I’ve listed above? 

Links of Note, 8/24/13

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A scene from Mr. Library Dude’s second installment of Lego libraries.

Here’s your (semi) regular roundup of interesting book-related posts and news from around the web. I’m keeping it short and sweet — it’s been really quiet around the book internet lately.

  • In case you missed this piece around the internet, here it is again: I hate Strong Female Characters. I like a lot of the points raised, but I also take issue with a number of them. I see the phrase “strong female character” substituted as an actual description of a character, but I tend to believe — and use it personally — to describe when a character has been well-written. It isn’t a depiction of their strength but instead of the fact it’s actually a full character. I realize that suggests the opposite, that all male characters are therefore strong male characters, but I use it as a means of saying exactly what I mean: the female character is strong in the story. 
  • This week for #readadv, we got to talking about backlist, and Sophie shared this interesting graph about new editions of books that are available from Amazon. Unless the book is very recent or out of copyright and thus new editions can be produced cheaply and easily (think about your new editions of classics), it’s likely there aren’t new copies available for purchase. 
  • Why do librarians run summer reading clubs? Surely, you read the story about the Evil Librarian and the boy who reads a lot and the mess of pr that’s going down there. I have Lots of Thoughts about the situation and how it was handled. I have Lots of Thoughts about summer reading clubs more broadly, but instead, go read Liz’s post and see what others have said about the topic. 
On a personal note, I’m going to drop this link to a post Liz wrote about the panel she and I proposed for next year’s ALA conference. If you’d be kind enough to click over, read what we’re hoping to talk about, and then do the quick survey, I’d appreciate it.

The Fallout by S. A. Bodeen

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Delayed sequels are interesting, particularly if they’re for teens. Presumably, the primary audience for the first book has aged out of the target group for the second. If the first book is still being read widely, though, that’s a different story.

It would appear that The Compound belongs to this category. It still circulates fairly well in my public library, and this post on Bodeen’s website shows that the teens at my library are not alone. It’s still making recommended reading lists as recently as 2012, so librarians and other gatekeepers recognize there’s still a teen readership for it as well.

As sequels go, this one is perhaps not “necessary.” By that I mean that the plot points of The Compound were all wrapped up fairly well, with no glaring loose ends or cliffhangers. That said, I can certainly see how teens would wonder how Eli and his family recovered from their ordeal. And that story is told in The Fallout. (I love this punny title. It’s the best.)

The Fallout is not just about recovery, though that’s a good part of it. There’s also a conspiracy involving Eli’s dad’s company, which he is set to inherit, and a very shady businessman who is trying to keep control of the company at all costs. Naturally, this very shady businessman is working with some very shady science – dangerous as well as lucrative, and Eli and his family are involved in his plans.

The story works well as a fast-paced thriller, in much the same way that The Compound did. What this shady businessman has in store for Eli and his family is gradually revealed, and it’s horrifying. (Though it’s not as horrifying as what Eli’s dad had in store in the first book. But then again, what could be as horrifying as that? Nothing.) It’s also interesting to see how Eli and his family adjust to living outside of the compound. They’re famous for all the wrong reasons, recognizable wherever they go, so a “normal” life is out of the question. They have their own set of stalkers, with websites dedicated to spotting them. They don’t know who to trust, and everything is foreign to them – from Costco to a football game.

What doesn’t work so well is the development of the relationship between Eli and his twin brother Eddy, whom Eli assumed had died in the first book. What the boys’ father did to their family is front-page news. Most of the awful details are very public. Therefore, it’s very hard for me to buy Eddy’s continued defense of his father. I get that Eddy could resent the return of these family members whom he barely knows (or doesn’t know at all, in the case of the youngest siblings). What I don’t get is Eddy’s envy of Eli for spending so much time with their dad. It’s not just a matter of not having the whole story, though there are some bits he’s still ignorant of. He knows enough of the truth to know better. I get that Bodeen was trying to instill some tension between the two, and it’s necessary for the plot, but it’s a weak link.

The science, too, is shaky, but I can forgive this a bit more (I’m being deliberately vague about what science is involved, as it’s quite spoilery). I may be ridiculed by hardcore SF fans for saying this, but shaky science doesn’t bug me much. If it gets me to wonder “what if,” then it’s done what I want it to do.

Faults aside, fans of the first will gobble this up. It’s intense, twisty, and should be catnip for reluctant readers.

Review copy received by the publisher. The Fallout will be published September 24.

August Debut YA Books

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Another month, another roundup of the YA debut novels published or soon to be published. As usual, you can check out the debut novels published in prior months by starting on our July post and working back through to January. We’ve been a little lax in updating with our review links in those posts, but you can always search our archives if you’re curious about any of the titles we may have covered here with more depth.

