I’d really love to read your thoughts on this topic! It’s a complex one, but it’s been on my mind for a while, and Immortal Dark broke the proverbial camel’s back 😅 This is not meant to be a critique of Immortal Dark specifically, but of this larger trend in publishing. I think adult fans of dark Romantasy will love Immortal Dark’s fresh take on vampires and would recommend it to those readers, even though it wasn’t my cup of tea! Edit: After publishing my video I was recommended this one by Kristen which is a more thorough (and very well done) breakdown of this book specifically (rather than a broader discussion of a trend in publishing), so please check it out, if you’re so inclined! ua-cam.com/video/EbAwde5hE9c/v-deo.html
I recently read Jane Eyre. And now after watching this your video, I'm thinking - many of those YA female authors are also readers themselves. And probably they themselves are influenced by other books and other authors. Actually many classic books has huge age gap between main female character and her love interest. Daddy longlegs, for example. Quite recently Rochester was named as most romantic male character. Wasn't Jane also very young when they started to form their sympathy for each other? It's just neverending thing about some women - they're are choosing bad guys, dreaming about dark, strong, little a bit rude and harsh men who can (or actually can't) be changed by sweet naive love. I think each teenage girl these days should read My dark Vanessa and then, just the start to read all those sexually charged contemporary YA books. I'm more interested in grown up healthy adult characters than toxic love stories about toxic people.
THANK YOU I thought I was the only one that felt this way. I read predominantly YA books and I noticed that so many had spice/explicit content. Even books like The Poisons We Drink (which I loved) had a full on explicit scene! I don’t think it’s necessarily bad but I completely agree that including this content should also come with a conversation about safe sex practices. And honestly, I really feel like some of these books are 100% marketed to the wrong demographic. I can’t tell you how many times i’ve opened a book thinking I’m getting a Percy Jackson type adventure and getting a Fifty Shades love story 😭😭 Publishers need to do better And thanks for the shout out!! 🫶
I've seen romance novels described as "p*rn for women", and I can see where that's coming from. P*rn, obviously, caters to male preferences, being visually stimulating and goal oriented. Romance novels go heavily into mental/imagination stimulation and indirect pathing that engages the reader's emotions in a roller coaster. Things which women like, but men tend to find annoying and frustrating. But, like p*rn, a lot of modern romance novels provide a highly unrealistic portrayal of how human interactions actually work. As you say, many introduce concepts like kink and BDSM without any discussion of the fact that, firstly, it's not something most couples engage in, and secondly, even those who do engage in it do so carefully. Also, as you say, they introduce men who would be, in the real world, considered borderline abusive, as men who are desirable. Femlit has always had the concept of the "bad boy that only I can fix", but women who are a little older understand that that is a fantasy, that "bad boys" remain bad, and are bad choices for romantic relationships. Teenagers, not so much. To invoke the p*rn comparison again, it's like showing underage boys p*rn and implying that this is how real relationships work (yes, I know that that is what the internet does). We at least make the pretense of saying that you shouldn't access p*rn if you're under 18 (though in truth I think 21 would be more appropriate) but there's seldom a similar rating for books, especially those ostensibly marketed to "young adults". Perhaps there does need to be a new rating for middle adults, 18 to 25 say, and if your book includes these kinds of materials then it goes into the MA category. Certainly, they shouldn't be classed as YA.
I think there needs to be better distinction between sex in books and smut. When I was a teenager discovering my sexuality, I was reading a ton of age-inappropriate books and fanfic, because I was fascinated and excited about sex for the first time. So much of what I was reading was unhealthy, and unfortunately when I started dating boys, my first experiences were tainted by my unhealthy views of how sex should look and feel, and how a love interest should have been treating me. I wish when I was younger and I was looking for stories about sex and intimacy, I was better able to access books that could have helped me understand respectful, fun, safe and positive sexuality.
As a non english native I was genualy confused at first because I thought "what's wrong it's for young adults, not teenagers so it's ok" (i thought YA were for people about 18-25) when i saw that this concern people from 12 to 18 I was shocked.. and this range doesn't even seem fair beacause a 12 year old should not read spice at all. But let's being honest from 16-18 you discover your body etc so it's ok to read some spice. Not dark romance tho cause it tends to normalize toxic behaviours. But if my soughter was reading Sarah J maas's books at 12 I think I'd die of embarrassment. How to explain what she had just read ? (And at least sarah J Mas isnt problematic at least what I red of her was not)
This is why we need a NEW ADULT section. Books for people between the ages of 18-25 I feel like this would just make this so much easier to categorize these books
I swear new adult was much more commonly used by both publishers and readers a few years ago, but it’s as if we collectively forgot it existed as a possible label!
Sarah J Maas and her publisher tried that with ACoTaR; it didn't take off, so they switched that to "older YA", and then just adult. ACoTaR is still shelved with Ya sometimes though; at the B&N I worked at, we had a table for the series right by the YA section. IMO she and her publisher hold a lot of responsibility for bringing explicit sex into YA and the mess it's become now.
I agree. We have age ratings for movies and on streaming services and now we need it for books. A 14 yo is very different from an 18 yo out of high school.
i work at an indie bookstore and have moved books several times from YA to our NA/adult romantasy sections several times bc i read them and found myself going "whoaaa that is not YA"
I work at a BN and do this as well. We also have the ability to change the category in our store system. The category is automatically loaded in by the publisher’s classifications, but individual stores can adjust it according to their book knowledge. I have weeded out and changed several.
Why not bring back the Teen Fiction section. I work as a librarian at a public library. It seemed over night the teen Fiction and Young Adult genre merged. Over the last year we have been making an effort to re-separate the two genres. Young adult used to mean readers between 18-25 while the Teen Fiction was 13-17.
@ilyaalister8193 i think it's just morphed to being YA for 13-17 and New Adult for 18-25. but the issue there is that NA is already kind of fading out as a category
@@bluesey-182 it does seem that it has moved to be 13 to 17 however you can’t just morph and aged base genre. Its like re-naming PG-13 to R- rated. Now the rating goes E for everyone, R-rated, and X-rated. Now the complaint is that movies designed to be R-rated for adults are inappropriate for the age range of the new restrictions. Its the same for book. It was unnecessary to change teen fiction to young adult when it was already a category with a defined meaning. It’s also confusing to readers and parents. There is no other institution where “adult”means anything other than 18 and over. The genres need to go back to their traditional format. Children’s books Early readers Teen Fiction/ Nonfiction Young Adult Adult
I think there's something inherently wrong and strange with grown adults saying, "I wish this book about teenagers had more explicit sex!" I've seen some people say that they ignore the canon age of the characters and picture them as adults (which, okay, I can't stop you from doing that and it's probably better than the alternative) but that doesn't excuse adults demanding sexual content in spaces that include minors. The YA space deserves writing and storytelling that is crafted with the age of the reader in mind - I don't really care if that's moralistic or constraining. I rarely read YA anymore but earlier this year I read The Summer of Broken Rules by KL Walther - it's a beachy romance that I was so impressed with because of how well the couple (aged 18 & 19) communicated and set boundaries with each other. They're very open with their attraction and flirtation but also very gentle and responsive to one another when issues come up. There are a few closed-door scenes that are brief and feelings focused. I think as a bare minimum if a YA romance won't depict good communication and mutual respect between the couple then it needs to thoroughly explore the damage of poor communication and a lack of respect.
You make good points. I have been consciously veering away from YA explicitly because I am far removed from being a teenager and not interested in reading about them having sex. I also am baffled by how many authors are writing very mature sexual content for teenage characters. (Though someone did make a point about publishers pushing authors into that direction and/or intentionally labeling books as YA against the authors' original intents.)
@@SillyCelly411 I generally try to give them the benefit of the doubt, assuming it’s more about the ease of reading of the YA writing style and the comfort they find in repetitive plots and characters and tropes than the characters’ actual ages, but you’re right it is unsettling to think about.
@@PlantBasedBride I think giving them the benefit of the doubt is fair, and I’m probably coming from a place of high sensitivity. I just hope these types of videos will help people realize that there are books that have the content they want without impacting teenagers.
I think the “thinking of teen characters as adults” thing happens a lot because the characters don’t really think or act like teenagers. Almost every depiction of a high schooler I’ve seen is more applicable to a college student. And of course it doesn’t help when in movie adaptations, they get a hot 30 year old to play them.
I’ll take it a step further. I don’t think enough people think it’s weird that ADULTS are making explicit sexual content FOR AND ABOUT MINORS and/or pushing other authors to do so.
I don’t mind spice in general, but I agree that it is often poorly written rather than deepening relationships in an interesting way. The trend of spicy scenes getting darker over time is not to my taste and is concerning to me for the impact on younger readers, though!
Also, referring to it as “spice”. If you can’t say the actual words to describe what is happening (and no, tiktok rules are not a decent excuse) then you shouldn’t be reading it 😂 if you’re talking about sex scenes say so. If it’s kink content, say so. If it’s erotica, say so. And if it’s just bad fake porn smut, say so! The term is meaningless because people use it to describe any and all sexual content and it just makes me thing of middle schoolers who giggle when they hear the word “vagina” 💁🏾♀️
@@jacforswear18 As a creator on YT, I am concerned about my content being age-gated or restricted, and I imagine TikTok is similar (though I don't post much there, so I don't have personal experience with their rules). I'd love to talk about everything with clear, accurate terminology, but I don't always have a choice if I want my videos to be seen by my audience.
Oh yes, this is such a great point and another side of the ‘adultification’ issue! Authors who want to write adult spicy fantasy are often shoehorned into YA by publishers when that was never the author’s intent.
I watched a video a librarian posted about how a lot of fantasy written by women (that they intended for adults) gets shelved in the YA fantasy section instead of the general fantasy section because fantasy written by (and for) women is not "for everyone" looking at the fantasy shelves and YA is considered to be for both teens and women. So that's definitely problematic.
I have 2 reading teens: a girl almost 15 and a boy almost 13. My boy is still reading a lot of middle grade books, but is slowly moving into something more complex (for now he's reading the Eragon series). My girl is returning to middle grade more and more. Exactly because of the more sexual content in ya. she'is not at all interessted in love-relationships and she finds that there is almost no ya that doesn't have a romance at all. I'm happy that she isn't ashamed of this and just dnf's books that make her feel uneasy. I think it's sad that she has to go back to middle great just because of this sexual content. Thank you for this video, i really hope it will reach a lot of people and make publishers think about better labeling the books.
This makes me sad to read, honestly. There are so many YA books these days that you’d think there would be unending options for teenage readers to read about characters their own age and explore things they’re interested in, and instead your daughter is forced to go back to books at a lower reading level exploring things she’s already gone through and are no longer necessarily relevant to her just to avoid explicit and mature content. I’ve definitely come across YA without this kind of content, but it can be really hard to determine the extent to which these themes are explored and how explicitly they’re described until you’re actually reading the book. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be to invest time and money into reading a story only to DNF it when you’re surprised with this kind of content that should be clearly labelled.
@@PlantBasedBride we read mainly through the library and we read in French. We had this problem with almost all « popular » books we heard about on booktube orbits bookstagram. She’s the only one in her friend group reading that’s way she turns to other places for recommendations. I try to read some of them before she does. We agreed that if she feels uncomfortable she can dnf and i’m there if she wants to talk about it. For now she seems to be able to find books she enjoys on the line between middle grade and ya.
Terry Brooks, James Barclay, Robin Hobb, Anne McCaffery, Juliet Marillier, Jane Welch, Sarah Zettel, have some good books out there. If you check the publication dates (before 2000), you will find that there are a lot of good fantasy books in the adult category that teenagers will find good to read that aren't all relationship/romance heavy. These old authors tend to get lost a bit as they are out of print, or don't tend to have their books stocked new anymore. If they like sci-fi, or movies like Star Wars, Timothy Zahn and Star Wars books under the Legends label are good too - I started reading them when I was 14.
When I was a teen if my mom was worried about something I was reading, she would ask to borrow the book and read it herself to then discuss it with me. I really loved this strategy, it always came from a place of interest not judgement, which made it much easier to actually talk about darker topics than if she had just forbidden it altogether
This is such a wonderful way to approach it, and also sounds like a really sweet way to connect and have your own little two person book club! My parents did not read most of the books I was reading as a kid nor did they talk to me about them, even the ones they had read previously and knew contained explicit content, but my parents didn’t talk to me about almost anything to do with sex and relationships growing up. So that wasn’t out of the norm 😅 I’m glad to know some parents at least are doing a better job of keeping lines of communication open and helping their kids navigate the content they’re being exposed to! It sounds like your mom was a great mom, at least in this aspect ❤️
I think a lot of people are missing the point. A lot of people are complaining about spice. “Oh I’m so over spice” or “I hate spice.” This is literally not about you, unless you are in fact, a teen. This is about putting spice into books written for children, and putting no content warnings. Literally not giving those readers the option to consent to the content. I agree. This has become a problem. As a bookseller I find that I can’t recommend books to teens. Books written for 13 and 14 year olds aren’t really being published anymore. Some are, but most YA books are about adults, doing adult things. These are not about teen characters. Most YA these days don’t even have characters under the age of 18. If teens want to read a an adult romance, those already exist. Why do we have to turn children’s books into adult books. The publishers are leaving behind the very group of kids YA was created for. Whenever this topic gets brought up, people get so mad and say “you want to ban books!” No! I want school libraries to be full of books actually written for children.
I completely agree with you but I think overall the obsession with “spice” has created a problem where kids feel that it’s necessary because their favorite influencers are also obsessed with it. When I was growing up on booktube adults would recommend YA that was appropriate for my age group and also adult books. Now it feels that all these popular book influencers exclusively recommend spice. You’ll be showing a YA book and someone will ask “does it have spice” it’s way out of hand now
As YA has gotten more and more adult, the lower end of the YA age range has become seriously underserved. There's little being published for 12-14 year olds. And I agree, there's nothing wrong with adults reading YA literature, but they need to bring different expectations than they would for an adult book. I've seen people in their late 20s and even early 30s who express frustration with the immaturity of those YA books. They need to remember that the audience for those books are teens, and the books should fit the experiences and interests of people 12-17. If they find it doesn't engage their interest anymore--whether because of spice level or the maturity and interests of the main characters--then perhaps they'd prefer to read books written for adults. There's a weird reluctance to admit that they're adults.
I definitely mention the immaturity of the characters when I review YA (largely because I know I’m not the only adult reading these books), but I try to mention at some point that I’m not the target audience and I understand why they are that way!
I can understand where you’re coming from, but young adult used to actually mean young adult between about 18-25. The problem was getting rid of the teen fiction and non-fiction genre titles. When I first became a librarian, these were well defined and separated genres . At some point, they merged to all become young adult. In the past year our library staff have been working to re-separate the two genres. It would be amazing if we could see ALA as a whole re-implement the teen fiction genre across all libraries. We shouldn’t be jumping from children’s book to young adult books. Book series like Percy Jackson and divergent used to fill this gap. Now you see them tagged as young adult which isn’t a category they fit as a characters are 12 to 18-year-olds.
Personally, think the biggest issue isn’t the “spice” level or the presence of toxic dynamics. These are things that someone 16-19 might be experiencing or seeing friends/siblings experience. The real issue is the glorification of the unhealthy dynamics and red flags and I think unfortunately that’s a much harder thing to label. If a YA book contained these exact sorts of dynamics but then had the heroine realize how unhealthy they were, learn to self advocate, draw boundaries, and move on if they aren’t respected despite the difficulty that could be an incredibly touching/important book for a lot of young people.
I'd like to see more stories of the characters growing up and away from toxicity too, but I don't think it actually encourages people to seek out real life abusers.
@@Tessa_RuI don’t think it makes people seek out those relationships either, but I think it makes it harder to identify the earlier warning signs, and might make younger people especially more likely to see them in a positive light, which can lead to sticking around longer than is healthy for some people, especially if they don’t have good counter-examples in their life/media.
I think the virality of self-censorship terms that creators use to get past content filters (saying "spice" instead of saying "sexual content" is one of many examples) is a part of the larger problem of YA not being YA anymore. They're just trying to get their content out to a wide audience, and to do so they have to work within the flawed systems we have set up, but by contributing to the watering down of language they are allowing the lines between these terms to be blurred.
I think this is actually one major factor in a wider problem: young girls are not allowed to be young anymore. They’re expected/pressured to be grown up when they’re still teenagers (example; the excessive skin care dilemma). If YA books have sex, it should be proper discussions about consent, protection, safety, and health. A great example of a YA books that had a “sex scene” is My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick. The scene isn’t explicit; what it is, is the main character thinking about how it wasn’t perfect and it was awkward (jumping around trying to take their socks off) but it was still okay because it was with the boy she likes and she wanted to do it. If authors want to add sex scenes into their fantasy stories, just make the main female character older. Make her a consenting adult that has a mostly/fully developed brain. And my thing is, if the characters aren’t going to school, why are they teenagers in the first place? If they are going to school, make them college students. TLDR; We are not asking for censoring nor prohibiting sex from teenagers. What we are asking for is a division between YOUNG ADULT (which has always been for teenagers) and NEW ADULT/FICTION (what happened to everyone cheering for new adult when acotar was big???)! There is nothing weird/wrong about wanting to read smut. But you know what is weird? Pushing for sex scenes between teenagers OR a teenager and a grown man. Sus.
I’d love to know a time where girls were allowed to live free from sexualisation. That world has never existed. I was being hassled by grown ass men from the age of 12.
@@hippie1325 This is sad but true. I was so primed to think I was “mature for my age” and an “old soul” while in high school that I didn't bat an eye at attention from much older men while I was still a teen - because obviously, I was too mature for the boys my age. The sad part is, I was. But that’s because I was forced to grow up faster than I should’ve been and I still wasn’t mature/experienced enough to be in relationships with men over a decade my senior.
I totally agree; I think that a lot of girls (myself included at one point) feel so pressured to start engaging with dating and sex earlier than they might want to just because it is so normalized. It's hard to find media directed at women that has nothing to do with those topics, and it made me feel like I was "behind" and needed to catch up to the girls on my screen and in the pages of my books.
This is actually why I've been turned more and more off of YA in recent years. The characters in YA novels now don't even act like teenagers... it's this weird cognitive dissonance where I feel like I'm reading about characters in their 20s but every now and again the author reminds us they're sixteen. I'm not even trying to actively picture them as adults... it puts me off because I'm either unable to suspend disbelief that the characters are sixteen years old and I think it's poorly written as a result, or I forget their age and then I'm reminded and it just pulls me out of it and gives me serious ick.
"And my thing is, if the characters aren’t going to school, why are they teenagers in the first place? If they are going to school, make them college students. TLDR;" The obvious answer is because life goes downhill after high school unless one went to a shitty violent or strict high school or has abusive parents. High school is the last time many people felt really alive, so obviously they look back at that time with nostalgia. College is super busy and exhausting and then jobs make life miserable. 25+ is downhill ride on even more levels, including cognitive and physical decline. "What we are asking for is a division between YOUNG ADULT (which has always been for teenagers) and NEW ADULT/FICTION (what happened to everyone cheering for new adult when acotar was big???)!" It's "young adult", not "old minor". Young adults are 18-34.
I have complicated feelings on this. The comp titles are Ninth House (adult fantasy) and The Cruel Prince (older YA, by which I mean 17+), so I do think they were trying to market it to older teens... but then that ties back into the problem of YA not being written for younger teens anymore, but for straight women in their 20s/30s because that's the main demographic buying these. When I worked at B&N, I almost never saw a teen buying actual YA. It was all older women. I'm not a prude, and I do think there's a way to write this stuff for teens, but this is... not it. And honestly I blame Sarah J Maas and her publisher for being the first to publish hard smut as "older YA"; but that's a very long rant.
I saw someone say that booktok/YA has just *become* wattpad, like i think it's fine to have teens read about some of this stuff but it should NOT be the norm. I think also a lot of adults 21+ dont want to acknowledge that they arent the target audience for YA anymore so publishers are like why yes you are still YA. Also to those same adults, there's no shame in reading erotica, no need to hide behind YA it's just hurting everyone involved.
Oh god you’re so right! I don’t understand why so many smut/spice readers have a strong aversion to reading erotica when it seems like it’s exactly what they want out of what they're reading. I must admit I have not read very much erotica, but even in my small sampling I’ve come across books that have pretty extensive world building, plots, and character development while delivering the level of spice and darker themes readers seem to want.
Absolutely! I just saw in another video this same point, YA has largely become wattpad, and to be fair I think the "wattpad" phase is important in development and early reading. However the whole point of wattpad was that it was outside the standard and the mere fact of reading a story in wattpad let you know the story was of a certain caliber. This literature leaking into mainstream publishing is incredibly damaging.
