There’s no question we’re passionate young adult fiction readers here at STACKED, and we like to think we offer up a nice mix of genres and styles in our reviews. We have pretty diverse interests and tastes, but more importantly, we are open minded and like to give new things a try.

One of the questions we’re most often asked — both as bloggers and as librarians — comes from those who are new to YA, and it’s simply “Where do I start?” It can be daunting to point out a title or two as starting points to the YA world. You can’t possibly pick one or two titles as essential starting points. You have to know what your reader likes and wants to read in order to feel like you can give them their correct starting point. Yes, I wrote that right: THEIR correct starting point.

So after thinking about this question, we decided we’d address it here at STACKED. But we’re not just addressing it ourselves; we’ve invited 20 (yes, 20) guests to write us a post answering the question “Someone who has never read YA Fiction before is interested in getting their feet wet. Where would you tell them to start?” We told our guest posters the question is open to interpretation, since we wanted to cast as wide a net of answers as possible. The answers we got to this question are fascinating and even for seasoned YA readers, there will be new books to discover.

You might be wondering who our guests are. You’re in for a treat. Our guests range from bloggers who blog because they love YA lit, bloggers who work as teachers and bloggers who work as librarians. We also have posts from a variety of YA authors, as well as folks who edit YA novels, and those who market YA novels. It’s a diverse and exciting group of experts who span the YA book world and every time we got a “yes” response back to our invitation, we were shocked and eager to see what thoughts they had and share them with our readers.

Our response was so phenomenal that our original plan to kick off the series in April changed a little bit.

Starting Monday and running through the end of July, we’ll be posting a “So You Want To Read YA?” response to kick off each week. They’ll range in focus and in length and in recommendations, and some will even include a giveaway or two. Kimberly, Jen, and I will kick it off for the first three weeks, and then we’ll dive into what our brilliant, witty, and insightful guests have to say.

We hope you enjoy! We have certainly loved seeing how our guests answered this question, and we are excited to give new (and veteran) YA readers new books to explore.