Is there something between YA and adult?

Is there something between YA and adult?

All novels get labels based on the target audience: children’s, middle readers, YA, adult, ect. A lot of factors go into determining what that is, but rarely are the reasons articulated. Sometimes it’s obvious why a book is considered, for example, YA. The characters are teenagers, the setting is high school, the themes are growing up, the writing style is 8^th grade reading level, and so forth. Content also plays a factor as some books are obviously targeted at adult (erotica) or children (picture books).  An entire different conversation is a publisher’s (or author’s) desire to tap the lucrative YA market.

So what about those books that don’t fit so neatly into the common categories? What about the ones that straddle the line between YA and adult? Two types come to mind.

The first is in terms of content, i.e. violence, sex, and profane language. Books seemed to have followed the way of movies to a certain extent where nearly all violence is acceptable if relatively bloodless. The Hunger Games raised the bar on acceptable violence in YA books. The series did this not just in descriptions of violence but also in the nature (children killing children mercilessly). The emotional impact of such violence is underrated. Consider also the last Twilight book Breaking Dawn and its portrayal of sex and teenage pregnancy (Bella being eighteen), which includes discussions of abortion and ends with the death of the mother. YA readers can see and hear worse on the Internet, but well constructive narrative stories carry more power than random posts and short videos. That being said, while the stories may contain mature content, none of the themes are presented nor discussed with any complexity, as they are (likely) to be in an adult novel.

The second type is defined by its handling of themes and ideas. These books may tackle the same themes, but they try to provide deeper and wider commentary than typical YA novels. In a way, the novels seek to speak to where the reader is going rather than where the reader is. It’s college versus high school. This issue of the present versus the future leads to very few explicitly college set YA novels. The ideas and feelings of college can be seen in any number of stories set at boarding schools or private academies (Harry Potter, Mortal Instruments). But a college setting with 18-22 year olds is rare. Luna Waxing and its sequels show the difficulties of a true college setting. First, the story could easily be transferred to a private high school without major changes. The college setting seems to add nothing and at the same time to discourage younger YA readers. Yet the themes of loneliness, connection, growing up, and finding yourself are classic YA. The conversations and ideas are philosophical and nuanced as found in adult novels. However, the violence and sex are too deliberately obscured and talked around for it to be considered a true adult novel.

It is somewhere in-between YA and adult. It is in some nether realm avoided by other authors and publishers. There is no name for it because there are so few books targeted at this audience – if there is an audience that is. There must be. There must be college student that read something besides textbooks. There must be young adults wanting something more mature and insightful. There must be adults looking for YA-style books that don’t read like they were written by a high schooler. There must be, so I am going to name this new category, audience, group.

They will be called...