Ok you brought up a fantastic point (a few of them in fact), and I'll be thinking on this for a while. Grown women really DO need to move on to proper romance/erotica books, but they likely won't after hating on them as teens. There's a level of shame that some people just can't grow up from.
@@Tessa_Rui agree that why i hate dark romance. Cause it doesnt exist its erotica, if you shelve it as erotica, nobody has an issue but by selling it under romance it bleeds into the actual romance category and full on forces unsuspecting readers to enter peoples fantasies. Some scenes resemble full on war se€sual abuse tactics and people brush it off as just fiction. If you label it erotica people come actoss it and then decide if it matches their „desires“ and can choose for themselves. Also teens read it and i remember accidentally reading my first dark romance book amd not trusting my judgment if its actual grape(it was not even blurred lines or could be seen as the characters not communicating or cohersion), cause i couldnt believe it would happen in a romance book
As a children’s bookseller, I really appreciate this video! I agree with everything you’ve said - YA (and by extension, middle grade) has been aging up steadily the last few years. YA used to mean it was targeted at ages 12+, now most books in the category feel 14,15,16, sometimes straight up 18+! I’m wary of moral panic around sex in YA, but I also think we need to have this conversation. I do think publishers are blurring these lines for all the reasons you mentioned, and I don’t think it serves young readers. And as an aside, I do think there’s a difference between sex scenes and ‘spice’. And while I think sex can absolutely be a part of YA, I don’t necessarily think ‘spice’ should be. And for the record, yep, that book is being labeled by publishers as YA and included in YA book buying lists!
I agree 100%. As I said in the video, I don’t think YA should have no sex - books are great way for teens to learn about sex in a low stakes environment - but the way the sex is handled is important in books aimed at teens. It’s unfortunate that a space that was carved out for young readers is being colonized by the very adults who have the majority of the world’s literary offerings set at their feet.
@@PlantBasedBride yep yep yep! I think it’s really irresponsible for the publishers to be labelling these books YA and including them in YA book buying lists for bookstores. Obviously, booksellers and buyers can’t read every book, so we rely on this info from publishers to make buying and categorisation choices. I work in a children’s specialist bookshop and we stock this book. I specialise more in middle grade so would never have gotten around to reading this, so without reviews like yours I wouldn’t even know about the content!
Elizabeth, I really appreciate watching you do spreads and discuss books. I will tell you I am over 60. I was asked to read a YA book by a niece who likes to talk about books with me. I was pretty shocked by what I read and knew my niece was in no way prepared to consume, contemplate, and consider the content! Thank you so much for calling attention to this problem. I read above my age always, but Michener, Stephen King, etc. was way different than the YA and adult fiction kids are reading now. We must all stay vigilant to help steer the young people in our lives into making good choices and understanding what they are reading and what it all means. Thanks again for what you are doing to help in this arena!
It is so important to keep talking about these things and sharing information with the younger people in our lives! I recently became an aunt and if my nephew turns out to be a reader I will happily start a little book club with him so we can talk about the content he’s coming across and make sure he understands how it aligns or differs from reality ❤️
I agree its really an issue with how books are being marketed. Someone high up in a big bookstore chain in the UK recently spoke in an interview about the pressure for bookstores to push 'tiktok trendy' books is affecting their marketing to older readers who are losing shelf space to their preferences despite being major book buyers. And it works the other way, in that authors are pressured to market their books a certain way to fit in the trends of subgenre (YA, romantasy, as 2 examples) publishers are just greedy
It’s so very frustrating to watch one subgenre monopolize the bookish space while so many amazing books are left unpublished or woefully under marketed! It has been very cool to see such a huge surge in new readers over the last handful of years, but greed and the attempt to make every single book a TikTok sensation (and somehow appealing to younger readers) is doing strange things to a publishing landscape. I only hope it’s not too late to course correct, though I’m not sure publishers have any interest in doing so.
Thanks for your video on this very important topic. I completely agree with you, that the correct labeling of books is necessary for every reader, but especially for a younger audience.
Agreed. They are marketing books as PG-13 when they are actually R. Nothing is wrong with either of those ratings but you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into with the mislabeling
also people would come and say that 'teens read crazy nasty stuff online' YES, we all read crazy nasty stuff on ao3, but for free and made by a peer, most probably another teen or young adult. labeling IS the issue because the publishers want to make more money, also they need to have better standards when it comes to the writing because they really do publish anything as long as it resembles the latest more famous 'spicy' romance.
Yes 100% agreed, PLUS ao3 has comprehensive tags telling readers about EVERYTHING that is in the fic, including possible sexual content, kinks, and whether the fic contains “dark” themes
What I think is so interesting about his conversation is how it usually stems from ACOTAR but like it's clear to me that the whole ACOTAR series was originally intended to be and adult fantasy series that was pushed into YA because S J Mass is a woman. (I'm not trying to comment about the quality of the series or anything about the audience I'm more talking about choices by publishers rather than authors)
100% agree I tend to warn parents who are not readers to at least pay attention to what their child is reading. For me being able to talk to my parents about the content I was consuming was very helpful. Video games, books, I think I felt safe talking to them about what I was reading. Sometimes I think that there are children and teens who feel like they are going to get in trouble.
I’m glad you were able to talk to your parents about the content you were consuming! I was not able to, and it wasn’t so much that I thought I’d get in trouble but more so that there were no open lines of communication and I felt a huge amount of discomfort/embarrassment that my parents did not work to dispel.
@@PlantBasedBride I too was reading very vanilla type books haha! So I don’t know if I would have been able to talk about this level of sexual content with my parents. Even having the space to have an open and educated conversation is something. I think this conversation bleeds into the vulnerability of minors to unlimited adult content on the internet and social media. It is definitely a problem.
"Late stage capitalist hellscape." 😭 yes we ARE, uggggh. I'm so glad you made this video, too. We need more people speaking up about how concerning and uncomfortable it is for not only teens reading this kind of content, but how BIZARRE it is for adults to read about children in sexual situations.
It's also an issue because it pushes out authors and books who want to write less sexualized content. As an author (now writing in another, adult, genre) who's had some YA books rejected by publishers because of this very issue, I wish there was a place for other types of books written for this age group. I had one publisher say that they loved my characters, setting, story, etc., BUT they didn't see enough "romance" in the first three chapters. I knew this was code for -- "not sexy enough." Not everyone wants smut in their books. it's fine if adults want that -- that's a choice. But where's the choice for -- I don't know -- ACE or demisexual or other teens? What about teens who aren't sure of their sexual orientation? (Most of these popular books push heteronormative relationships , with any other orientation only briefly mentioned or reserved for very minor characters). I also think focusing on sex overrides other important issues that young people grapple with -- like personal identity, goals outside of "love" relationships, etc.
This is such a huge issue and it annoys me to no end. Most books in the YA genre atm is esentially popular genre/trope of the day + romance. And while I'm not opposed to romance, the amount of times I've finished a YA booking feeling 'wow, that was 100 pages you could've spent on more worldbuilding/plot' is a lot...
Why does it take a UA-cam Creator to bring this to light? But when I try to say something to "important people" in person I get crazy looks, and told to get over it? Does this seem normal to others? I barely can get through young adult books anymore these days. Cheers for you mentioning this!
I totally agree!! There's so much normalizing abuse on the one hand while we're trying to teach teenagers and young adults that grooming and abuse is something to be aware of. But by normalizing this type of abuse in media, and especially in books and movies, it's sending the message that it's "ok to date older abusers". And who will teenagers and young adults listen to? Parents and adults who care about their well-being? Or publishers and the media who are after the bottom line?
As a former children's librarian, I can say that these tendencies have been around since the formation of the YA category of books. I, too, share your concern in these things. The genre where I noticed it first was in anime - where you also have a visual. Some of these anime were put out by Playboy, of all companies! It is up to parents to make sure they are aware of what their children are reading and discussing the why nots with them in a way that makes them want to read it out of rebellion.
I agree but if i think nack to my teenage self, k would just look online for the books i want to read and find pefs cause its free and teenage me didnt have money. And i never told my mom what 18+ scenes i found in the book even if i told her what the plot is
100% agree that this is not a new phenomenon. I was in middle school when the first Twilight book came out 16 years ago, and it was very obviously advertised to tweens and teens.
I'm going to show my age in this comment, but my YA was VC Andrews. These books were VERY concerning and I should not of been reading them, but I didn't have anyone monitoring what I read or even caring that I was reading. This push for mature themes is very concerning and I couldn't agree with you more. Not all teens have parents or adults to guide them or talk to them about how these relationships are unhealthy and how damaging these relationships can be. I also agree that we live in the "money makes the world go around" world and sex has been selling for years. My hopes is that more people, like yourself will speak out and publishers and authors will listen. Thank you Elizabeth for speaking on this.
I read all of Virginia Andrews books as a kid. Did they make we want to commit incest? Gosh no. The brother sister relationship was one of the most loving partnerships I’d ever seen in a series. I think adults look back on things with a different perspective. If YA didn’t exist, kids would just read adult fiction like they always have.
@@Soniawithani I haven’t read any VC Andrews so I can’t speak to those books specifically, but I agree that one of the most vital pieces of this puzzle is having safe adults to talk to and learn from, and unfortunately so many teens don’t have that.
Sorry for the belated comment in reply to yours, but your reply got the old gears turning. A lot of children end up reading books that are too mature for them (either through neglect, curiosity, or some other reason), and after reading your comment, it hit me that there is a very big difference between YA having smut and dark themes in it, and kids getting their hands on adult books that contain these things. In the latter case, the kids often KNOW the themes and story being told are "too mature" for them; they're AWARE they're in territory they're not supposed to be in. There's a kind of understanding there, that they're reading out of their age group and that everything presented in the story/text isn't something they should or have to think about. In the former case, the books are literally being marketed to them; they think these themes and stories are FOR THEM and for their age group, and they're led to believe via marketing and shelving that the themes in these books are relevant to them *now* and they should be thinking of/considering them. That's not to say that some kids don't accidentally read adult novels, but in my experience having done such things when I was much younger...I was aware INSTANTLY that I had accidentally checked an adult book out of the library, and it let me view that book and story through the lens of a young person who knew I was reading something that wasn't meant for me. I deeply wish publishers would be more responsible (and agree that New Adult should become more officially adopted as a transition genre), but unfortunately they will continue to do whatever nets them the most money. :(
I read two of them when I was 20 . Flowers in the attic and Petals on the wind. But I didn't consider them YA at all. The first book I enjoyed because it was a straight up Drama Horror Thriller. The second book I think was sick, all the horror thriller from the first one disappeared and turned into a WTF is this?
@@loati94 I don't think they are YA either. I think I was 14 when I picked Flowers off of the lake resort bookshelf for something to read while on vacation. Thought it was for my age group because there were kids on the cover. Read it and found it was definitely NOT for my age group. If I remember correctly, the sex wasn't gratuitous, and is tame by today's standards. But it being the first sex I'd read, and incest at that, well, it still disgusts me to this day. That ties in to @mannastea's point--if I'd KNOWN it was an adult book, I probably would've put it back on the shelf. Because adult books were boring.
I’m so glad you’re talking about this! It’s so important for publishers and authors to write appropriately for their age and it’s ALSO important for parents to know what their kids are reading!
Such a great conversation! I work at an elementary school that is constantly trying to add more books for our grades 6-8 readers who just devour books - except now all of the new books need to be "content read" by staff before being given to the teens. I help out with the content reads, and wow, I am often shocked by what's now considered "normal" in teen and sometimes even middle grade books (those that put emphasis on romance, and girls being obsessed with boys). I definitely agree better content warnings and labels would be helpful!
Oh that’s unsettling - even in books aimed at preteens? I don’t read a lot of middle grade/children’s so I didn’t realize it was spreading there, too 😟
Thank you for addressing a topic I’ve been concerned about for so long! I have to read everything that is labeled YA before letting my teens read them because I can’t trust this rating anymore. You have articulated my own thoughts perfectly.
I agree with you totally. As a fully-fledged adult I don't need or want spice in my books. In old movies they would do that whole 'pan to the ocean' thing and viewers knew what was happening. That's enough for me. I now go to the effort of looking up content warnings before I buy a book. This came about after spending money on books that I had to skip around in because of the type of spice they contained. I don't like spending money that way. Which leads me to wonder why book publishers haven't been pressured to use a rating system before now? In this era of continued book banning maybe a rating system would help? Probably not; those who ban books don't seem to want anyone to read them. Ratings would help inform readers and especially parents. I don't want younger readers exposed to more than they're ready for. You addressed this very well. As adults it is our responsibility to help younger generations avoid learning everything the hard way. Let's not ban books. Let those who want spice be able to have it. And let those who don't want it be able to avoid it. It seems like this should be easy. Unfortunately, I think you're right that it comes down to the almighty dollar. Thanks for your caring video.
I think it’s two fold, as a parent of a teen it’s important to me to have books labeled appropriately and also knowing what my kiddo is reading. I do utilize her dad a lot for the manga she reads bc he knows more about those than me.
And the more cagey publishers are about the content in books and who they’re aimed at just makes it a more confusing and time-consuming process for parents to do the research, which a lot of parents don’t have time for!
100% agree with you. As an adult I'm also getting tired of the crazy spice and toxic relationships in books, can't imagine what it's doing for young impressionable minds. As a side note, I'd love to know which books were you reading when you were a teen, and overall better recs for teens and young adults ❤
How about a video suggesting appropriate YA or even Adult books for teens? My niece is currently 12 years old and I try to bridge the gap between her dramatic social life at school and what more regulated thoughts/opinions/friendships can look like. I agree that this is a problem and thankyou so much for talking about it.
I happy to recommend. If she likes fantasy Brandon Sanderson is a solid recommendation. Tress of the emerald sea is a good starting point. I don't have more that I'd recommend but 12 is still young.
I suggest Rangers Apprentice, Redwall, Warrior Cats (the first series, everything else is meh), Squires Tales, Boxcar Children..etc . I grew up with those series, and they were super good (I still have them and read them)
I don’t think this would be nearly as big a problem if we taught proper sexual education to teens and young adults. I can see how young people can use these books to teach them about sex, consent, kink, etc. but without an active conversation with family (especially parents) it’s a slippery slope to toxic relationships. By actively limiting this kind of conversation, teens are going to seek it out in other ways. Especially as a queer kid, the ONLY kind of literature with that kind of representation was smutty wattpad or tumblr fanfiction. And it’s not like we learned anything about that in sex ed either. Coming out as an adult I felt wholly unprepared for queer sex and relationships and was so lucky to find the right people that didn’t take advantage of that. It all starts in the home, in conversation, and in education!!
100% agree that the issue stems from nonexistent or not enough sexual education on ALL aspects of being sexual, including queerness, relationships, and yes kink and pleasure.
I totally agree with your arguments! Contentwarnings shouldn't be broad/keeping you guessing/vibey, they should WARN. Also a system to label the spice / triggers would be so easily done with just using the common alphabet 🤷🏻♀️
I think the sexual experience is important to represent in older YA BUT...AND ITS A BIG BUT. There is a difference between coming of age and exploring your own sexuality as you grow into adulthood and explicit very adult erotic themes. Immortal Dark should 100% be an adult fantasy book.
Additionally - I think what you market the book as is super important. It's the issue I have with It Ends With Us being advertised as a romance when it should just be fiction. This should be adult fantasy, not YA.
I agree wholeheartedly! I think teens should, ideally, be exposed to some important aspects of sexuality, especially health and consent, before they’re actually engaging in these behaviours in real life. And books are a great way to do that. But again, that only works if the books are presenting healthy relationships and pointing out when relationships are not safe and why. Fiction doesn’t have to be completely responsible for teaching kids about safe and healthy relationships, but there is a level of responsibility there when they’re earning their living by selling books to minors.
Elizabeth, I am absolutely with you on this. As a mom of a teenage boy, it's been difficult to find books for his age. As I've read a lot more YA and Adults books this year, I'm very surprised by how much they've changed since I was a young adult. I really do hope publishers will change how they market books and please more writers write good books for our teens! Thank you for this video!!!
he may like Full Tilt by Neal Schusterman. . I'd recommend it to teens and up. A couple of teen brothers get invited to a mysterious carnival where they must ride and survive seven "deadly rides" before dawn or they're trapped there forever... explores themes of (and overcoming) fear, insecurities, loss, regret, guilt.. it has a great message imo and is a fun fast-paced read. one of my faves from last year.
For those who say "Adults should realize they're adults and stick to the adult section-" I get it. Adults invading teen spaces and still acting like teenagers is a real issue. That being said- some of the biggest media franchises in the world are for kids or young adults. The Hunger Games and Twilight, sure. But even the original Hobbit book was meant for children before Lord of The Rings was written for the adults that grew up with it. Trying to tell adults to stay away from YA sections is not only useless, as people won't listen, but also alienating. Teenage years are tough, and their struggles aren't always apparent to adults. Reading these books can help people still sympathize with different age groups, consciously or subconsciously. And not to mention that YA books also have other benefits- for those who specifically DON’T want spice (thats me, btw, the sex-repulsed Asexual) YA is a safer section, where (it used to be) you don't have to research a book before you read to make sure you don't have unexpected very spicy scenes. And even for people who just want a faster-paced or more casual read, YA can really scratch that itch, while it's sometimes harder to find adult books that do the same without more research. And sometimes you just wanna read something easy because reading is supposed to be fun and you're a little tired.
I’m an adult and I still read ‘teen’ books as well. There’s that nostalgia value; there are children’s book series that I started as a child, but forgot about because the sequel took years to come out, and by the time I remembered it existed and how much I had once wanted to finish the series, I was in my twenties. And despite being an adult in grad school, I don’t want so much ‘spice’ in my books either. It makes reading in public awkward. When I’m trying to relax with a nice book on the commute home or in the office at my university, the last thing I want to be worrying about is for a stranger or a fellow student/colleague to look over my shoulder and see random porn. It’s called NSFW for a reason 😭 Plus, I rarely find well written smut. I find that it’s often rather corny (genuinely, some bored 20 year olds on AO3 write better smut than the published books I’ve seen).
I understand I'm a bit late responding to this video, but I just wanted to provide my 2 cents. I attended a book signing event with the author for Immortal Dark when it first released (the author is Melbourne based and the event was in Sydney), and the way the author spoke about the book implied heavily that it was always intended to be an adult book. The entire vibe of the event was very adult focused, and there was no one under 18 at the signing. The topic of spice was even brought up multiple times during the Q&A, and the author engaged with those questions happily. It comes as a shock to me a whole month later finding this video and learning the book was marketed as YA?!
I was pretty shocked to see it repeatedly labelled YA! It didn’t fully deliver what I wanted from it but I wouldn’t have had an issue with it if it was clearly labelled as adult dark Romantasy with mature themes and content.
Same! And when I heard that Kidan is 18 I was like WAIT what? I’m not sure how I missed that in the book but it doesn’t make sense for her to be 18 at all
I didn't realize either, I also looked up if there was a release date for book 2 and saw that it will also be translated into German (German bookseller here xD) and it's not going to be released as a YA book but general Fantasy xD (same happened with Dark Rise by C.S. Pacat), so that's fine by me and I forgot way too early that Kidan is only 18 bc noone in this book acts like young adults xD
I just wish there was some type of warning label on books like they have for movies (PG, PG-13, R, etc) especially when it comes to dark themes and sexual content. Because the covers can be very deceiving! It’s not just teenagers that have access to these books unfortunately…much younger ones are able to read these due to having them in the libraries at their school or even local libraries. Sometimes, even grown women/men get into situations in which they don’t see the “red flags” much less “children” or “teenagers”.
That’s essentially what children’s/middle grade/YA/Adult used to (and is supposed to) be. There used to be boundaries for each of the categories, for example you could have sex scenes in YA but they had to basically be fade to black type scenes and there was a limit on how many swear words you could use
Thank you for this video. This book came up on an email from Waterstones, that was labelled as YA. I was looking for my 12 year old daughter, who reads YA, I would not expect the topics you talked about to be featured in a YA book. I wouldn't be happy if I allowed my daughter to read this, as much I research the books before she read them.. I do expect a YA book to be suitable for 12 year old, this needs to be addressed and publishing needs to act accordingly and label books correctly
Yikes, that is unsettling 😟 I can’t imagine anyone under 16 reading this book, and 16-20 is really pushing it due to the content. Do bookstore do even a cursory amount of research into the books they recommending in this way?