If I’ve missed any traditionally published YA debuts out in August, leave a note in the comments. I’m interested only in actual first-time publications, so first YA books by authors who’ve published in other categories aren’t included. All descriptions are from WorldCat or Goodreads. 

August is a slower month in publishing, so there are fewer debuts out. But don’t worry — the fall will bring a huge number more. 

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke: Violet is in love with River, a mysterious seventeen-year-old stranger renting the guest house behind the rotting seaside mansion where Violet lives, but when eerie, grim events begin to happen, Violet recalls her grandmother’s frequent warnings about the devil and wonders if River is evil.

Taste Test by Kelly Fiore: While attending a New Hampshire culinary academy, North Carolina high schooler Nora suspects someone of sabotaging the academy’s televised cooking competition. This looks like it could be a great read alike for Jennifer E. Smith’s books. 

On Little Wings by Regina Sirios: Sixteen-year-old Jennifer travels to Smithport, Maine, to learn about the family her mother has kept a secret.

Canary by Rachele Alpine: In this debut novel, a high school girl tries to understand the world, figure out where she fits in, and learn how to stand up for herself when everything falls apart. With the passing of her mother, Kate Franklin’s life unravels at the seams as she loses the only emotional mooring in her family. Her dad shuts down completely, and her brother enlists in the army. Things start looking better when her dad is hired to coach at Beacon Prep, home of one of the best basketball teams in the state. In a blog of prose and poetry, Kate chronicles her new world, dating a basketball player, being caught up in a world of idolatry and entitlement, and discovering the perks the inner circle enjoys. Then Kate’s fragile life shatters once again when one of her boyfriend’s teammates assaults her at a party. Although she knows she should speak out, her dad is vehemently against it and so, like a canary sent into a mine to test toxicity levels and protect miners, Kate alone breathes the poisonous secrets to protect her dad and the team. The once welcoming community has betrayed Kate, her family is disintegrating, and she’s on her own to grapple with whether to stay quiet or speak out and expose a town’s hero and destroy her father’s career.

Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy by Elizabeth Kiem: After a harrowing defection to the United States in 1982, Russian teenager Marya and her father settle in Brooklyn, where Marya is drawn into a web of intrigue involving her gift of foresight, her mother’s disappearance, and a boy she cannot bring herself to trust.

If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan: In Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death, seventeen-year-olds Sahar and Nasrin love each other in secret until Nasrin’s parents announce their daughter’s arranged marriage and Sahar proposes a drastic solution.

Jumped In by Patrick Flores-Scott: In the two years since his mother left him with his grandparents in Des Moines, Washington, Sam has avoided making friends and perfected the art of being a slacker, but being paired with a frightening new student for a slam poetry unit transforms his life.

Gated by Amy Christine Parker: Seventeen-year-old Lyla feels ambivalent when the charismatic leader of her isolated suburban community is told that the end of the world is near and when it arrives they must all be ready to defend themselves against the unchosen.

Two Double-Takes

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A couple more double-takes for you today:

The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney is a 2011 Flux title. It’s an urban fantasy about fairies and alchemy. (It’s been on my to-read shelf for a couple years now, too.) I really dig this cover, though that may be partially due to my weakness for sparkles. The markings on the girl’s arm are straight from the story, and I love that they extend to the design of the title as well. Plus, she’s obviously clutching something relevant too.

So Much it Hurts by Monique Polak is a 2013 Orca title about a girl who becomes romantically involved with an abusive older man. Here, the girl is much paler, and I’m not quite sure if she’s holding something in her hand, or if it’s been completely edited out. Also interesting to me is that her angle is slightly different – she’s a bit more turned down, making her look a bit more like she’s suffering or hiding, I think. I prefer the treatment in The Iron Witch, but I don’t think this cover is bad, either.

Fractured by Teri Terry is the second in Terry’s dystopian trilogy, published by Penguin in 2013. It’s also another book that features teens’ memories being wiped. The top portion of the cover makes it look pretty SF, I think. I wonder if this is just the ARC cover, since when I “look inside” on Amazon, I get a different (but still pretty generic) cover.

Torn by Cat Clarke is a contemporary realistic book that Kelly really dug about a teenage prank that leads to the death of a girl, and how it affects those involved. The treatment of the photo here is much different: the mirror-image girl looks like she might have just emerged from the pool, her hair soaked with chlorine. Her eyes are a different color, too, and she’s washed out. I prefer this cover – it seems to give off an eerier feel, and the girl looks a bit more suspicious since we can see she’s looking over her shoulder.