@PlantBasedBride as YA is aimed at 12 to 18, the content of this book is really quite questionable and concerning 😳. It sounds more like something I would read. I think there needs to be another section that covers 12 to 16 and then have 16 to 19 as YA. I honestly don't think bookstores to look further into if a book is advertised correctly
My main issue with the way things are categorized is that YA should be for adults. It's in the title of the age group. Young adults are 18 and up. They're not 13. Those are teenagers. I think a lot of the controversy about "spice" in YA books is that adult books with spice are being cross-marketed in the YA category because they're popular and often because they're written by women and a lot of women also read YA. And a lot of those cross-over books are fantasy and women authors of fantasy often end up with their books shelved in YA even when they're not YA books. I also think it's unfair to think that with YA as a teen category more than an actual "young adult" category, that every book that's shelved there needs to be for the entire age span of the category (which is often in the 13/14-18/19 range). A book for/appropriate for 18-year-olds is still a book for people in this category even if it's not a book that someone would necessarily want their 14 year old who's still in 8th grade to read. Even if things were reclassified as "teen readers" instead of "young adult," that would still include 18 and 19 year old readers. The issue is probably that someone can be both a teen and a legal adult. And once someone is the legal age to drive and/or have a job in the state (or country, etc.) where they work, it's pretty difficult to control the media they consume when they can pay for it themselves and drive themselves to get it/watch it. I also think that it's wildly easy for a parent to find out about the content of a book their child wants. A minute on Goodreads while you're standing in a Barnes and Noble with your kid asking, "Can I read this" will tell you exactly what type of content is in a book. We're past having to ask a bookseller who might not know or a librarian or having to read the entirety of a book ourselves before figuring that out. So anyone who thinks a book might have been dubiously shelved in the YA section as a cross-over, can check it pretty quickly. And if a teen/young adult is old enough to purchase things themselves, then they're also old enough to just buy things off the adult shelf anyway. I do think that books written specifically for young teen audiences with young teen characters shouldn't contain really graphic and explicit scenes. But most of the books in question don't have 14 year old main characters and were not written for 14 year olds. So the actual issue isn't completely that YA has become too explicit; it's that the marketing departments aren't separating the books that are for older audiences (whether that's older teens - your 18 year olds for example) from the ones that are more universally appropriate for the entire age group that YA shelves encompass.
this is exactly what ive been thinking and saying for a while. it’s one thing if a teenager deliberately picks up a book from the adult section of the library or bookstore and comes across material that many would rate as too mature for them. if a teen *chooses* to go to the adult section and pick but a smut book, that’s life. but *young adult* should remain a space for teenagers - in my opinion, if a teen is selecting a book from the ya section, there should be no risk of them accidentally stumbling across the kind of graphic sex scenes that are unfortunately starting to become commonplace in ya. edit - and yea, i work at a bookstore, and many books, like immortal dark, are which people will insist is misplaced on the shelves and is actually for adults, is listed in our systems as young adult / teen.
I think slightly more explicit depictions of sex can be fine as long as they make sure to highlight safety, consent, respect, etc. But that should be clearly indicated so teens who aren’t ready/interested in such content can easily choose something else!
They want as many books in the YA section as possible because that's where the mass fandoms happen, merch sells, teens are on socials the most pushing and creating mass hysteria over book characters. But many of these books could easily have been marketed to adults by just a change to the characters age in the description. So many YA 18 yo FMCs are being written like they're actually 28. I can tell you I would never ever want my 15 yo to read Zodiac Academy for example. She's too immature to understand how toxic those relationships are and she should never romanticize them. That to me is a great example of publishers dropping the ball on their responsibility to put age appropriate books in the YA section. Bully romances do not belong in YA unless it's to teach girls what to stay away from!
I've been thinking exactly the same while reading the cruel prince. The protagonist acts like she's in her early or mid-20s instead of 17. It's an amazing book and well written, even for adults but even if the sexual content is not that bad, that degree of murder and torture is a little much for teens.
One of the thing that confounds me, is the fact that New Adult as a genre (or age range) was being marketed as YA writing + sexual scenes a few years ago, but I haven't seen it being used recently at all. Which is such a shame, because using New Adult for books like this would really help set expectations, but of course YA sells well and publishers want all the money they can get. I do like Andrew Joseph Write, who clearly writes books aimed at teens but doesn't shy away from darker topics, includes trigger warnings in front of his books AND limits sexual content. Because while teens can definitely handle darker topics and should be able to read books about themselves, if it's being aimed at this group it shouldn't include the full on sex scenes we see nowadays. While it can definitely be mentioned, discussed, or even have a "closed door" approach, I do not think full on smut (including kink) is what is healthy for them. It's definitely a tough subject, and as someone who doesn't really interact with teens, I have no idea what it's like for them and if they're actually reading these books.
I have also found it baffling that New Adult is not utilized more! I find it odd in general that publishing doesn’t have any clear labelling system to distinguish between different types of content… Everything is so nebulous and often set by the publishers’ marketing material with no official rating, content warnings, or age recommendation to be found!
And also...I would LOVe to read books where protagonists are between 16 -18 and married with a family and I think we are missing this whole age group, regardless of sex content or not
@@PlantBasedBride New Adult isn't utilized as much because bookstores often don't have a New Adult section, and so the marketing doesn't line up enough to convince publishers to invest more in this much-needed space. Capitalism once again ruins things for everyone...
Teen here, I stay as far away from them as I possibly can, however some of my friends do read them and from what I've observed they're not in a place to critically engage with these books. They know some of the behaviour is wrong and abusive but because the books are written in a way that romanticizes this toxicity, they still end up deeming certain worrying patterns desirable (such as big age gaps). It really makes me worry for their safety when they get into relationships sometimes. I've personally only taken sneak peaks into self-proclaimed "spicy" YA books, and let me tell you I was horrified everytime to open a bright, colorful, obviously YA coded book, which looks and sounds like a cute love story at first, on a random page and it was smut with kink elements involved (worst one I've seen so far was Love Hypothesis, but I also had this experience with Icebreaker and some other books). And like, these books were the YA Bestsellers on the shelves at Thalia :/. Also the writing style is very reminicent of AO3 and Wattpad fictions in my opinion, who also show the same red flags of romantizizing abuse for smut and kinks pretty often.
I mean, this was always going to happen. When publishers created the term 'young adult' (which, to a reasonable person in the US, should mean 18-22 maybe) but meant it as double-talk for 'teen', in service of making their teen readers feel more adult, they also opened the door for adults to read YA stuff and not feel like they were reading kids stuff. When marketing is misleading, and reliant on self-deception to push more sales, the edges are going to get murky. I work in comics, and there's a similar dynamic going on, although it came up more organically: what was originally a medium mostly for children is now catering to kids who grew up reading them, but are now adults, and it can lead to some dissonance when a kid picks up something a little more mature than they should. We try to communicate as clearly as we can, but it happens. But that brings us to why I think this whole thing is well-intentioned, but naive. Teens are going to get into stuff they aren't supposed to. It's what they do. Are the relationship dynamics in Twilight gross? Yeah, of course. But here's the rub: every 16-year-old in the world has seen porn, right? Adult content is everywhere, and teenagers are GREAT at spotting, and feverishly sponging up, any content that their parents would really prefer they not have gotten into. I got ahold of a girlie book when I was in jr high school, saw my first porn video at like 14, and was sexually active at 16 (this was like 30 years ago). My peers had similar experiences. If you're worried about a 17-year-old reader may need content warnings for lit, that ship has sailed. All that stuff you were saying about the importance of educating about boundaries and informed consent, I agree completely, but I'll go you one better: it's not about warning the readers of Immortal Dark, it's about educating EVERYONE. If you relabel the smutty stuff 'New Adult,' it's totally naive to think that teens won't read it. Hell, I bet the reason publishers HAVEN'T done that is that if they do, a bunch of YA readers will migrate to that shelf, and they'll have split their demographic. Like you said yourself, they're never going to do such an act of economic self-harm.
Yes. I'm a YA author and while I write 'realistic' fiction, this bothers me too. A teen should not be in any sort of sexual relationship without that consent and understanding that you mentioned. Publishers need to step up and authors do too.
I could not agree more!! 🧡I too consider this development in YA to be very concerning... 🤔 I remember well, back when I was 14, I borrowed a book from our school library and it had a VERY disturbing, very explicit intimate scene in it... next day, I brought the book back and told the librarian that I don't think this book should be for 12-14 year old kids - I showed her the passage, and she was completely shocked. She told me, the library got their books from publishing houses, who categorize books for specific ages and she would have never thought, that such a scene would appear in a book for 12-14 year olds. She apologized and I think she started to proofread many books in that category afterwards. 😅 A content warning should be the bare minimum. Much better would be a general "level up" in the quality of "written spice" - there are so many elegant ways to describe intimacy without being straightforward p/rn or being just cringeworthy.
@ I can‘t remember the book title, but the scene was about abusive behavior of an adult man towards a teenge girl and it was just awful to read back then 🫣
THANK YOU! I have been talking about this to anybody who will listen to me (and even some who don't) for years, and I'm glad more people are starting to talk about it more and more. It's fine that adults want to read YA books, but the fact that they are now causing YA to become a kind of adult genre when they are not the intended to be the target audience. But as someone who reads almost entirely fantasy, I have found that the adult books I read are far less sexual and don't glorify toxic relationships and dark themes than the YA books I read only a few years ago. It's why I did a huge switch to adult rather than YA books almost overnight, to the point that I owned somewhere between 50 and 75 YA books that I hadn't read yet (ones that I was so excited to read for a while) that I am now realizing I will never read. Without going into too much detail, growing up reading a lot of YA fantasy books (Shatter Me, ACOTAR, Throne of Glass, and Divergent specifically). I was 14 or 15 when I read the first three of those series and more like 10 when I read Divergent, and it directly reinforced the idea that my abuser wasn't an abuser because I was going through that situation with him when I read them, it made me believe that there wasn't anything wrong with the 18 year old in grade 12 taking advantage of me when I was 14 in grade 9 and that his actions were that of a man who loved me, not of an abuser. So, I genuinely thank you for speaking about this, I think people need to realize this and more people need to talk about it.
I’m so sorry you went through that. I wish it was an isolated incident, but so many young girls have similar experiences and it’s heartbreaking. I hope you have a future full of healthy, reciprocal, loving relationships ❤️
I’m only a teen for another month, but this topic has been taken over by adults so much older than me since I was like 14/15. We’re completely capable of understanding that the 300 year old immortal vamp that’s a bad boy with a heart of gold is not the same as Jim from the Class of 2009 still hanging out by the high school who smells like cigarettes. We are capable of reading works of fiction and understanding that something may be fun to read, but we don’t want that to happen to us irl, that it’s just fun to play around with in fiction (in fact, Immortal Dark was the first depiction of blood play I’ve read and now I know without even needing to do it that I’m good on that lmao). And if we’re not old enough to understand that like when I was a little kid when ACOTAR came out, then parents have to step in (which mine did). The women (who are mainly the authors of these works) writing these books are no where near the driving force that leads girls and women into unhealthy relationships. Women have ended up in horrid and unhealthy relationships before books like these became popular, before movies and television ever existed. Predatory men have always been the driving force even before mass media. Mass media has not increased those numbers. It’s always been something men have put us through. We’re not being robbed of our agency when I’m literally able (and my parents were able a few years ago when they needed to) to Google a book and find out the additional info I need about it. If I picked up Immortal Dark and saw the “violence” tag (which is also just as vague) there I can just Google to see what specific kind of violence if I’m concerned. It’s amazing how books like The Hunger Games (which I love!) or literally any of those old YA dystopian books my oldest sister used to read can have people being blown to bits and violently unalived by others and adults haven’t been blowing up our spaces for years and years telling us these books are gonna make us go stäb someone lmao but the second someone does a tush smack during a bare tush make out it’s ‘you mere teens can’t tell this is bad! you’re gonna end up in an äbusive relationship now because of this!’ And if any younger teens aren’t able to differentiate then their parents have to be cognizant of what they are reading and either not allow it or talk to them about it. And it’s like I don’t even disagree with the idea of a new adult category and more specific content warnings (though I think we should be careful about labelings beyond trigger warning and content warnings that because the rise in book bannings that’ll take advantage of that idea like marking higher ages for anything even depicting queer characters). I do think adults’ purchasing habits have made less space for less dark and more early and mid teen books for years and publishers should buy more for that teen demo more often to level it out. I just for years have resented the idea that as a teen (especially once I hit like 15/16), I am incapable of understanding when fiction is fiction when it comes to spice (and only spice cause again adults truly rarely seemed to care about the amount of violence in these books) or that parents don’t need to parent when it comes to their younger teens.
I'm glad you’re not feeling influenced by this content. That’s great! I’m not a parent so I was mostly extrapolating from my own personal experience, where I did get into unhealthy dynamics as an older teen. I tried to make it very clear in the video that I don’t think teens are dumb or that they can’t distinguish between fact and fiction, but there is a real correlation between trends in media and the normalization of real life behaviours and relationships. It’s impacted me and a lot of other people, and while I hope you don’t run into the same things I did, your experience is also not every teen’s experience.
I think this is your best video yet and I think all of your opinions are on point. I will be sharing this with a friend who has an 11 year old that is struggling to read things that are suitable for an 11 year old mind. I especially like your thoughts about the publishing industry crowding out stories/writing that is actually YA. And I agree with you that there isn't anything wrong with teenagers reading spice but I feel you are right when you say that the publishing industry is making it harder and harder for parents, who do want to monitor their child's reading material, to sift through what is appropriate and what is not. Most of my practical sex education came from books but your exactly right when you say that there is a huge difference between what used to be sexual content and the very racy, more adult oriented sexual content. I recently went into a Barnes & Noble for the first time in years and I went into the YA section to see if they had hardcover copies of an author who is legitimately YA and I was blown away at the series I have read that I think are decidedly not YA that are shelved in that section. And to boot, they did not have hardcover copies of even the more recent titles by the YA author that I was looking for. Thank you as always for your content!
Thank you! As much as I myself dislike SJM and CoHo my only genuine issues with both of their books is the fact that both have been marketed to teens and I strongly feel that just as the need for romantasy-esque novels from adults have shaped YA, the marketing of non-teen romance and erotica books to teens I feel has also contributed to where we find ourselves today. One thing I always wonder is why people are careful to guard kids against visual p*rn but not the literary kind when both can eqaully shape you teens' expectations and senses of reality. I might say the literary kind can be even more intense because it looks so innocent on the surface and tends not to carry the same stigmas as the visual kind does so people might be more likely to go in without any expectation of encountering it. Personally a r*pe scene in a book I read when I was 12 still haunts me to this day, I wish I'd never read it. And from personal experience I can say I completely didnt internalize the red flags of someone hanging out in your bedroom without your consent (cough twilight) i genuinely did think it was romantic when I was a teen so no I dont think seperating fiction from reality is as easy for teens nor is it as easy to examine what you internalize from books when you are a teen. (For those who say it should be easy to distinguish between the two.) Thank you for having this discussion. I wish it was had more often because though I know a lot of youtubers have mentioned it, I think the general points are often ignore or dismissed when they're made and contentualized within one specific book that a reviewer is discussing. Not sure if I managed to stay coherent, sorry for the long comment but this is something I feel incredibly strongly about. Thanks again for the video.
That is such a good point about parents and society in general being so focussed on the kind of visual content kids and teens are exposed to, but seeming to have very little concern around how vivid their imaginations can be combined with explicit literary material. Yeah, as much as I think teens are great at distinguishing between reality and fiction when it comes to the fantastical elements I agree that especially because they have likely had very little experience with romantic relationships in their own lives, these books can set expectations and normalize behaviours before they’re even interacting with people romantically. Which can be pretty dangerous when the behaviours that are being normalized are ones that in real life can be indicative of coercive or abusive relationship dynamics.
Not the point but reading your comment made me remember how reading the graphic SA scene in The Kite Runner while in high school absolutely scarred me. The teacher had not given any sort of content warning and it was genuinely so frustrating and infuriating
This is wonderful. I am 40 - so like you and maybe even more so, I read adult books as a kid and teen and yeah… very vanilla. My youngest is a reader and she’s 16 1/2 and reads YA and Adult but we talk about sex. We talk about emotional and physical effects of sex and we talk about respectful relationships (romantic and platonic) and she said to me (while watching the recent season of Heartstopper) that she wished more media showed people choosing to wait to have sex. She said it seems strange that her and her friends want to be responsible and also want to wait but she barely sees it represented. And I think that’s VERY true. Anyway… just adding that thought and thanks for this video. Great conversation.
I wish all books had better content warnings not just YA. I do agree with you that YA is no longer what it was and for the detriment of the category. Also it’s now so annoying to look for books because I never know the section to look in anymore.
I think people also forget that there’s a difference between YOUNG adult and NEW ADULT! There’s definitely a lot of books that should be under the new adult category
Wow. So interesting…as I don’t read YA I had no idea of this situation…tbh it is very important to categorise books according to their topics, otherwise it could be problematic for the readers…thanks Elizabeth for explaining this so well…
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Elizabeth! Not many people bring this up and it’s so important. As a personal preference, I like to read books that have no spice and do my best to avoid them. With that being said I’d love to see a video further covering this topic and a suggestion list of book recommendations that you find that are either teen friendly (clean books) or ones for adults that have little to no spice and are still good reads.
I just shared a post on my Instagram with 27 YA books I rated at least 4 stars and would recommend to teens. I added a link to the description box for anyone who is interested! I hope you find something you love on that list ❤
to give an author’s perspective-there is definitely a pressure many writers are feeling these days about adding romance/spice for marketing reasons. or even to make a book YA when it’s probably better as Adult/new adult. sometimes it makes the difference between whether or not your book sells or fails to attract editors based on “marketability”. i agree that maybe we need new labels and rating systems and also i think the solution has to start with publishers choosing to invest in a diversity of stories.
Thank you for talking about it! And thanks for all the nuances you bring. I've always felt very disturbed by the publisher's target audience on this kind of subject. As well as the book influencers who take part, and who, even though they know their audience, never put any warning on this content. I think this should be the minimum behaviour. We should be talking more about how these relationships are portrayed as 'normal' and questioning the growing popularity of these writings. Maybe I'm too worried, but I find it really alarming.
I haven't read Immortal Dark yet, but I will bc as a 37yo black woman, I'm excited for it. Black readers didn't get a lot of rep in the fantasy genre when YA became a thing. Most of my classmates in the late 90s/early 2000s were reading books by Zane, which is most definitely in the Erotica genre. We are just now getting our Vampire Academy and Vampire Diaries like stories... Which also have questionable vampire/mentor age gap relationships and were so popular they got movies and tv series. Although, I do appreciate the deep dive video essays on series like these that are being made now bc looking back at Pretty Little Liars with a developed prefrontal cortex... Yeesh. I think what's considered YA needs a shift to maybe have something between Middle Grade and YA like a Younger Teens. Also, there needs to be some responsibility of authors and publishers to provide serious author's notes and content/trigger warnings. Some popular author's treat their trigger warnings like a *teehee*, "I'm so edgy" kink list. Also including resources to provide better and safe context on the adult and sometimes toxic behaviors that are exhibited in darker fantasies. PS- I wrote this RIGHT before you made some of the same points lol
I hope you enjoy it! The fresh vampire lore was my favourite part. I also recently heard of another book featuring Black vampires that I’m excited to try out called This Ravenous Fate.
I agree with everything you say in the video except for the fact that novels back in the days were more focused on consent. Rereading some of the books I read when I was younger, there is so much misogyny in it. Maybe the spicy scenes weren’t as spicy, but the books weren’t perfect in terms of consent and feminism either. I think it’s wrong to say “books back in the days were better” when they were just different but sometimes just as problematic.
The books I read growing up were actually quite great at demonstrating consent and making it clear when what was happening was non consensual and therefore not ok, but of course I can only speak to the books I have personally read in my life! You don’t know what you don’t know, as they say. The books I read contained misogyny but those aren’t mutually inclusive concepts.
@ That makes sense. I’m glad you had those types of books! But I agree with your overall reflection and message in this video. Thank you for making it :)
Young people have been reading things they shouldn't for as long as literacy has been taught early in life, I imagine. Those have the lure of the forbidden. A book with more explicit content that's categorized by its publisher as YA appropriate is a different story. Maybe publishers don't bother (or no longer bother) to pay people who have expertise in dev psych to look over the books before they're sent through the pipeline. (Edit: or experienced editors, content experts, etc. I don't want to seem like I know a lot about publishing under the hood, 'cause I don't. 😅) However, blaming media for undesirable behavior in youth has been around for quite a while, too. I have doubts about how much reading might influence behavior vs how a person is raised, and would want more substantiation for that than is provided here. As for what to call that simple level of prose that's associated with YA... it exists in books marketed to adults as well. Depending on the context, I call it supermarket novel prose, airport novel prose, or "bestsellerese." 😄
As a former 16yo who devoured smutty paranormal romance books, if they want it they’ll find it. No need to market books with smut to teens as if they don’t know A03 and wattpad exists.
Finally a video about this. These are pretty much my thoughts, albeit in a more eloquent manner lol. I don't believe sexual content should be banned from YA, because teens ARE having sex, but I do feel that by gearing YA towards adults, publishers and authors are forgetting that actual teens/YA do not see, experience or understand sex the same way an adult does. Kinks should absolutely NOT be in a YA book - the necessary consent and seriousness of some of them require a layer of understanding of the sexual act itself that teens cannot fully grasp (how could they, if they are only now finding out their sexuality?). I honestly feel like books that have sexual content entering the erotica category or dealing with a more dark approach to sex SHOULD be NA point blank period. Sex in YA should have a perhaps more "educational" approach (and by educational it can simply be explaining how you can have fun having sex with someone that respects you, for example). You can even have high and low NA, the same way some people use in YA (low YA being 13+; high YA being 16+). Let's also not forget that this conversation crosses paths with the conversation about porn. From the few things I've read, more and more teens are basing their vision of sex through porn. But porn is mostly scripted, the actors know what they are getting into, the things they do are previously agreed upon and not all actors do all things (I know most porn isn't ethical, but that's not my point rn). A lot of teens believe certain things they see in porn videos are MEANT to be done when those are, in fact, kinks not everyone is interested in. Things like sub/dom, choking, slapping, bondage, etc. can be very dangerous if not done right and some can very easily cross the line towards rape if people don't understand how consent works. A great example of this (that I have never found in YA, thankfully), is some people have a rape kink - some people like to act out being caught by surprise and having sex forced on them. And despite the opinion someone might have about this kink in particular, I think we can ALL agree this is obviously not ok outside of a previously agreed upon arrangement. Now let's imagine a teenager that doesn't understand what kinks are and how they work finding videos about this - does anyone seriously think they will be capable of discerning the issues by themselves? Or will they, perhaps, assume those things are normal and expected of them, and thus repeat them? Teenagers are not idiots, but they also have (naturally) a limited life experience, which means they sometimes think they have the full picture when they don't (I was a teenager once, I REMEMBER some of the things I believed were set in stone). The same problem exists in books, I believe. Find a new category, add the right trigger warnings, be clear on a rating, but don't put sexual content in books that teenagers won't be able to discern by themselves. Finally, Nicole Brinkley made some pretty good essays about YA being the main reason why YA is "dying" (not literally, but it's basically focusing only on adults and no longer teens/YA), which are very good reads: misshelved.substack.com/p/did-twitter-break-ya-misshelved-6 & misshelved.substack.com/p/is-ya-still-for-teens-misshelved-7 .
As someone who was a teen in the early 2000's, I was reading fan fiction that was frankly 10000% more wildly explicit and spicy at 15/16 years old than what I've read in traditionally published books now in my mid 30's. Looking back, I wouldn't necessarily say it was appropriate, but I also turned out just fine and have never had any confusion on what's fantasy vs. reality in real-life relationships. That being said....I had incredible English/Lit teachers who taught me how to read critically and engage with the text on a deeper level and I think that helped a lot. I also had parents that never censored what I was reading (genre or age-range wise) but were always open to discussing it or answering whatever questions I had (and I was a curious teen, I had a lot of questions lol). To me, those two things - learning to read critically and having an outlet to discuss/question the content - are key things when it comes to younger readers reading more mature content (sexually explicit or otherwise). I don't agree with adding "ratings" to books because unfortunately, in the world we live in today (or at least in the US), I think it can potentially become a slippery slope to book banning. HOWEVER, I 100% agree with you that a lot of this issue really falls on marketing by the publishers and an unfortunate trend by publishers to push their authors (many, if not most of whom are women...a whole other issue by itself) towards YA when the authors might not even want to write to that demographic. All because of the purchasing power of teen girls that publishers KNOW they can latch on to 😕
@@hazelmorera5946 I think being taught to read and think critically and having that open communication to ask questions without judgement are crucial and unfortunately not everyone is as lucky as you were (me! ✋ I didn’t have a safe place to ask these questions growing up). The rating question is definitely nuanced, but I do wonder if more clear ratings would make much of a difference when books are already being banned without ratings or content warnings, and books are being banned not because of harmful behaviour but more so according to an ideology. I don’t know how we work around religious fanaticism, but I don’t know that letting perfect be the enemy of the good is the answer either? It’s all very complex which is why I wanted to leave it open for discussion and hear more thoughts from the community!
Nobody, without some sort of disorder, is confusing fantasy with fiction. When people talk about this issue, that's not what they are claiming. It's more about how people emotionally respond to fiction and what lessons they might draw and adapt from that.
I totally agree with a better labelling/age rating system on books! As a teenager, I did not want to read books with sexual content and even though I tried really hard to research and vet the books I read, I still kept being caught off-guard (and slightly traumatized). I can’t even imagine how much harder it is for parents who just want their kids to read age-appropriate books!
OK, I had to think about this one for a bit. Because I'm a bookseller. And I have a lot of thoughts. (About many things LOL) So. We tried New Adult as a general age category back around the early 2010s...and the second the Fifty Shades series got tagged as NA for marketing purposes, anything else that could have been grouped into that category for comparison (The Magicians series, The Locked Tomb series, etc.) distanced themselves because "New Adult" was very quickly used as a synonym for "contemporary romance with a college-age/early 20s FMC who gets into questionable relationship dynamics (usually with a billionaire?)". And while NA has gathered in some high-heat fantasy series like ACOTAR, it just isn't used as an age category or marketing term because it has that connotation. More literary books with a college-aged/early 20s protagonist trying to figure their life out like Emergency Contact or Yolk by Mary HK Choi or more straight down the line fantasies like Ninth House or Addie LaRue really stay away from New Adult as a marketing term despite being at the white-hot center of that age range. (There are obviously many more books I could name but this is where we get into that very specific bookseller problem where I have forgotten the titles of every book I've ever heard of the exact second I try to bring one up as an example. LOL) [This is where I insert that I really can't tell what a "young adult" vs "adult" style is any more, unless it's highly ~literary~ because the whole thing has blended together so much. I basically look at whether it's plot-forward or character-forward as far as "who's driving this narrative?".] Now, should we keep trying to repurpose NA? I say yes, because I think that's probably the least-objectionable way to go. An official rating system for books is a no-go for me. I am a massive critic of the MPAA system and how it is incredibly biased (and bigoted) and rather than a "content guide" it's used as a restrictive throttle for theatrical distribution. (The TV rating system isn't quite as bad, although it's not great.) Bookstores can shuffle books around and group them together by age category, which could be arbitrary from store to store (and library to library, of course). But, from my own experience, it doesn't matter *where* you put the New Adult- or adult-marketed titles (our adult romance section is not next to the YA section - manga, SF/Fantasy, general mass markets, and horror are inbetween). The teenagers will buy CoHo, the Twisted series (Huang), the Never After series (McIntire), Sophie Lark, Harley Laroux, etc. (although they don't buy Katee Robert, too, which is strange) because they either saw it on the Internet or a friend told them about it. And that's it. Which is what we did when I was a teen (early 90s). Your friend read this WILD book called Flowers in the Attic and let you borrow it. You heard about Tom Cruise in this new vampire movie and went and read all the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles, then the Witch books, and then her erotica (at which point, your eyebrows never returned to their normal starting position). You read the romances you found under your mom's bed or in the back of the closet. And so on. Which kind of brings me to my final point - I hear so much concern about the sex...but what about the violence? The same person who would refuse to buy their kid CoHo would turn around let them buy Stephen King's IT (which has some extremely problematic sexual and relationship content and has not aged well). We argue alot about Peeta vs Gale in the Hunger Games but little about the extreme violence that teenage characters have enacted for the Capitol's (and readers') entertainment. And that is a major feature of many YA Fantasy series any more - so many of them hinge around a magical/dystopian contest or magic system with an element of violence or death with an almost hand-wavy treatment of what that kind of violence does to a person and how it is almost normalized in this genre (Caraval, Divergent, Uglies, Shatter Me, Shadow and Bone/Six of Crows, Ember in the Ashes, Curious Tides, Waxways, etc). And to your commentary in the video on Immortal Dark, you do mention that the FMC does murder/covers up murder but with much less concern for a young person reading that versus the concern for the poor relationship dynamics. (And those relationship dynamics are yes, very not great, but it always interests me what people call out as concerning and it's the sexual content first, never the violence.) So just something to think about/add to the Disk Horse. ;) There are no easy solutions to this. I would love for publishers, when they acquire a book like Immortal Dark, so either a) be honest and say that it should be marketed to an adult audience or b) push back at the author and ask them to justify why a book with high-heat content should be marketed as Young Adult and therefore be placed in the same age category as Heartstopper, Forever, etc. But I'm finding it harder to get publishers to even copy-edit a book properly, let alone do good developmental and content editing. So there's also that. (Yikes, sorry this got so long)
I agree but i think its fair to put more focus on the sexual „violence“ in tjose books because we grow up learning puching people is while everything even closely related to sex(and its dangers) dont get mentioned. Also in alot of those new books its in a fantsy setting with powers or trials that went dont find in real life. While those morally grey violent charming characters are present in real life
This is such an important conversation. My first foray into the literal YA labeled books (I.e. the sticker on the spine) was Christopher Pike … who liked to mention breasts and allude to sex in his horror. YA themes today absolutely blow that out of the water (and at 11 years old in the early 90s - advanced reader - I was positively scandalized). YA in a library is recommended for ages 12-18. Girls - yes legally girls - in this age range aren’t necessarily prepared to inspect these themes maturely.
Wow I've never heard of that book before but you could have been talking about Throne of Glass lol I am an adult who reads YA to avoid the spice and I was shocked that series has been marketed as YA for so long. Just like you were saying, it's not just the explicit content, there's a massive age gap relationship that starts off with physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. I read Heir of Fire earlier this year and my big sis alarm bells were just RINGING dude.
I read heir of fire when I was 13 and I hated the romance plotline, the whole time I was like ‘girl leave him he’s an arsehole’. Manon and Abraxos were my favourite characters lol.
I am a high school librarian in a relatively conservative county (one of the leading counties in my state that has been implementing Book Bans and library restrictions because of sex in teen books). This is such an important conversation to have-it is so difficult to place age-appropriate book orders when librarians cannot read every single book. While some teens will seek out this type of media, it shouldn't be advertised as YOUNG adult. Especially when my coworkers and I can literally lose our jobs over one wrong order lol
I'll be brave and disagree, because I don't see anyone in the comments making this important counterpoint. I don't know that I agree with the overall tone that publishers or even parents should be controlling what children read. I also don't agree with the assumption that sex is "inappropriate" for teenagers-- who are, by and large, already having sex. I grew up in a very conservative community and this led to more dangerous outcomes for kids than if we had actually been informed via some kind of media. And I don't agree with setting an arbitrary line about what "level" of spice is appropriate or inappropriate for whom. That's a slippery slope if I've ever seen one. This conversation tends to overlap with the "clean romance" community on social media, which is equally problematic in my opinion. These authors/readers rant and rave about how certain books are "bad" and others are "good" and it's all very holier-than-thou. These people beg for a "return to traditional values"... aka the days when teen girls either read middle grade books or their mom's Avon collection under cloak of night. Let teens read what they want to read, because they're going to seek it out anyway. And if that's Twilight (and the hundreds of stories it spawned), let them at it. I loved Twilight in 7th grade just like everyone else. Making certain elements "forbidden" only makes them more alluring and increases a dangerous cultural taboo. It's great to expect greater presence of content warnings. I agree with New Adult as a publishing category. But I don't think we should do it because "this is WRONG or BAD for teens".
Btw Elizabeth, I have been a huge fan for a long time and I truly do enjoy your content! This is the first time I've ever disagreed with one of your hot takes. I hope my message of disagreement isn't harmful to you in any way. I just feel very strongly about this topic given my upbringing, and I feel that it's important for someone to represent this viewpoint among the masses.
I think we agree more than we disagree, honestly! I tried to make it clear that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with there being sex (even more explicit sex) in books that teens are reading; like I said in the video, I think it’s healthy for teens to learn about sex in a safe environment at home reading a book. My concern is with depicting unhealthy/toxic/coercive etc. behaviours and presenting them as normal and desirable in so many of the books marketed to teens, including potentially dangerous acts like ch*king and bl**d play as par for the course (both of which can be fatal if engaged with incorrectly). “Dark romance” is becoming more and more popular, and I've noticed some troubling trends in how young people seem to react to reading about this kind of dynamic. Twilight is not even remotely on the level of the books that are coming out these days, and I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with that in a general sense. Still, I do think there is a potential danger in promoting those books to underage readers. Perhaps we disagree on that point, which is entirely okay. I appreciate your opinion and your sharing it, even though it felt like going against the tide!
I definitely agree on the fact that we shouldn’t police what kids and teens are reading bc they’re going to seek it out anyway. I think the issue at stake is providing teens with the resources to know what they are reading in these “dark romance” ya novels are not something to be normalized and idealized. I believe that is also Elizabeth’s central message in this video, that the industry itself is being harmful.
I agree that the "clean" label is just as problematic (do we really teach kids that sex is dirty??), but overall, sex written for adults (to turn them on, mostly) should be different from sex written for teens (by adults).
I agree, sex is an important theme that should not be crossed out of YA books. But the problem is how these books are selling unhealthy behaviours such as age and power imbalances, physical and emotional abuse and a lack of healthy communication as desirable. What lessons do you think teens who have very little experience will take away from this? "Oh the book says this is good/acceptable so it must be what I should tolerate and seek out in relationships". They won't critically examine the text, I've seen this happen before. Instead, YA books need to clearly communicate "Hey, this behaviour is toxic" or show examples of healthy relationships (I think this is done very well in Heartstopper). Anything else would be irresponsible. Especially younger teens aged 12-15 are so impressionable.
(I work at a library and just confirmed this book’s marketed reading level is “Ages 14 and up. Little, Brown and Company.”) I am also a big fan of YA and YA Fantasy. I am also often surprised when the YA book I am reading sounds incredibly similar to an adult book I just read. It also makes me uncomfortable reading YA spice as an adult- let alone letting kids read YA spice. In my interpretation, it seems the OG young adult novel fans (who are now adults, myself included) want the nostalgia or simplicity of YA while also getting their adult spice fix…and that could be why there’s such a blurring of the lines now. And I agree this is totally uncomfortable and why it is SO important for people to do the research into what they’re reading or what they’re going to read.
I haven't watched the video but as a teen girl, I do steer clear of books with spice or I just skip the scenes. The only "Adult " books I read are thrillers fantasy or mystery etc. not romance (for obvious reasons) but I know girls my age reading haunting Adeline etc. In my opinion the age of the YA matters a lot because as a 17 year old I don't really want to read middle grade esque books and I do recognize the the writing etc. Ppl need to remember YAs are not all the same age.
I know the word "spice" was born from algorithms shunning more explicit words but I can't stop feeling like the word itself is to blame for a lot of this. People are just a lot more comfortable saying they want more "spice" in YA, than they are saying they want more explicit sex in YA. Same goes for the sellers and publishers of fiction: it's much less weird to put a spiciness level next to a novel, nicely visualized with hot peppers, than to list all the sexual kinks and fetishes this specific work depicts. A lot of parents probably don't even know what it means when they buy their 15 year old teenager a book with a 5/5 🌶 level.
I don't think these kinds of problematic age gaps in YA romance with a barely legal FMC and ancient MMC is the cause of young women glorifying relationships with older men (entirely), but rather a symptom of a more systemic problem. Teenage girls often actively seek out and WANT to read these kinds of romances, and I was one such teenage girl. There is a reason why these stories became so popular, and a big chunk of the audiences that make these stories popular are self-admittedly young women and teens. From a young age, we are often pressured and expected to be and act more adult than boys and young men, creating a mental gap between us and our male peers. We are raised to grow up too quickly, leaving us to feel less connected to boys who are allowed to just be children longer. Not to mention how predatory men and society manipulate us by praising us for being so mature and telling us we need a more mature man, making us feel special and grooming us into seeking out these kinds of relationships. I used to be mostly bullied and ignored by boys my own age, but older guys would be nice to me and praise me, so I found myself gravitating more towards them for a long time. We need to stop treating girls like mini adults and let them be kids just like we do with boys.
@@taefee4919 I agree, though the way you phrased your reply makes me feel like it's meant to discredit my comment. Both things are true, in my opinion.
@@SolarmatrixCobra no no I dont mean to discredit your writing. I agree with you. but, all I was saying that it's crazy that grown ass women write unhealthy stuff for teen girls.
@@taefee4919 ah! sorry for the confusion! Yes, I completely agree. Especially for YA, writers need to be much more mindful and aware in their writing, IMO.
I’ve been waiting to talk about this. A friend of mine (we’re both 20) recently asked me what a healthy relationship is. Wanna know why?? Because her whole life she’s consumed media with toxic couples in romanticized relationship at the center of the story. She wanted to see if her friend’s relationship was healthy (my mother studied psychology and mentioned to my friend’s mother, who was speaking very highly of this relationship, that some behaviors were unhealthy). I’ve been saying this since I was a teenager and I’ll keep saying this: no, young people can NOT separate fiction from reality. And I know it because for a long while I thought that control, that possessiveness and jealousy was romantic. I’m not sure what happened then, but I was lucky enough to grow up early enough not to end up in stupid situations.
I actually completely agree with everything you've said. I have 2 teenagers and I have opened up to them about how a lot of my unhealthy ideals came from the media I consumed when I was young. As a teenager I was learning about relationships from books and movies without realising it. I understand fiction isn't real life and I know people enjoy reading as an escape of sorts, but young peoples brains are gathering information to fill in gaps all the time without them even knowing it. I try to make sure my kids know how to consume media with their brains switched on. They can read about whatever they want but they need to understand what messages they're receiving and be able to question all of those messages critically to get valuble conscious learning from it. That's not something all teenagers can easily do. Honestly, I only properly learnt how in my late 20s.
You sound like such an amazing parent! All teens deserve to have parents as engaged as you are and as willing as you are to have these conversations with them. I, too, didn’t develop the ability to identify coercive behaviour and red flags until I’d already experienced some very unhealthy relationships that, to be completely honest, traumatized me. I wish my parents had been able to have these conversations with me, though they met and got married very young and I’m not sure they had the same experience as I did.
Thank you Elizabeth ❤ I too got myself into some very problematic relationships and I'm just doing my best to help my kids to avoid making the same mistakes I did. They're both so much more mature than I was at their age. I'm very proud of them.
As a teacher I have observed the same, there are some very popular amazing fantasy books that my students are reading but I am concerned because they are exposed to the level of content that is not suitable for their age level. Not only the spiciness but the violence and certain other concepts makes the books more adult than high school level. I used to read Dan Brown and Nancy Drew books as a teenager but they are going full romantasy.
Also a rating system like we have for movies would be great for books! As a parent, I would like to be aware of what kind of content is in everything my kids are consuming
The very easy fix would be for authors to age up their characters to mid/late 20s, or even 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. A lot of readers want the conventions found in YA writing, but also want more mature subjects in their books. It would be SOOO easy to just... market books with more adult themes as adult fiction, regardless of how closely they follow YA conventions. But as you say in the video, it isn't as easy as just making sure the label matches the content. I wouldn't be surprised if the bigger publishers either pressure authors to write about characters in their late teens with their 400 year old vampire/fairy boyfriends, or if the companies just go ahead and market explicitly adult fiction as YA, whether the author's are cognizant of the fact or not.
YES! I read Immortal Dark last month and I thought it was an adult book because of the spice. I remember thinking “there’s no way this is YA..?” Especially the bath scenes??
100% agree and have felt similarly for years. When I came across a sexually explicit sex scene in YA for the first time, I got the serious ick. There is no reason for adults to be writing such sexually explicit material about teenagers. It is problematic. I know not all love interests can be cinnamon roll characters, but I totally agree that age gap romance in YA might really impact some teens into thinking a romance with older adult males is normal and acceptable.
I also started reading adult fiction when I was quite young because there wasn’t a lot of options in YA. I read books that had explicit sex, but it was almost always in the context of a relationship which progressed the plot or in a romance book. Looking back on it, even though it was explicit and geared towards an adult reader, it was a lof more vanilla than what comes out now. It feels like there’s more and more romance/romantasy that reads like borderline erotica. I think my experience reading earth’s children at 12 is a lot tamer and age appropriate than what some teens are experiencing reading YA right now. I think being a teen is hard enough without adding confusion bdsm, dark romance or romanticized age gaps
I also read the Earth’s Children series very young - starting around 7 with the first book. It’s easy to make fun of the romance in those books, but the way it was handled set me up for success in a lot of ways with how focussed it was on reciprocal pleasure and boundaries and communication and consent! Those books were the first books I ever read with sexual content and they’re much healthier than the average YA romantasy being published today.
I think the problem is that the 'genre' of these books that we call YA really started with millennials. So the people who grew up on the style are now in their thirties, still like it the style, and want exactly the same thing but with the adult themes. Which is fine, except that now people are using what used to be the age rating of the books as what is essentially a genre name which is just insane behavior. It's like how 'indie rock' became a genre even when bands were working with big production companies except in this case it's actually harmful. Imagine if people started using 'PG13' to describe a genre of movie. And like you say, publishers still treat it as an age rating because it sells more books. When you bring up indie rock linguists will tell you "that's just how language works" but someone needs to put a stop to this. 'YA' should not be a genre and 'YA Themes' shouldn't be a phrase used to describe these books. There needs to be a new word and the community needs to rally behind it.
I COMPLETELY agree! I haven't read Immortal Dark, but I have become increasingly disgusted with what publishers are putting out FOR TEENS. I am 22 (almost 23), and I don't even want that stuff in the books I read. At the very least, I think that publishers should embrace content warnings so readers of all ages can make an informed decision about what they want to read. I am not a parent, but if I had a teenage daughter, I wouldn't want her reading books with all of that in there and would want to be able to clearly see what kind of content is in the books she might want to read and be able to either say no or have a conversation with her about it. To me, that just seems like part of being an involved parent.
Intriguing video topic. When I was in my teens and 20s the fantasy genre (witches, vampires, etc.) was almost non-existent. The "Chic Lit" genre (rom-com novels for adults) became popular in my 20s, when I was the perfect age for them. I outgrew them and ignored this genre for many years; but just recently, in an effort to lighten my mood during a too-serious time, I sought out a few of these rom-com genre novels from the adult fiction section of the public library. I just wanted some light, fluffy, feel-good escapism. These are not fantasy genre books at all, and they are for adults (the characters are professionals in their 20s and 30s). What I was surprised to discover is that today's rom-com novels are a lot like the ones I read 25 years ago in terms of the storylines, writing style, etc...except now they all seem to have some soft porn sprinkled throughout them. It is very weird to me. Just when I am really enjoying the story, I'll come to another steamy scene that is way more graphic than anything I recall reading as a young woman. The whole genre, I'm guessing, has morphed into a hybrid of light, fluffy romance and soft porn! So disturbing. I would enjoy the romance and cutesy humour of the story more without words like "rock hard erection" thrown in there, you know? What happened to the fun of ROMANCE and LOVE in stories? Instead it sounds like there's hyper-focus on the lust and sex part - apparently even in YA books. But then again, today's kids have the Internet so there are a lot of 12-year-olds out there watching hardcore porn, apparently. So sad and disturbing for today's youth.
I couldn´t agree more! As a teenager, I read some books with more adult content that made a big impression on me. I realised that they were well ahead my life experience and out of my age range, I would say. The fact that now these topics are normalised, as you say, seem very dangerous to me. Not a big fan of too much spice in general, so I don't get the need of including it in YA books.
This was such a well articulated moment of WTF, thank you! I do find it problematic that because so many adults read YA, adult themes and content are now present in YA. Let the YA be for young adults and move that stuff to the adult section! If you’re an adult reading YA, it’s probably just a kissing book and that’s ok!
I used to be a high school teacher, and I agree with everything you said. You can have dark themes in YA but it is going too far. I also do not understand how people can be okay with an immortal with centuries of life experience and their choice of partner is a 17-18 year old girl? Something about that is definitely very not right. There absolutely needs to be a reshuffle of category in publishing, like Middle Grade, Teen (13-17), then Young Adult (18-24). I have definitely seen an uncomfortable shift in the amount of sexual content in YA.
I agree. It is my opinion that we need a rating system similar to the one we use for films, in the book industry. I think its healthy for adults to visit YA and for teens to visit adult literature, BUT the type of content in a book is no longer reflected in the marketing labels publishers place on books.
I was literally saying this to my sister yesterday when I finished it. I enjoyed it but I would not recommend this to my nieces who are teenagers because I thought the content was too mature to be YA
I’d really love to read your thoughts on this topic! It’s a complex one, but it’s been on my mind for a while, and Immortal Dark broke the proverbial camel’s back 😅 This is not meant to be a critique of Immortal Dark specifically, but of this larger trend in publishing. I think adult fans of dark Romantasy will love Immortal Dark’s fresh take on vampires and would recommend it to those readers, even though it wasn’t my cup of tea!
Edit: After publishing my video I was recommended this one by Kristen which is a more thorough (and very well done) breakdown of this book specifically (rather than a broader discussion of a trend in publishing), so please check it out, if you’re so inclined! ua-cam.com/video/EbAwde5hE9c/v-deo.html
I recently read Jane Eyre. And now after watching this your video, I'm thinking - many of those YA female authors are also readers themselves. And probably they themselves are influenced by other books and other authors. Actually many classic books has huge age gap between main female character and her love interest. Daddy longlegs, for example. Quite recently Rochester was named as most romantic male character. Wasn't Jane also very young when they started to form their sympathy for each other? It's just neverending thing about some women - they're are choosing bad guys, dreaming about dark, strong, little a bit rude and harsh men who can (or actually can't) be changed by sweet naive love. I think each teenage girl these days should read My dark Vanessa and then, just the start to read all those sexually charged contemporary YA books. I'm more interested in grown up healthy adult characters than toxic love stories about toxic people.
THANK YOU I thought I was the only one that felt this way. I read predominantly YA books and I noticed that so many had spice/explicit content. Even books like The Poisons We Drink (which I loved) had a full on explicit scene! I don’t think it’s necessarily bad but I completely agree that including this content should also come with a conversation about safe sex practices. And honestly, I really feel like some of these books are 100% marketed to the wrong demographic. I can’t tell you how many times i’ve opened a book thinking I’m getting a Percy Jackson type adventure and getting a Fifty Shades love story 😭😭 Publishers need to do better
And thanks for the shout out!! 🫶
I've seen romance novels described as "p*rn for women", and I can see where that's coming from.
P*rn, obviously, caters to male preferences, being visually stimulating and goal oriented.
Romance novels go heavily into mental/imagination stimulation and indirect pathing that engages the reader's emotions in a roller coaster. Things which women like, but men tend to find annoying and frustrating.
But, like p*rn, a lot of modern romance novels provide a highly unrealistic portrayal of how human interactions actually work. As you say, many introduce concepts like kink and BDSM without any discussion of the fact that, firstly, it's not something most couples engage in, and secondly, even those who do engage in it do so carefully.
Also, as you say, they introduce men who would be, in the real world, considered borderline abusive, as men who are desirable. Femlit has always had the concept of the "bad boy that only I can fix", but women who are a little older understand that that is a fantasy, that "bad boys" remain bad, and are bad choices for romantic relationships.
Teenagers, not so much. To invoke the p*rn comparison again, it's like showing underage boys p*rn and implying that this is how real relationships work (yes, I know that that is what the internet does). We at least make the pretense of saying that you shouldn't access p*rn if you're under 18 (though in truth I think 21 would be more appropriate) but there's seldom a similar rating for books, especially those ostensibly marketed to "young adults".
Perhaps there does need to be a new rating for middle adults, 18 to 25 say, and if your book includes these kinds of materials then it goes into the MA category. Certainly, they shouldn't be classed as YA.
I think there needs to be better distinction between sex in books and smut. When I was a teenager discovering my sexuality, I was reading a ton of age-inappropriate books and fanfic, because I was fascinated and excited about sex for the first time. So much of what I was reading was unhealthy, and unfortunately when I started dating boys, my first experiences were tainted by my unhealthy views of how sex should look and feel, and how a love interest should have been treating me.
I wish when I was younger and I was looking for stories about sex and intimacy, I was better able to access books that could have helped me understand respectful, fun, safe and positive sexuality.
As a non english native I was genualy confused at first because I thought "what's wrong it's for young adults, not teenagers so it's ok" (i thought YA were for people about 18-25) when i saw that this concern people from 12 to 18 I was shocked.. and this range doesn't even seem fair beacause a 12 year old should not read spice at all. But let's being honest from 16-18 you discover your body etc so it's ok to read some spice. Not dark romance tho cause it tends to normalize toxic behaviours. But if my soughter was reading Sarah J maas's books at 12 I think I'd die of embarrassment. How to explain what she had just read ? (And at least sarah J Mas isnt problematic at least what I red of her was not)
This is why we need a NEW ADULT section. Books for people between the ages of 18-25 I feel like this would just make this so much easier to categorize these books
I swear new adult was much more commonly used by both publishers and readers a few years ago, but it’s as if we collectively forgot it existed as a possible label!
I agree, clear age appropriateness ratings in addition to content warnings for adults that wish to avoid spice.
@@the_madhadder Yes. We've needed this for a long time.
Sarah J Maas and her publisher tried that with ACoTaR; it didn't take off, so they switched that to "older YA", and then just adult. ACoTaR is still shelved with Ya sometimes though; at the B&N I worked at, we had a table for the series right by the YA section.
IMO she and her publisher hold a lot of responsibility for bringing explicit sex into YA and the mess it's become now.
I agree. We have age ratings for movies and on streaming services and now we need it for books. A 14 yo is very different from an 18 yo out of high school.
i work at an indie bookstore and have moved books several times from YA to our NA/adult romantasy sections several times bc i read them and found myself going "whoaaa that is not YA"
I work at a BN and do this as well. We also have the ability to change the category in our store system. The category is automatically loaded in by the publisher’s classifications, but individual stores can adjust it according to their book knowledge. I have weeded out and changed several.
@nikkimirhosseyni9535 i was actually curious how that worked in stores like BN so thanks for sharing!
Why not bring back the Teen Fiction section. I work as a librarian at a public library. It seemed over night the teen Fiction and Young Adult genre merged. Over the last year we have been making an effort to re-separate the two genres.
Young adult used to mean readers between 18-25 while the Teen Fiction was 13-17.
@ilyaalister8193 i think it's just morphed to being YA for 13-17 and New Adult for 18-25. but the issue there is that NA is already kind of fading out as a category
@@bluesey-182 it does seem that it has moved to be 13 to 17 however you can’t just morph and aged base genre. Its like re-naming PG-13 to R- rated. Now the rating goes E for everyone, R-rated, and X-rated. Now the complaint is that movies designed to be R-rated for adults are inappropriate for the age range of the new restrictions. Its the same for book.
It was unnecessary to change teen fiction to young adult when it was already a category with a defined meaning. It’s also confusing to readers and parents. There is no other institution where “adult”means anything other than 18 and over.
The genres need to go back to their traditional format.
Children’s books
Early readers
Teen Fiction/ Nonfiction
Young Adult
Adult
I think there's something inherently wrong and strange with grown adults saying, "I wish this book about teenagers had more explicit sex!" I've seen some people say that they ignore the canon age of the characters and picture them as adults (which, okay, I can't stop you from doing that and it's probably better than the alternative) but that doesn't excuse adults demanding sexual content in spaces that include minors. The YA space deserves writing and storytelling that is crafted with the age of the reader in mind - I don't really care if that's moralistic or constraining.
I rarely read YA anymore but earlier this year I read The Summer of Broken Rules by KL Walther - it's a beachy romance that I was so impressed with because of how well the couple (aged 18 & 19) communicated and set boundaries with each other. They're very open with their attraction and flirtation but also very gentle and responsive to one another when issues come up. There are a few closed-door scenes that are brief and feelings focused. I think as a bare minimum if a YA romance won't depict good communication and mutual respect between the couple then it needs to thoroughly explore the damage of poor communication and a lack of respect.
You make good points. I have been consciously veering away from YA explicitly because I am far removed from being a teenager and not interested in reading about them having sex. I also am baffled by how many authors are writing very mature sexual content for teenage characters. (Though someone did make a point about publishers pushing authors into that direction and/or intentionally labeling books as YA against the authors' original intents.)
@@SillyCelly411 I generally try to give them the benefit of the doubt, assuming it’s more about the ease of reading of the YA writing style and the comfort they find in repetitive plots and characters and tropes than the characters’ actual ages, but you’re right it is unsettling to think about.
@@PlantBasedBride I think giving them the benefit of the doubt is fair, and I’m probably coming from a place of high sensitivity. I just hope these types of videos will help people realize that there are books that have the content they want without impacting teenagers.
I think the “thinking of teen characters as adults” thing happens a lot because the characters don’t really think or act like teenagers. Almost every depiction of a high schooler I’ve seen is more applicable to a college student. And of course it doesn’t help when in movie adaptations, they get a hot 30 year old to play them.
I’ll take it a step further. I don’t think enough people think it’s weird that ADULTS are making explicit sexual content FOR AND ABOUT MINORS and/or pushing other authors to do so.
I'm tired of the spice. It seldomly provides anything to the plot or the characters' relationship. It's boring 99% of the time.
I don’t mind spice in general, but I agree that it is often poorly written rather than deepening relationships in an interesting way. The trend of spicy scenes getting darker over time is not to my taste and is concerning to me for the impact on younger readers, though!
OMG yes! I have gotten to the point where spice gives me the ick
Also, referring to it as “spice”. If you can’t say the actual words to describe what is happening (and no, tiktok rules are not a decent excuse) then you shouldn’t be reading it 😂 if you’re talking about sex scenes say so. If it’s kink content, say so. If it’s erotica, say so. And if it’s just bad fake porn smut, say so! The term is meaningless because people use it to describe any and all sexual content and it just makes me thing of middle schoolers who giggle when they hear the word “vagina” 💁🏾♀️
@@jacforswear18 As a creator on YT, I am concerned about my content being age-gated or restricted, and I imagine TikTok is similar (though I don't post much there, so I don't have personal experience with their rules). I'd love to talk about everything with clear, accurate terminology, but I don't always have a choice if I want my videos to be seen by my audience.
@@PlantBasedBride Yes, I agree, that's my perception too as a non-content creator. The term also kind of makes me cringe, but I get WHY it's used.
Another element you might be interested in is that women are more likely to be published as YA while men as adult.
Oh yes, this is such a great point and another side of the ‘adultification’ issue! Authors who want to write adult spicy fantasy are often shoehorned into YA by publishers when that was never the author’s intent.
I watched a video a librarian posted about how a lot of fantasy written by women (that they intended for adults) gets shelved in the YA fantasy section instead of the general fantasy section because fantasy written by (and for) women is not "for everyone" looking at the fantasy shelves and YA is considered to be for both teens and women. So that's definitely problematic.
@@dr_not_sam I hadn’t even thought about that! How it’s a systemic problem and as a community we have to bring awareness.
@@jenniferr9998 that is so interesting! and saddening at the same time.
Oh wow, this must put the author in an awkward position if they never meant for their book to be YA in the first place. 😬
I have 2 reading teens: a girl almost 15 and a boy almost 13. My boy is still reading a lot of middle grade books, but is slowly moving into something more complex (for now he's reading the Eragon series). My girl is returning to middle grade more and more. Exactly because of the more sexual content in ya. she'is not at all interessted in love-relationships and she finds that there is almost no ya that doesn't have a romance at all. I'm happy that she isn't ashamed of this and just dnf's books that make her feel uneasy.
I think it's sad that she has to go back to middle great just because of this sexual content.
Thank you for this video, i really hope it will reach a lot of people and make publishers think about better labeling the books.
This makes me sad to read, honestly. There are so many YA books these days that you’d think there would be unending options for teenage readers to read about characters their own age and explore things they’re interested in, and instead your daughter is forced to go back to books at a lower reading level exploring things she’s already gone through and are no longer necessarily relevant to her just to avoid explicit and mature content.
I’ve definitely come across YA without this kind of content, but it can be really hard to determine the extent to which these themes are explored and how explicitly they’re described until you’re actually reading the book. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be to invest time and money into reading a story only to DNF it when you’re surprised with this kind of content that should be clearly labelled.
@@PlantBasedBride we read mainly through the library and we read in French. We had this problem with almost all « popular » books we heard about on booktube orbits bookstagram. She’s the only one in her friend group reading that’s way she turns to other places for recommendations.
I try to read some of them before she does.
We agreed that if she feels uncomfortable she can dnf and i’m there if she wants to talk about it. For now she seems to be able to find books she enjoys on the line between middle grade and ya.
My 15yo literally skipped YA and reads Adult Fantasy because YA is too sexualized. Nettle and Bone and. Sorceress Comes to Call are her favs.
Terry Brooks, James Barclay, Robin Hobb, Anne McCaffery, Juliet Marillier, Jane Welch, Sarah Zettel, have some good books out there. If you check the publication dates (before 2000), you will find that there are a lot of good fantasy books in the adult category that teenagers will find good to read that aren't all relationship/romance heavy. These old authors tend to get lost a bit as they are out of print, or don't tend to have their books stocked new anymore. If they like sci-fi, or movies like Star Wars, Timothy Zahn and Star Wars books under the Legends label are good too - I started reading them when I was 14.
@craftyhobbit7623 Thank you!
When I was a teen if my mom was worried about something I was reading, she would ask to borrow the book and read it herself to then discuss it with me. I really loved this strategy, it always came from a place of interest not judgement, which made it much easier to actually talk about darker topics than if she had just forbidden it altogether
This is such a wonderful way to approach it, and also sounds like a really sweet way to connect and have your own little two person book club! My parents did not read most of the books I was reading as a kid nor did they talk to me about them, even the ones they had read previously and knew contained explicit content, but my parents didn’t talk to me about almost anything to do with sex and relationships growing up. So that wasn’t out of the norm 😅 I’m glad to know some parents at least are doing a better job of keeping lines of communication open and helping their kids navigate the content they’re being exposed to! It sounds like your mom was a great mom, at least in this aspect ❤️
Great to see parents this involved with their kids reading. I wish there were more of this.
I think a lot of people are missing the point. A lot of people are complaining about spice. “Oh I’m so over spice” or “I hate spice.” This is literally not about you, unless you are in fact, a teen. This is about putting spice into books written for children, and putting no content warnings. Literally not giving those readers the option to consent to the content.
I agree. This has become a problem. As a bookseller I find that I can’t recommend books to teens. Books written for 13 and 14 year olds aren’t really being published anymore. Some are, but most YA books are about adults, doing adult things. These are not about teen characters. Most YA these days don’t even have characters under the age of 18.
If teens want to read a an adult romance, those already exist. Why do we have to turn children’s books into adult books. The publishers are leaving behind the very group of kids YA was created for.
Whenever this topic gets brought up, people get so mad and say “you want to ban books!” No! I want school libraries to be full of books actually written for children.
I completely agree with you but I think overall the obsession with “spice” has created a problem where kids feel that it’s necessary because their favorite influencers are also obsessed with it. When I was growing up on booktube adults would recommend YA that was appropriate for my age group and also adult books. Now it feels that all these popular book influencers exclusively recommend spice. You’ll be showing a YA book and someone will ask “does it have spice” it’s way out of hand now
I found “spice” in our house…in my mother’s bookcase. This is just more fear mongering.
^^^ This!
I completely agree with you!
Agreed I miss Rick Riordan
As YA has gotten more and more adult, the lower end of the YA age range has become seriously underserved. There's little being published for 12-14 year olds.
And I agree, there's nothing wrong with adults reading YA literature, but they need to bring different expectations than they would for an adult book. I've seen people in their late 20s and even early 30s who express frustration with the immaturity of those YA books. They need to remember that the audience for those books are teens, and the books should fit the experiences and interests of people 12-17. If they find it doesn't engage their interest anymore--whether because of spice level or the maturity and interests of the main characters--then perhaps they'd prefer to read books written for adults.
There's a weird reluctance to admit that they're adults.
I definitely mention the immaturity of the characters when I review YA (largely because I know I’m not the only adult reading these books), but I try to mention at some point that I’m not the target audience and I understand why they are that way!
I can understand where you’re coming from, but young adult used to actually mean young adult between about 18-25. The problem was getting rid of the teen fiction and non-fiction genre titles.
When I first became a librarian, these were well defined and separated genres . At some point, they merged to all become young adult. In the past year our library staff have been working to re-separate the two genres. It would be amazing if we could see ALA as a whole re-implement the teen fiction genre across all libraries.
We shouldn’t be jumping from children’s book to young adult books. Book series like Percy Jackson and divergent used to fill this gap. Now you see them tagged as young adult which isn’t a category they fit as a characters are 12 to 18-year-olds.
I would argue that 12-14 is not young adult. They are still kids.
Personally, think the biggest issue isn’t the “spice” level or the presence of toxic dynamics. These are things that someone 16-19 might be experiencing or seeing friends/siblings experience. The real issue is the glorification of the unhealthy dynamics and red flags and I think unfortunately that’s a much harder thing to label. If a YA book contained these exact sorts of dynamics but then had the heroine realize how unhealthy they were, learn to self advocate, draw boundaries, and move on if they aren’t respected despite the difficulty that could be an incredibly touching/important book for a lot of young people.
Agreed 100%. I feel the same! It’s definitely harder to label and quantify but it’s vitality important for young people reading these books.
I'd like to see more stories of the characters growing up and away from toxicity too, but I don't think it actually encourages people to seek out real life abusers.
@@Tessa_RuI don’t think it makes people seek out those relationships either, but I think it makes it harder to identify the earlier warning signs, and might make younger people especially more likely to see them in a positive light, which can lead to sticking around longer than is healthy for some people, especially if they don’t have good counter-examples in their life/media.
@@Tessa_Rubooks with healthy relationships and boundaries exist already. They just don’t sell.
I think the virality of self-censorship terms that creators use to get past content filters (saying "spice" instead of saying "sexual content" is one of many examples) is a part of the larger problem of YA not being YA anymore. They're just trying to get their content out to a wide audience, and to do so they have to work within the flawed systems we have set up, but by contributing to the watering down of language they are allowing the lines between these terms to be blurred.
I think this is actually one major factor in a wider problem: young girls are not allowed to be young anymore.
They’re expected/pressured to be grown up when they’re still teenagers (example; the excessive skin care dilemma).
If YA books have sex, it should be proper discussions about consent, protection, safety, and health. A great example of a YA books that had a “sex scene” is My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick. The scene isn’t explicit; what it is, is the main character thinking about how it wasn’t perfect and it was awkward (jumping around trying to take their socks off) but it was still okay because it was with the boy she likes and she wanted to do it.
If authors want to add sex scenes into their fantasy stories, just make the main female character older. Make her a consenting adult that has a mostly/fully developed brain.
And my thing is, if the characters aren’t going to school, why are they teenagers in the first place? If they are going to school, make them college students.
TLDR; We are not asking for censoring nor prohibiting sex from teenagers.
What we are asking for is a division between YOUNG ADULT (which has always been for teenagers) and NEW ADULT/FICTION (what happened to everyone cheering for new adult when acotar was big???)!
There is nothing weird/wrong about wanting to read smut. But you know what is weird? Pushing for sex scenes between teenagers OR a teenager and a grown man. Sus.
I’d love to know a time where girls were allowed to live free from sexualisation. That world has never existed.
I was being hassled by grown ass men from the age of 12.
@@hippie1325 This is sad but true. I was so primed to think I was “mature for my age” and an “old soul” while in high school that I didn't bat an eye at attention from much older men while I was still a teen - because obviously, I was too mature for the boys my age. The sad part is, I was. But that’s because I was forced to grow up faster than I should’ve been and I still wasn’t mature/experienced enough to be in relationships with men over a decade my senior.
I totally agree; I think that a lot of girls (myself included at one point) feel so pressured to start engaging with dating and sex earlier than they might want to just because it is so normalized. It's hard to find media directed at women that has nothing to do with those topics, and it made me feel like I was "behind" and needed to catch up to the girls on my screen and in the pages of my books.
This is actually why I've been turned more and more off of YA in recent years. The characters in YA novels now don't even act like teenagers... it's this weird cognitive dissonance where I feel like I'm reading about characters in their 20s but every now and again the author reminds us they're sixteen. I'm not even trying to actively picture them as adults... it puts me off because I'm either unable to suspend disbelief that the characters are sixteen years old and I think it's poorly written as a result, or I forget their age and then I'm reminded and it just pulls me out of it and gives me serious ick.
"And my thing is, if the characters aren’t going to school, why are they teenagers in the first place? If they are going to school, make them college students.
TLDR;"
The obvious answer is because life goes downhill after high school unless one went to a shitty violent or strict high school or has abusive parents. High school is the last time many people felt really alive, so obviously they look back at that time with nostalgia. College is super busy and exhausting and then jobs make life miserable. 25+ is downhill ride on even more levels, including cognitive and physical decline.
"What we are asking for is a division between YOUNG ADULT (which has always been for teenagers) and NEW ADULT/FICTION (what happened to everyone cheering for new adult when acotar was big???)!"
It's "young adult", not "old minor". Young adults are 18-34.
I have complicated feelings on this. The comp titles are Ninth House (adult fantasy) and The Cruel Prince (older YA, by which I mean 17+), so I do think they were trying to market it to older teens... but then that ties back into the problem of YA not being written for younger teens anymore, but for straight women in their 20s/30s because that's the main demographic buying these. When I worked at B&N, I almost never saw a teen buying actual YA. It was all older women.
I'm not a prude, and I do think there's a way to write this stuff for teens, but this is... not it. And honestly I blame Sarah J Maas and her publisher for being the first to publish hard smut as "older YA"; but that's a very long rant.
I saw someone say that booktok/YA has just *become* wattpad, like i think it's fine to have teens read about some of this stuff but it should NOT be the norm. I think also a lot of adults 21+ dont want to acknowledge that they arent the target audience for YA anymore so publishers are like why yes you are still YA. Also to those same adults, there's no shame in reading erotica, no need to hide behind YA it's just hurting everyone involved.
Oh god you’re so right! I don’t understand why so many smut/spice readers have a strong aversion to reading erotica when it seems like it’s exactly what they want out of what they're reading. I must admit I have not read very much erotica, but even in my small sampling I’ve come across books that have pretty extensive world building, plots, and character development while delivering the level of spice and darker themes readers seem to want.
Absolutely! I just saw in another video this same point, YA has largely become wattpad, and to be fair I think the "wattpad" phase is important in development and early reading. However the whole point of wattpad was that it was outside the standard and the mere fact of reading a story in wattpad let you know the story was of a certain caliber. This literature leaking into mainstream publishing is incredibly damaging.
Very true!!
Ok you brought up a fantastic point (a few of them in fact), and I'll be thinking on this for a while. Grown women really DO need to move on to proper romance/erotica books, but they likely won't after hating on them as teens. There's a level of shame that some people just can't grow up from.
@@Tessa_Rui agree that why i hate dark romance. Cause it doesnt exist its erotica, if you shelve it as erotica, nobody has an issue but by selling it under romance it bleeds into the actual romance category and full on forces unsuspecting readers to enter peoples fantasies. Some scenes resemble full on war se€sual abuse tactics and people brush it off as just fiction. If you label it erotica people come actoss it and then decide if it matches their „desires“ and can choose for themselves. Also teens read it and i remember accidentally reading my first dark romance book amd not trusting my judgment if its actual grape(it was not even blurred lines or could be seen as the characters not communicating or cohersion), cause i couldnt believe it would happen in a romance book
As a children’s bookseller, I really appreciate this video! I agree with everything you’ve said - YA (and by extension, middle grade) has been aging up steadily the last few years. YA used to mean it was targeted at ages 12+, now most books in the category feel 14,15,16, sometimes straight up 18+! I’m wary of moral panic around sex in YA, but I also think we need to have this conversation. I do think publishers are blurring these lines for all the reasons you mentioned, and I don’t think it serves young readers. And as an aside, I do think there’s a difference between sex scenes and ‘spice’. And while I think sex can absolutely be a part of YA, I don’t necessarily think ‘spice’ should be.
And for the record, yep, that book is being labeled by publishers as YA and included in YA book buying lists!
I agree 100%. As I said in the video, I don’t think YA should have no sex - books are great way for teens to learn about sex in a low stakes environment - but the way the sex is handled is important in books aimed at teens. It’s unfortunate that a space that was carved out for young readers is being colonized by the very adults who have the majority of the world’s literary offerings set at their feet.
@@PlantBasedBride yep yep yep! I think it’s really irresponsible for the publishers to be labelling these books YA and including them in YA book buying lists for bookstores. Obviously, booksellers and buyers can’t read every book, so we rely on this info from publishers to make buying and categorisation choices. I work in a children’s specialist bookshop and we stock this book. I specialise more in middle grade so would never have gotten around to reading this, so without reviews like yours I wouldn’t even know about the content!
Elizabeth, I really appreciate watching you do spreads and discuss books. I will tell you I am over 60. I was asked to read a YA book by a niece who likes to talk about books with me. I was pretty shocked by what I read and knew my niece was in no way prepared to consume, contemplate, and consider the content! Thank you so much for calling attention to this problem. I read above my age always, but Michener, Stephen King, etc. was way different than the YA and adult fiction kids are reading now. We must all stay vigilant to help steer the young people in our lives into making good choices and understanding what they are reading and what it all means. Thanks again for what you are doing to help in this arena!
It is so important to keep talking about these things and sharing information with the younger people in our lives! I recently became an aunt and if my nephew turns out to be a reader I will happily start a little book club with him so we can talk about the content he’s coming across and make sure he understands how it aligns or differs from reality ❤️
I agree its really an issue with how books are being marketed. Someone high up in a big bookstore chain in the UK recently spoke in an interview about the pressure for bookstores to push 'tiktok trendy' books is affecting their marketing to older readers who are losing shelf space to their preferences despite being major book buyers. And it works the other way, in that authors are pressured to market their books a certain way to fit in the trends of subgenre (YA, romantasy, as 2 examples) publishers are just greedy
It’s so very frustrating to watch one subgenre monopolize the bookish space while so many amazing books are left unpublished or woefully under marketed! It has been very cool to see such a huge surge in new readers over the last handful of years, but greed and the attempt to make every single book a TikTok sensation (and somehow appealing to younger readers) is doing strange things to a publishing landscape. I only hope it’s not too late to course correct, though I’m not sure publishers have any interest in doing so.
YES. THANK YOU. IT IS EXACTLY THIS
Thanks for your video on this very important topic. I completely agree with you, that the correct labeling of books is necessary for every reader, but especially for a younger audience.
I would love a rating system similar to the film industry with a bit more specificity and clear guidelines!
Agreed. They are marketing books as PG-13 when they are actually R. Nothing is wrong with either of those ratings but you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into with the mislabeling
also people would come and say that 'teens read crazy nasty stuff online' YES, we all read crazy nasty stuff on ao3, but for free and made by a peer, most probably another teen or young adult. labeling IS the issue because the publishers want to make more money, also they need to have better standards when it comes to the writing because they really do publish anything as long as it resembles the latest more famous 'spicy' romance.
Also any fanfiction I ever read had accurate mature/NC-17/etc flags of some sort on the initial link or first page author’s note!
Yes 100% agreed, PLUS ao3 has comprehensive tags telling readers about EVERYTHING that is in the fic, including possible sexual content, kinks, and whether the fic contains “dark” themes
Plus ao3 has much better content tags you usually know what you're getting into
What I think is so interesting about his conversation is how it usually stems from ACOTAR but like it's clear to me that the whole ACOTAR series was originally intended to be and adult fantasy series that was pushed into YA because S J Mass is a woman. (I'm not trying to comment about the quality of the series or anything about the audience I'm more talking about choices by publishers rather than authors)
This is a great point and definitely a huge factor in this shift!
100% agree I tend to warn parents who are not readers to at least pay attention to what their child is reading. For me being able to talk to my parents about the content I was consuming was very helpful. Video games, books, I think I felt safe talking to them about what I was reading. Sometimes I think that there are children and teens who feel like they are going to get in trouble.
I’m glad you were able to talk to your parents about the content you were consuming! I was not able to, and it wasn’t so much that I thought I’d get in trouble but more so that there were no open lines of communication and I felt a huge amount of discomfort/embarrassment that my parents did not work to dispel.
@@PlantBasedBride I too was reading very vanilla type books haha! So I don’t know if I would have been able to talk about this level of sexual content with my parents. Even having the space to have an open and educated conversation is something. I think this conversation bleeds into the vulnerability of minors to unlimited adult content on the internet and social media. It is definitely a problem.
Depending on the parents they might its definitely good to encourage discussion and the parents taking interest in their kids interests
"Late stage capitalist hellscape." 😭 yes we ARE, uggggh. I'm so glad you made this video, too. We need more people speaking up about how concerning and uncomfortable it is for not only teens reading this kind of content, but how BIZARRE it is for adults to read about children in sexual situations.
It's also an issue because it pushes out authors and books who want to write less sexualized content. As an author (now writing in another, adult, genre) who's had some YA books rejected by publishers because of this very issue, I wish there was a place for other types of books written for this age group. I had one publisher say that they loved my characters, setting, story, etc., BUT they didn't see enough "romance" in the first three chapters. I knew this was code for -- "not sexy enough." Not everyone wants smut in their books. it's fine if adults want that -- that's a choice. But where's the choice for -- I don't know -- ACE or demisexual or other teens? What about teens who aren't sure of their sexual orientation? (Most of these popular books push heteronormative relationships , with any other orientation only briefly mentioned or reserved for very minor characters). I also think focusing on sex overrides other important issues that young people grapple with -- like personal identity, goals outside of "love" relationships, etc.
This is such a huge issue and it annoys me to no end. Most books in the YA genre atm is esentially popular genre/trope of the day + romance. And while I'm not opposed to romance, the amount of times I've finished a YA booking feeling 'wow, that was 100 pages you could've spent on more worldbuilding/plot' is a lot...
Why does it take a UA-cam Creator to bring this to light? But when I try to say something to "important people" in person I get crazy looks, and told to get over it? Does this seem normal to others? I barely can get through young adult books anymore these days. Cheers for you mentioning this!
No i agree , its the whole let people enjoy things and its just fiction response that make me give up
Because, generally, the average person doesn't care.
I totally agree!! There's so much normalizing abuse on the one hand while we're trying to teach teenagers and young adults that grooming and abuse is something to be aware of. But by normalizing this type of abuse in media, and especially in books and movies, it's sending the message that it's "ok to date older abusers". And who will teenagers and young adults listen to? Parents and adults who care about their well-being? Or publishers and the media who are after the bottom line?
As a former children's librarian, I can say that these tendencies have been around since the formation of the YA category of books. I, too, share your concern in these things. The genre where I noticed it first was in anime - where you also have a visual. Some of these anime were put out by Playboy, of all companies! It is up to parents to make sure they are aware of what their children are reading and discussing the why nots with them in a way that makes them want to read it out of rebellion.
I agree but if i think nack to my teenage self, k would just look online for the books i want to read and find pefs cause its free and teenage me didnt have money. And i never told my mom what 18+ scenes i found in the book even if i told her what the plot is
100% agree that this is not a new phenomenon. I was in middle school when the first Twilight book came out 16 years ago, and it was very obviously advertised to tweens and teens.
I'm going to show my age in this comment, but my YA was VC Andrews. These books were VERY concerning and I should not of been reading them, but I didn't have anyone monitoring what I read or even caring that I was reading. This push for mature themes is very concerning and I couldn't agree with you more. Not all teens have parents or adults to guide them or talk to them about how these relationships are unhealthy and how damaging these relationships can be. I also agree that we live in the "money makes the world go around" world and sex has been selling for years. My hopes is that more people, like yourself will speak out and publishers and authors will listen. Thank you Elizabeth for speaking on this.
I read all of Virginia Andrews books as a kid. Did they make we want to commit incest? Gosh no. The brother sister relationship was one of the most loving partnerships I’d ever seen in a series. I think adults look back on things with a different perspective.
If YA didn’t exist, kids would just read adult fiction like they always have.
@@Soniawithani I haven’t read any VC Andrews so I can’t speak to those books specifically, but I agree that one of the most vital pieces of this puzzle is having safe adults to talk to and learn from, and unfortunately so many teens don’t have that.
Sorry for the belated comment in reply to yours, but your reply got the old gears turning. A lot of children end up reading books that are too mature for them (either through neglect, curiosity, or some other reason), and after reading your comment, it hit me that there is a very big difference between YA having smut and dark themes in it, and kids getting their hands on adult books that contain these things. In the latter case, the kids often KNOW the themes and story being told are "too mature" for them; they're AWARE they're in territory they're not supposed to be in. There's a kind of understanding there, that they're reading out of their age group and that everything presented in the story/text isn't something they should or have to think about.
In the former case, the books are literally being marketed to them; they think these themes and stories are FOR THEM and for their age group, and they're led to believe via marketing and shelving that the themes in these books are relevant to them *now* and they should be thinking of/considering them.
That's not to say that some kids don't accidentally read adult novels, but in my experience having done such things when I was much younger...I was aware INSTANTLY that I had accidentally checked an adult book out of the library, and it let me view that book and story through the lens of a young person who knew I was reading something that wasn't meant for me.
I deeply wish publishers would be more responsible (and agree that New Adult should become more officially adopted as a transition genre), but unfortunately they will continue to do whatever nets them the most money. :(
I read two of them when I was 20 . Flowers in the attic and Petals on the wind. But I didn't consider them YA at all. The first book I enjoyed because it was a straight up Drama Horror Thriller. The second book I think was sick, all the horror thriller from the first one disappeared and turned into a WTF is this?
@@loati94 I don't think they are YA either. I think I was 14 when I picked Flowers off of the lake resort bookshelf for something to read while on vacation. Thought it was for my age group because there were kids on the cover. Read it and found it was definitely NOT for my age group. If I remember correctly, the sex wasn't gratuitous, and is tame by today's standards. But it being the first sex I'd read, and incest at that, well, it still disgusts me to this day. That ties in to @mannastea's point--if I'd KNOWN it was an adult book, I probably would've put it back on the shelf. Because adult books were boring.
I’m so glad you’re talking about this! It’s so important for publishers and authors to write appropriately for their age and it’s ALSO important for parents to know what their kids are reading!
Such a great conversation! I work at an elementary school that is constantly trying to add more books for our grades 6-8 readers who just devour books - except now all of the new books need to be "content read" by staff before being given to the teens. I help out with the content reads, and wow, I am often shocked by what's now considered "normal" in teen and sometimes even middle grade books (those that put emphasis on romance, and girls being obsessed with boys). I definitely agree better content warnings and labels would be helpful!
Oh that’s unsettling - even in books aimed at preteens? I don’t read a lot of middle grade/children’s so I didn’t realize it was spreading there, too 😟
Thank you for addressing a topic I’ve been concerned about for so long! I have to read everything that is labeled YA before letting my teens read them because I can’t trust this rating anymore. You have articulated my own thoughts perfectly.
I agree with you totally. As a fully-fledged adult I don't need or want spice in my books. In old movies they would do that whole 'pan to the ocean' thing and viewers knew what was happening. That's enough for me. I now go to the effort of looking up content warnings before I buy a book. This came about after spending money on books that I had to skip around in because of the type of spice they contained. I don't like spending money that way. Which leads me to wonder why book publishers haven't been pressured to use a rating system before now? In this era of continued book banning maybe a rating system would help? Probably not; those who ban books don't seem to want anyone to read them. Ratings would help inform readers and especially parents. I don't want younger readers exposed to more than they're ready for. You addressed this very well. As adults it is our responsibility to help younger generations avoid learning everything the hard way.
Let's not ban books. Let those who want spice be able to have it. And let those who don't want it be able to avoid it. It seems like this should be easy. Unfortunately, I think you're right that it comes down to the almighty dollar. Thanks for your caring video.
I think it’s two fold, as a parent of a teen it’s important to me to have books labeled appropriately and also knowing what my kiddo is reading. I do utilize her dad a lot for the manga she reads bc he knows more about those than me.
And the more cagey publishers are about the content in books and who they’re aimed at just makes it a more confusing and time-consuming process for parents to do the research, which a lot of parents don’t have time for!
@@PlantBasedBride exactly! It can be very frustrating
100% agree with you. As an adult I'm also getting tired of the crazy spice and toxic relationships in books, can't imagine what it's doing for young impressionable minds.
As a side note, I'd love to know which books were you reading when you were a teen, and overall better recs for teens and young adults ❤
How about a video suggesting appropriate YA or even Adult books for teens? My niece is currently 12 years old and I try to bridge the gap between her dramatic social life at school and what more regulated thoughts/opinions/friendships can look like. I agree that this is a problem and thankyou so much for talking about it.
I happy to recommend. If she likes fantasy Brandon Sanderson is a solid recommendation. Tress of the emerald sea is a good starting point. I don't have more that I'd recommend but 12 is still young.
I suggest Rangers Apprentice, Redwall, Warrior Cats (the first series, everything else is meh), Squires Tales, Boxcar Children..etc . I grew up with those series, and they were super good (I still have them and read them)
Definitely seconding Ranger's Apprentice, also add Skulduggery Pleasant and Percy Jackson.
thirding rangers apprentice. im 18 and i still go back to reading it, its just so good!
I don’t think this would be nearly as big a problem if we taught proper sexual education to teens and young adults. I can see how young people can use these books to teach them about sex, consent, kink, etc. but without an active conversation with family (especially parents) it’s a slippery slope to toxic relationships. By actively limiting this kind of conversation, teens are going to seek it out in other ways. Especially as a queer kid, the ONLY kind of literature with that kind of representation was smutty wattpad or tumblr fanfiction. And it’s not like we learned anything about that in sex ed either. Coming out as an adult I felt wholly unprepared for queer sex and relationships and was so lucky to find the right people that didn’t take advantage of that. It all starts in the home, in conversation, and in education!!
100% agree that the issue stems from nonexistent or not enough sexual education on ALL aspects of being sexual, including queerness, relationships, and yes kink and pleasure.
I totally agree with your arguments! Contentwarnings shouldn't be broad/keeping you guessing/vibey, they should WARN. Also a system to label the spice / triggers would be so easily done with just using the common alphabet 🤷🏻♀️
Many of these "YA" books are in the teen sections at the library. Even though 18 is still a teen, 13+ year olds are reading these books.
I think the sexual experience is important to represent in older YA BUT...AND ITS A BIG BUT. There is a difference between coming of age and exploring your own sexuality as you grow into adulthood and explicit very adult erotic themes. Immortal Dark should 100% be an adult fantasy book.
Additionally - I think what you market the book as is super important. It's the issue I have with It Ends With Us being advertised as a romance when it should just be fiction. This should be adult fantasy, not YA.
I agree wholeheartedly! I think teens should, ideally, be exposed to some important aspects of sexuality, especially health and consent, before they’re actually engaging in these behaviours in real life. And books are a great way to do that. But again, that only works if the books are presenting healthy relationships and pointing out when relationships are not safe and why. Fiction doesn’t have to be completely responsible for teaching kids about safe and healthy relationships, but there is a level of responsibility there when they’re earning their living by selling books to minors.
Elizabeth, I am absolutely with you on this. As a mom of a teenage boy, it's been difficult to find books for his age. As I've read a lot more YA and Adults books this year, I'm very surprised by how much they've changed since I was a young adult. I really do hope publishers will change how they market books and please more writers write good books for our teens!
Thank you for this video!!!
he may like Full Tilt by Neal Schusterman. . I'd recommend it to teens and up. A couple of teen brothers get invited to a mysterious carnival where they must ride and survive seven "deadly rides" before dawn or they're trapped there forever... explores themes of (and overcoming) fear, insecurities, loss, regret, guilt.. it has a great message imo and is a fun fast-paced read. one of my faves from last year.
Brandon Sanderson is another author I suggest. He's one of my favorite authors
For those who say "Adults should realize they're adults and stick to the adult section-" I get it. Adults invading teen spaces and still acting like teenagers is a real issue. That being said- some of the biggest media franchises in the world are for kids or young adults. The Hunger Games and Twilight, sure. But even the original Hobbit book was meant for children before Lord of The Rings was written for the adults that grew up with it. Trying to tell adults to stay away from YA sections is not only useless, as people won't listen, but also alienating. Teenage years are tough, and their struggles aren't always apparent to adults. Reading these books can help people still sympathize with different age groups, consciously or subconsciously. And not to mention that YA books also have other benefits- for those who specifically DON’T want spice (thats me, btw, the sex-repulsed Asexual) YA is a safer section, where (it used to be) you don't have to research a book before you read to make sure you don't have unexpected very spicy scenes. And even for people who just want a faster-paced or more casual read, YA can really scratch that itch, while it's sometimes harder to find adult books that do the same without more research. And sometimes you just wanna read something easy because reading is supposed to be fun and you're a little tired.
I’m an adult and I still read ‘teen’ books as well. There’s that nostalgia value; there are children’s book series that I started as a child, but forgot about because the sequel took years to come out, and by the time I remembered it existed and how much I had once wanted to finish the series, I was in my twenties. And despite being an adult in grad school, I don’t want so much ‘spice’ in my books either. It makes reading in public awkward. When I’m trying to relax with a nice book on the commute home or in the office at my university, the last thing I want to be worrying about is for a stranger or a fellow student/colleague to look over my shoulder and see random porn. It’s called NSFW for a reason 😭
Plus, I rarely find well written smut. I find that it’s often rather corny (genuinely, some bored 20 year olds on AO3 write better smut than the published books I’ve seen).
I understand I'm a bit late responding to this video, but I just wanted to provide my 2 cents. I attended a book signing event with the author for Immortal Dark when it first released (the author is Melbourne based and the event was in Sydney), and the way the author spoke about the book implied heavily that it was always intended to be an adult book. The entire vibe of the event was very adult focused, and there was no one under 18 at the signing. The topic of spice was even brought up multiple times during the Q&A, and the author engaged with those questions happily. It comes as a shock to me a whole month later finding this video and learning the book was marketed as YA?!
honestly i read that book thinking it was adult i had no idea it was YA 😭 rly enjoyed the book as an adult read. 🤷🏻♀️
I was pretty shocked to see it repeatedly labelled YA! It didn’t fully deliver what I wanted from it but I wouldn’t have had an issue with it if it was clearly labelled as adult dark Romantasy with mature themes and content.
Same! And when I heard that Kidan is 18 I was like WAIT what? I’m not sure how I missed that in the book but it doesn’t make sense for her to be 18 at all
I didn't realize either, I also looked up if there was a release date for book 2 and saw that it will also be translated into German (German bookseller here xD) and it's not going to be released as a YA book but general Fantasy xD (same happened with Dark Rise by C.S. Pacat), so that's fine by me and I forgot way too early that Kidan is only 18 bc noone in this book acts like young adults xD
I just wish there was some type of warning label on books like they have for movies (PG, PG-13, R, etc) especially when it comes to dark themes and sexual content. Because the covers can be very deceiving! It’s not just teenagers that have access to these books unfortunately…much younger ones are able to read these due to having them in the libraries at their school or even local libraries. Sometimes, even grown women/men get into situations in which they don’t see the “red flags” much less “children” or “teenagers”.
It's such a confusing system, and frankly, publishers aren't making it any easier!
@@PlantBasedBride so true! Thank you for your perspective on this and for sharing it as well, I greatly appreciated it🫶🏼
That’s essentially what children’s/middle grade/YA/Adult used to (and is supposed to) be. There used to be boundaries for each of the categories, for example you could have sex scenes in YA but they had to basically be fade to black type scenes and there was a limit on how many swear words you could use
Thank you for this video. This book came up on an email from Waterstones, that was labelled as YA. I was looking for my 12 year old daughter, who reads YA, I would not expect the topics you talked about to be featured in a YA book. I wouldn't be happy if I allowed my daughter to read this, as much I research the books before she read them.. I do expect a YA book to be suitable for 12 year old, this needs to be addressed and publishing needs to act accordingly and label books correctly
Yikes, that is unsettling 😟 I can’t imagine anyone under 16 reading this book, and 16-20 is really pushing it due to the content. Do bookstore do even a cursory amount of research into the books they recommending in this way?
@PlantBasedBride as YA is aimed at 12 to 18, the content of this book is really quite questionable and concerning 😳. It sounds more like something I would read. I think there needs to be another section that covers 12 to 16 and then have 16 to 19 as YA. I honestly don't think bookstores to look further into if a book is advertised correctly
My main issue with the way things are categorized is that YA should be for adults. It's in the title of the age group. Young adults are 18 and up. They're not 13. Those are teenagers. I think a lot of the controversy about "spice" in YA books is that adult books with spice are being cross-marketed in the YA category because they're popular and often because they're written by women and a lot of women also read YA. And a lot of those cross-over books are fantasy and women authors of fantasy often end up with their books shelved in YA even when they're not YA books. I also think it's unfair to think that with YA as a teen category more than an actual "young adult" category, that every book that's shelved there needs to be for the entire age span of the category (which is often in the 13/14-18/19 range). A book for/appropriate for 18-year-olds is still a book for people in this category even if it's not a book that someone would necessarily want their 14 year old who's still in 8th grade to read. Even if things were reclassified as "teen readers" instead of "young adult," that would still include 18 and 19 year old readers. The issue is probably that someone can be both a teen and a legal adult. And once someone is the legal age to drive and/or have a job in the state (or country, etc.) where they work, it's pretty difficult to control the media they consume when they can pay for it themselves and drive themselves to get it/watch it. I also think that it's wildly easy for a parent to find out about the content of a book their child wants. A minute on Goodreads while you're standing in a Barnes and Noble with your kid asking, "Can I read this" will tell you exactly what type of content is in a book. We're past having to ask a bookseller who might not know or a librarian or having to read the entirety of a book ourselves before figuring that out. So anyone who thinks a book might have been dubiously shelved in the YA section as a cross-over, can check it pretty quickly. And if a teen/young adult is old enough to purchase things themselves, then they're also old enough to just buy things off the adult shelf anyway. I do think that books written specifically for young teen audiences with young teen characters shouldn't contain really graphic and explicit scenes. But most of the books in question don't have 14 year old main characters and were not written for 14 year olds. So the actual issue isn't completely that YA has become too explicit; it's that the marketing departments aren't separating the books that are for older audiences (whether that's older teens - your 18 year olds for example) from the ones that are more universally appropriate for the entire age group that YA shelves encompass.
this is exactly what ive been thinking and saying for a while. it’s one thing if a teenager deliberately picks up a book from the adult section of the library or bookstore and comes across material that many would rate as too mature for them. if a teen *chooses* to go to the adult section and pick but a smut book, that’s life.
but *young adult* should remain a space for teenagers - in my opinion, if a teen is selecting a book from the ya section, there should be no risk of them accidentally stumbling across the kind of graphic sex scenes that are unfortunately starting to become commonplace in ya.
edit - and yea, i work at a bookstore, and many books, like immortal dark, are which people will insist is misplaced on the shelves and is actually for adults, is listed in our systems as young adult / teen.
I think slightly more explicit depictions of sex can be fine as long as they make sure to highlight safety, consent, respect, etc. But that should be clearly indicated so teens who aren’t ready/interested in such content can easily choose something else!
They want as many books in the YA section as possible because that's where the mass fandoms happen, merch sells, teens are on socials the most pushing and creating mass hysteria over book characters.
But many of these books could easily have been marketed to adults by just a change to the characters age in the description.
So many YA 18 yo FMCs are being written like they're actually 28.
I can tell you I would never ever want my 15 yo to read Zodiac Academy for example. She's too immature to understand how toxic those relationships are and she should never romanticize them. That to me is a great example of publishers dropping the ball on their responsibility to put age appropriate books in the YA section. Bully romances do not belong in YA unless it's to teach girls what to stay away from!
I've been thinking exactly the same while reading the cruel prince. The protagonist acts like she's in her early or mid-20s instead of 17. It's an amazing book and well written, even for adults but even if the sexual content is not that bad, that degree of murder and torture is a little much for teens.
One of the thing that confounds me, is the fact that New Adult as a genre (or age range) was being marketed as YA writing + sexual scenes a few years ago, but I haven't seen it being used recently at all. Which is such a shame, because using New Adult for books like this would really help set expectations, but of course YA sells well and publishers want all the money they can get.
I do like Andrew Joseph Write, who clearly writes books aimed at teens but doesn't shy away from darker topics, includes trigger warnings in front of his books AND limits sexual content. Because while teens can definitely handle darker topics and should be able to read books about themselves, if it's being aimed at this group it shouldn't include the full on sex scenes we see nowadays. While it can definitely be mentioned, discussed, or even have a "closed door" approach, I do not think full on smut (including kink) is what is healthy for them.
It's definitely a tough subject, and as someone who doesn't really interact with teens, I have no idea what it's like for them and if they're actually reading these books.
I have also found it baffling that New Adult is not utilized more! I find it odd in general that publishing doesn’t have any clear labelling system to distinguish between different types of content… Everything is so nebulous and often set by the publishers’ marketing material with no official rating, content warnings, or age recommendation to be found!
And also...I would LOVe to read books where protagonists are between 16 -18 and married with a family and I think we are missing this whole age group, regardless of sex content or not
@@PlantBasedBride New Adult isn't utilized as much because bookstores often don't have a New Adult section, and so the marketing doesn't line up enough to convince publishers to invest more in this much-needed space. Capitalism once again ruins things for everyone...
Teen here, I stay as far away from them as I possibly can, however some of my friends do read them and from what I've observed they're not in a place to critically engage with these books.
They know some of the behaviour is wrong and abusive but because the books are written in a way that romanticizes this toxicity, they still end up deeming certain worrying patterns desirable (such as big age gaps). It really makes me worry for their safety when they get into relationships sometimes.
I've personally only taken sneak peaks into self-proclaimed "spicy" YA books, and let me tell you I was horrified everytime to open a bright, colorful, obviously YA coded book, which looks and sounds like a cute love story at first, on a random page and it was smut with kink elements involved (worst one I've seen so far was Love Hypothesis, but I also had this experience with Icebreaker and some other books). And like, these books were the YA Bestsellers on the shelves at Thalia :/.
Also the writing style is very reminicent of AO3 and Wattpad fictions in my opinion, who also show the same red flags of romantizizing abuse for smut and kinks pretty often.
I mean, this was always going to happen. When publishers created the term 'young adult' (which, to a reasonable person in the US, should mean 18-22 maybe) but meant it as double-talk for 'teen', in service of making their teen readers feel more adult, they also opened the door for adults to read YA stuff and not feel like they were reading kids stuff. When marketing is misleading, and reliant on self-deception to push more sales, the edges are going to get murky. I work in comics, and there's a similar dynamic going on, although it came up more organically: what was originally a medium mostly for children is now catering to kids who grew up reading them, but are now adults, and it can lead to some dissonance when a kid picks up something a little more mature than they should. We try to communicate as clearly as we can, but it happens.
But that brings us to why I think this whole thing is well-intentioned, but naive. Teens are going to get into stuff they aren't supposed to. It's what they do. Are the relationship dynamics in Twilight gross? Yeah, of course. But here's the rub: every 16-year-old in the world has seen porn, right? Adult content is everywhere, and teenagers are GREAT at spotting, and feverishly sponging up, any content that their parents would really prefer they not have gotten into. I got ahold of a girlie book when I was in jr high school, saw my first porn video at like 14, and was sexually active at 16 (this was like 30 years ago). My peers had similar experiences. If you're worried about a 17-year-old reader may need content warnings for lit, that ship has sailed. All that stuff you were saying about the importance of educating about boundaries and informed consent, I agree completely, but I'll go you one better: it's not about warning the readers of Immortal Dark, it's about educating EVERYONE. If you relabel the smutty stuff 'New Adult,' it's totally naive to think that teens won't read it. Hell, I bet the reason publishers HAVEN'T done that is that if they do, a bunch of YA readers will migrate to that shelf, and they'll have split their demographic. Like you said yourself, they're never going to do such an act of economic self-harm.
Having an age rating system for books would be such a great idea. We do this with movies, we need to do it with books too!
Yes. I'm a YA author and while I write 'realistic' fiction, this bothers me too. A teen should not be in any sort of sexual relationship without that consent and understanding that you mentioned. Publishers need to step up and authors do too.
I could not agree more!! 🧡I too consider this development in YA to be very concerning... 🤔 I remember well, back when I was 14, I borrowed a book from our school library and it had a VERY disturbing, very explicit intimate scene in it... next day, I brought the book back and told the librarian that I don't think this book should be for 12-14 year old kids - I showed her the passage, and she was completely shocked. She told me, the library got their books from publishing houses, who categorize books for specific ages and she would have never thought, that such a scene would appear in a book for 12-14 year olds. She apologized and I think she started to proofread many books in that category afterwards. 😅
A content warning should be the bare minimum. Much better would be a general "level up" in the quality of "written spice" - there are so many elegant ways to describe intimacy without being straightforward p/rn or being just cringeworthy.
What was this book? I can't believe this is in a book for 12 year olds...
@ I can‘t remember the book title, but the scene was about abusive behavior of an adult man towards a teenge girl and it was just awful to read back then 🫣
THANK YOU! I have been talking about this to anybody who will listen to me (and even some who don't) for years, and I'm glad more people are starting to talk about it more and more. It's fine that adults want to read YA books, but the fact that they are now causing YA to become a kind of adult genre when they are not the intended to be the target audience. But as someone who reads almost entirely fantasy, I have found that the adult books I read are far less sexual and don't glorify toxic relationships and dark themes than the YA books I read only a few years ago. It's why I did a huge switch to adult rather than YA books almost overnight, to the point that I owned somewhere between 50 and 75 YA books that I hadn't read yet (ones that I was so excited to read for a while) that I am now realizing I will never read.
Without going into too much detail, growing up reading a lot of YA fantasy books (Shatter Me, ACOTAR, Throne of Glass, and Divergent specifically). I was 14 or 15 when I read the first three of those series and more like 10 when I read Divergent, and it directly reinforced the idea that my abuser wasn't an abuser because I was going through that situation with him when I read them, it made me believe that there wasn't anything wrong with the 18 year old in grade 12 taking advantage of me when I was 14 in grade 9 and that his actions were that of a man who loved me, not of an abuser.
So, I genuinely thank you for speaking about this, I think people need to realize this and more people need to talk about it.
I’m so sorry you went through that. I wish it was an isolated incident, but so many young girls have similar experiences and it’s heartbreaking. I hope you have a future full of healthy, reciprocal, loving relationships ❤️
I’m only a teen for another month, but this topic has been taken over by adults so much older than me since I was like 14/15. We’re completely capable of understanding that the 300 year old immortal vamp that’s a bad boy with a heart of gold is not the same as Jim from the Class of 2009 still hanging out by the high school who smells like cigarettes. We are capable of reading works of fiction and understanding that something may be fun to read, but we don’t want that to happen to us irl, that it’s just fun to play around with in fiction (in fact, Immortal Dark was the first depiction of blood play I’ve read and now I know without even needing to do it that I’m good on that lmao). And if we’re not old enough to understand that like when I was a little kid when ACOTAR came out, then parents have to step in (which mine did).
The women (who are mainly the authors of these works) writing these books are no where near the driving force that leads girls and women into unhealthy relationships. Women have ended up in horrid and unhealthy relationships before books like these became popular, before movies and television ever existed. Predatory men have always been the driving force even before mass media. Mass media has not increased those numbers. It’s always been something men have put us through.
We’re not being robbed of our agency when I’m literally able (and my parents were able a few years ago when they needed to) to Google a book and find out the additional info I need about it. If I picked up Immortal Dark and saw the “violence” tag (which is also just as vague) there I can just Google to see what specific kind of violence if I’m concerned. It’s amazing how books like The Hunger Games (which I love!) or literally any of those old YA dystopian books my oldest sister used to read can have people being blown to bits and violently unalived by others and adults haven’t been blowing up our spaces for years and years telling us these books are gonna make us go stäb someone lmao but the second someone does a tush smack during a bare tush make out it’s ‘you mere teens can’t tell this is bad! you’re gonna end up in an äbusive relationship now because of this!’ And if any younger teens aren’t able to differentiate then their parents have to be cognizant of what they are reading and either not allow it or talk to them about it.
And it’s like I don’t even disagree with the idea of a new adult category and more specific content warnings (though I think we should be careful about labelings beyond trigger warning and content warnings that because the rise in book bannings that’ll take advantage of that idea like marking higher ages for anything even depicting queer characters). I do think adults’ purchasing habits have made less space for less dark and more early and mid teen books for years and publishers should buy more for that teen demo more often to level it out. I just for years have resented the idea that as a teen (especially once I hit like 15/16), I am incapable of understanding when fiction is fiction when it comes to spice (and only spice cause again adults truly rarely seemed to care about the amount of violence in these books) or that parents don’t need to parent when it comes to their younger teens.
I'm glad you’re not feeling influenced by this content. That’s great! I’m not a parent so I was mostly extrapolating from my own personal experience, where I did get into unhealthy dynamics as an older teen. I tried to make it very clear in the video that I don’t think teens are dumb or that they can’t distinguish between fact and fiction, but there is a real correlation between trends in media and the normalization of real life behaviours and relationships. It’s impacted me and a lot of other people, and while I hope you don’t run into the same things I did, your experience is also not every teen’s experience.
I will never get tired of you calling out the old man vamp-boyfriend trope. Such an important critique.
I appreciate you for this. Great perspective and a respectful commentary that is arguably good to bring to the table. ❤
Ps, what lip are you wearing?
I think this is your best video yet and I think all of your opinions are on point. I will be sharing this with a friend who has an 11 year old that is struggling to read things that are suitable for an 11 year old mind. I especially like your thoughts about the publishing industry crowding out stories/writing that is actually YA. And I agree with you that there isn't anything wrong with teenagers reading spice but I feel you are right when you say that the publishing industry is making it harder and harder for parents, who do want to monitor their child's reading material, to sift through what is appropriate and what is not. Most of my practical sex education came from books but your exactly right when you say that there is a huge difference between what used to be sexual content and the very racy, more adult oriented sexual content. I recently went into a Barnes & Noble for the first time in years and I went into the YA section to see if they had hardcover copies of an author who is legitimately YA and I was blown away at the series I have read that I think are decidedly not YA that are shelved in that section. And to boot, they did not have hardcover copies of even the more recent titles by the YA author that I was looking for. Thank you as always for your content!
Thank you! As much as I myself dislike SJM and CoHo my only genuine issues with both of their books is the fact that both have been marketed to teens and I strongly feel that just as the need for romantasy-esque novels from adults have shaped YA, the marketing of non-teen romance and erotica books to teens I feel has also contributed to where we find ourselves today. One thing I always wonder is why people are careful to guard kids against visual p*rn but not the literary kind when both can eqaully shape you teens' expectations and senses of reality. I might say the literary kind can be even more intense because it looks so innocent on the surface and tends not to carry the same stigmas as the visual kind does so people might be more likely to go in without any expectation of encountering it. Personally a r*pe scene in a book I read when I was 12 still haunts me to this day, I wish I'd never read it.
And from personal experience I can say I completely didnt internalize the red flags of someone hanging out in your bedroom without your consent (cough twilight) i genuinely did think it was romantic when I was a teen so no I dont think seperating fiction from reality is as easy for teens nor is it as easy to examine what you internalize from books when you are a teen. (For those who say it should be easy to distinguish between the two.)
Thank you for having this discussion. I wish it was had more often because though I know a lot of youtubers have mentioned it, I think the general points are often ignore or dismissed when they're made and contentualized within one specific book that a reviewer is discussing.
Not sure if I managed to stay coherent, sorry for the long comment but this is something I feel incredibly strongly about. Thanks again for the video.
That is such a good point about parents and society in general being so focussed on the kind of visual content kids and teens are exposed to, but seeming to have very little concern around how vivid their imaginations can be combined with explicit literary material.
Yeah, as much as I think teens are great at distinguishing between reality and fiction when it comes to the fantastical elements I agree that especially because they have likely had very little experience with romantic relationships in their own lives, these books can set expectations and normalize behaviours before they’re even interacting with people romantically. Which can be pretty dangerous when the behaviours that are being normalized are ones that in real life can be indicative of coercive or abusive relationship dynamics.
Not the point but reading your comment made me remember how reading the graphic SA scene in The Kite Runner while in high school absolutely scarred me. The teacher had not given any sort of content warning and it was genuinely so frustrating and infuriating
This is wonderful. I am 40 - so like you and maybe even more so, I read adult books as a kid and teen and yeah… very vanilla. My youngest is a reader and she’s 16 1/2 and reads YA and Adult but we talk about sex. We talk about emotional and physical effects of sex and we talk about respectful relationships (romantic and platonic) and she said to me (while watching the recent season of Heartstopper) that she wished more media showed people choosing to wait to have sex. She said it seems strange that her and her friends want to be responsible and also want to wait but she barely sees it represented. And I think that’s VERY true. Anyway… just adding that thought and thanks for this video. Great conversation.
I wish all books had better content warnings not just YA. I do agree with you that YA is no longer what it was and for the detriment of the category. Also it’s now so annoying to look for books because I never know the section to look in anymore.
I think people also forget that there’s a difference between YOUNG adult and NEW ADULT! There’s definitely a lot of books that should be under the new adult category
Wow. So interesting…as I don’t read YA I had no idea of this situation…tbh it is very important to categorise books according to their topics, otherwise it could be problematic for the readers…thanks Elizabeth for explaining this so well…
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Elizabeth! Not many people bring this up and it’s so important. As a personal preference, I like to read books that have no spice and do my best to avoid them. With that being said I’d love to see a video further covering this topic and a suggestion list of book recommendations that you find that are either teen friendly (clean books) or ones for adults that have little to no spice and are still good reads.
I just shared a post on my Instagram with 27 YA books I rated at least 4 stars and would recommend to teens. I added a link to the description box for anyone who is interested! I hope you find something you love on that list ❤
Amazing! I’ll check it out asap ~ thanks Elizabeth🕺🏽
to give an author’s perspective-there is definitely a pressure many writers are feeling these days about adding romance/spice for marketing reasons. or even to make a book YA when it’s probably better as Adult/new adult. sometimes it makes the difference between whether or not your book sells or fails to attract editors based on “marketability”. i agree that maybe we need new labels and rating systems and also i think the solution has to start with publishers choosing to invest in a diversity of stories.
Thank you for talking about it!
And thanks for all the nuances you bring.
I've always felt very disturbed by the publisher's target audience on this kind of subject. As well as the book influencers who take part, and who, even though they know their audience, never put any warning on this content. I think this should be the minimum behaviour. We should be talking more about how these relationships are portrayed as 'normal' and questioning the growing popularity of these writings. Maybe I'm too worried, but I find it really alarming.
I haven't read Immortal Dark yet, but I will bc as a 37yo black woman, I'm excited for it. Black readers didn't get a lot of rep in the fantasy genre when YA became a thing. Most of my classmates in the late 90s/early 2000s were reading books by Zane, which is most definitely in the Erotica genre. We are just now getting our Vampire Academy and Vampire Diaries like stories... Which also have questionable vampire/mentor age gap relationships and were so popular they got movies and tv series. Although, I do appreciate the deep dive video essays on series like these that are being made now bc looking back at Pretty Little Liars with a developed prefrontal cortex... Yeesh.
I think what's considered YA needs a shift to maybe have something between Middle Grade and YA like a Younger Teens. Also, there needs to be some responsibility of authors and publishers to provide serious author's notes and content/trigger warnings. Some popular author's treat their trigger warnings like a *teehee*, "I'm so edgy" kink list. Also including resources to provide better and safe context on the adult and sometimes toxic behaviors that are exhibited in darker fantasies.
PS- I wrote this RIGHT before you made some of the same points lol
I hope you enjoy it! The fresh vampire lore was my favourite part. I also recently heard of another book featuring Black vampires that I’m excited to try out called This Ravenous Fate.
@@PlantBasedBride Oo, I'll have to look into that! Thanks!
I agree! I just wrote and published my first YA fantasy, and people reviewed it complaining that it didn’t have spice…. That’s the point?!? Wtf
That would be so demoralizing 😔 I hope your book finds its audience!
I agree with everything you say in the video except for the fact that novels back in the days were more focused on consent. Rereading some of the books I read when I was younger, there is so much misogyny in it. Maybe the spicy scenes weren’t as spicy, but the books weren’t perfect in terms of consent and feminism either. I think it’s wrong to say “books back in the days were better” when they were just different but sometimes just as problematic.
The books I read growing up were actually quite great at demonstrating consent and making it clear when what was happening was non consensual and therefore not ok, but of course I can only speak to the books I have personally read in my life! You don’t know what you don’t know, as they say. The books I read contained misogyny but those aren’t mutually inclusive concepts.
@ That makes sense. I’m glad you had those types of books! But I agree with your overall reflection and message in this video. Thank you for making it :)
Young people have been reading things they shouldn't for as long as literacy has been taught early in life, I imagine. Those have the lure of the forbidden. A book with more explicit content that's categorized by its publisher as YA appropriate is a different story. Maybe publishers don't bother (or no longer bother) to pay people who have expertise in dev psych to look over the books before they're sent through the pipeline. (Edit: or experienced editors, content experts, etc. I don't want to seem like I know a lot about publishing under the hood, 'cause I don't. 😅)
However, blaming media for undesirable behavior in youth has been around for quite a while, too. I have doubts about how much reading might influence behavior vs how a person is raised, and would want more substantiation for that than is provided here.
As for what to call that simple level of prose that's associated with YA... it exists in books marketed to adults as well. Depending on the context, I call it supermarket novel prose, airport novel prose, or "bestsellerese." 😄
Nothing worse than getting invested in a book only for it to end up being explicit scenes every other page and no longer wanting to read 😭
As a former 16yo who devoured smutty paranormal romance books, if they want it they’ll find it. No need to market books with smut to teens as if they don’t know A03 and wattpad exists.
Right? People are so behind the times on how the internet culture is these days.
Finally a video about this. These are pretty much my thoughts, albeit in a more eloquent manner lol. I don't believe sexual content should be banned from YA, because teens ARE having sex, but I do feel that by gearing YA towards adults, publishers and authors are forgetting that actual teens/YA do not see, experience or understand sex the same way an adult does. Kinks should absolutely NOT be in a YA book - the necessary consent and seriousness of some of them require a layer of understanding of the sexual act itself that teens cannot fully grasp (how could they, if they are only now finding out their sexuality?).
I honestly feel like books that have sexual content entering the erotica category or dealing with a more dark approach to sex SHOULD be NA point blank period. Sex in YA should have a perhaps more "educational" approach (and by educational it can simply be explaining how you can have fun having sex with someone that respects you, for example). You can even have high and low NA, the same way some people use in YA (low YA being 13+; high YA being 16+). Let's also not forget that this conversation crosses paths with the conversation about porn. From the few things I've read, more and more teens are basing their vision of sex through porn. But porn is mostly scripted, the actors know what they are getting into, the things they do are previously agreed upon and not all actors do all things (I know most porn isn't ethical, but that's not my point rn). A lot of teens believe certain things they see in porn videos are MEANT to be done when those are, in fact, kinks not everyone is interested in. Things like sub/dom, choking, slapping, bondage, etc. can be very dangerous if not done right and some can very easily cross the line towards rape if people don't understand how consent works. A great example of this (that I have never found in YA, thankfully), is some people have a rape kink - some people like to act out being caught by surprise and having sex forced on them. And despite the opinion someone might have about this kink in particular, I think we can ALL agree this is obviously not ok outside of a previously agreed upon arrangement. Now let's imagine a teenager that doesn't understand what kinks are and how they work finding videos about this - does anyone seriously think they will be capable of discerning the issues by themselves? Or will they, perhaps, assume those things are normal and expected of them, and thus repeat them? Teenagers are not idiots, but they also have (naturally) a limited life experience, which means they sometimes think they have the full picture when they don't (I was a teenager once, I REMEMBER some of the things I believed were set in stone). The same problem exists in books, I believe. Find a new category, add the right trigger warnings, be clear on a rating, but don't put sexual content in books that teenagers won't be able to discern by themselves. Finally, Nicole Brinkley made some pretty good essays about YA being the main reason why YA is "dying" (not literally, but it's basically focusing only on adults and no longer teens/YA), which are very good reads: misshelved.substack.com/p/did-twitter-break-ya-misshelved-6 & misshelved.substack.com/p/is-ya-still-for-teens-misshelved-7 .
Honestly fewer teens are having sex while underage than you think. It’s getting less common with each successive generation.
As someone who was a teen in the early 2000's, I was reading fan fiction that was frankly 10000% more wildly explicit and spicy at 15/16 years old than what I've read in traditionally published books now in my mid 30's. Looking back, I wouldn't necessarily say it was appropriate, but I also turned out just fine and have never had any confusion on what's fantasy vs. reality in real-life relationships. That being said....I had incredible English/Lit teachers who taught me how to read critically and engage with the text on a deeper level and I think that helped a lot. I also had parents that never censored what I was reading (genre or age-range wise) but were always open to discussing it or answering whatever questions I had (and I was a curious teen, I had a lot of questions lol). To me, those two things - learning to read critically and having an outlet to discuss/question the content - are key things when it comes to younger readers reading more mature content (sexually explicit or otherwise).
I don't agree with adding "ratings" to books because unfortunately, in the world we live in today (or at least in the US), I think it can potentially become a slippery slope to book banning. HOWEVER, I 100% agree with you that a lot of this issue really falls on marketing by the publishers and an unfortunate trend by publishers to push their authors (many, if not most of whom are women...a whole other issue by itself) towards YA when the authors might not even want to write to that demographic. All because of the purchasing power of teen girls that publishers KNOW they can latch on to 😕
@@hazelmorera5946 I think being taught to read and think critically and having that open communication to ask questions without judgement are crucial and unfortunately not everyone is as lucky as you were (me! ✋ I didn’t have a safe place to ask these questions growing up).
The rating question is definitely nuanced, but I do wonder if more clear ratings would make much of a difference when books are already being banned without ratings or content warnings, and books are being banned not because of harmful behaviour but more so according to an ideology. I don’t know how we work around religious fanaticism, but I don’t know that letting perfect be the enemy of the good is the answer either?
It’s all very complex which is why I wanted to leave it open for discussion and hear more thoughts from the community!
There’s no excuse to not have an age rating.
Nobody, without some sort of disorder, is confusing fantasy with fiction. When people talk about this issue, that's not what they are claiming. It's more about how people emotionally respond to fiction and what lessons they might draw and adapt from that.
I totally agree with a better labelling/age rating system on books! As a teenager, I did not want to read books with sexual content and even though I tried really hard to research and vet the books I read, I still kept being caught off-guard (and slightly traumatized). I can’t even imagine how much harder it is for parents who just want their kids to read age-appropriate books!
OK, I had to think about this one for a bit. Because I'm a bookseller. And I have a lot of thoughts. (About many things LOL)
So. We tried New Adult as a general age category back around the early 2010s...and the second the Fifty Shades series got tagged as NA for marketing purposes, anything else that could have been grouped into that category for comparison (The Magicians series, The Locked Tomb series, etc.) distanced themselves because "New Adult" was very quickly used as a synonym for "contemporary romance with a college-age/early 20s FMC who gets into questionable relationship dynamics (usually with a billionaire?)". And while NA has gathered in some high-heat fantasy series like ACOTAR, it just isn't used as an age category or marketing term because it has that connotation. More literary books with a college-aged/early 20s protagonist trying to figure their life out like Emergency Contact or Yolk by Mary HK Choi or more straight down the line fantasies like Ninth House or Addie LaRue really stay away from New Adult as a marketing term despite being at the white-hot center of that age range. (There are obviously many more books I could name but this is where we get into that very specific bookseller problem where I have forgotten the titles of every book I've ever heard of the exact second I try to bring one up as an example. LOL)
[This is where I insert that I really can't tell what a "young adult" vs "adult" style is any more, unless it's highly ~literary~ because the whole thing has blended together so much. I basically look at whether it's plot-forward or character-forward as far as "who's driving this narrative?".]
Now, should we keep trying to repurpose NA? I say yes, because I think that's probably the least-objectionable way to go. An official rating system for books is a no-go for me. I am a massive critic of the MPAA system and how it is incredibly biased (and bigoted) and rather than a "content guide" it's used as a restrictive throttle for theatrical distribution. (The TV rating system isn't quite as bad, although it's not great.) Bookstores can shuffle books around and group them together by age category, which could be arbitrary from store to store (and library to library, of course). But, from my own experience, it doesn't matter *where* you put the New Adult- or adult-marketed titles (our adult romance section is not next to the YA section - manga, SF/Fantasy, general mass markets, and horror are inbetween). The teenagers will buy CoHo, the Twisted series (Huang), the Never After series (McIntire), Sophie Lark, Harley Laroux, etc. (although they don't buy Katee Robert, too, which is strange) because they either saw it on the Internet or a friend told them about it. And that's it. Which is what we did when I was a teen (early 90s). Your friend read this WILD book called Flowers in the Attic and let you borrow it. You heard about Tom Cruise in this new vampire movie and went and read all the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles, then the Witch books, and then her erotica (at which point, your eyebrows never returned to their normal starting position). You read the romances you found under your mom's bed or in the back of the closet. And so on.
Which kind of brings me to my final point - I hear so much concern about the sex...but what about the violence? The same person who would refuse to buy their kid CoHo would turn around let them buy Stephen King's IT (which has some extremely problematic sexual and relationship content and has not aged well). We argue alot about Peeta vs Gale in the Hunger Games but little about the extreme violence that teenage characters have enacted for the Capitol's (and readers') entertainment. And that is a major feature of many YA Fantasy series any more - so many of them hinge around a magical/dystopian contest or magic system with an element of violence or death with an almost hand-wavy treatment of what that kind of violence does to a person and how it is almost normalized in this genre (Caraval, Divergent, Uglies, Shatter Me, Shadow and Bone/Six of Crows, Ember in the Ashes, Curious Tides, Waxways, etc). And to your commentary in the video on Immortal Dark, you do mention that the FMC does murder/covers up murder but with much less concern for a young person reading that versus the concern for the poor relationship dynamics. (And those relationship dynamics are yes, very not great, but it always interests me what people call out as concerning and it's the sexual content first, never the violence.) So just something to think about/add to the Disk Horse. ;)
There are no easy solutions to this. I would love for publishers, when they acquire a book like Immortal Dark, so either a) be honest and say that it should be marketed to an adult audience or b) push back at the author and ask them to justify why a book with high-heat content should be marketed as Young Adult and therefore be placed in the same age category as Heartstopper, Forever, etc. But I'm finding it harder to get publishers to even copy-edit a book properly, let alone do good developmental and content editing. So there's also that. (Yikes, sorry this got so long)
I agree but i think its fair to put more focus on the sexual „violence“ in tjose books because we grow up learning puching people is while everything even closely related to sex(and its dangers) dont get mentioned. Also in alot of those new books its in a fantsy setting with powers or trials that went dont find in real life. While those morally grey violent charming characters are present in real life
Sorry not the point but who the HELL is labeling fifty shades of grey as new adult???? Just because the main character is in her 20s??? Oh my god
Because sexual violence is normalized, murder is not.
This is such an important conversation. My first foray into the literal YA labeled books (I.e. the sticker on the spine) was Christopher Pike … who liked to mention breasts and allude to sex in his horror. YA themes today absolutely blow that out of the water (and at 11 years old in the early 90s - advanced reader - I was positively scandalized). YA in a library is recommended for ages 12-18. Girls - yes legally girls - in this age range aren’t necessarily prepared to inspect these themes maturely.
Wow I've never heard of that book before but you could have been talking about Throne of Glass lol I am an adult who reads YA to avoid the spice and I was shocked that series has been marketed as YA for so long. Just like you were saying, it's not just the explicit content, there's a massive age gap relationship that starts off with physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. I read Heir of Fire earlier this year and my big sis alarm bells were just RINGING dude.
I read heir of fire when I was 13 and I hated the romance plotline, the whole time I was like ‘girl leave him he’s an arsehole’. Manon and Abraxos were my favourite characters lol.
I am a high school librarian in a relatively conservative county (one of the leading counties in my state that has been implementing Book Bans and library restrictions because of sex in teen books). This is such an important conversation to have-it is so difficult to place age-appropriate book orders when librarians cannot read every single book. While some teens will seek out this type of media, it shouldn't be advertised as YOUNG adult. Especially when my coworkers and I can literally lose our jobs over one wrong order lol
I'll be brave and disagree, because I don't see anyone in the comments making this important counterpoint.
I don't know that I agree with the overall tone that publishers or even parents should be controlling what children read. I also don't agree with the assumption that sex is "inappropriate" for teenagers-- who are, by and large, already having sex. I grew up in a very conservative community and this led to more dangerous outcomes for kids than if we had actually been informed via some kind of media. And I don't agree with setting an arbitrary line about what "level" of spice is appropriate or inappropriate for whom. That's a slippery slope if I've ever seen one.
This conversation tends to overlap with the "clean romance" community on social media, which is equally problematic in my opinion. These authors/readers rant and rave about how certain books are "bad" and others are "good" and it's all very holier-than-thou. These people beg for a "return to traditional values"... aka the days when teen girls either read middle grade books or their mom's Avon collection under cloak of night.
Let teens read what they want to read, because they're going to seek it out anyway. And if that's Twilight (and the hundreds of stories it spawned), let them at it. I loved Twilight in 7th grade just like everyone else. Making certain elements "forbidden" only makes them more alluring and increases a dangerous cultural taboo.
It's great to expect greater presence of content warnings. I agree with New Adult as a publishing category. But I don't think we should do it because "this is WRONG or BAD for teens".
Btw Elizabeth, I have been a huge fan for a long time and I truly do enjoy your content! This is the first time I've ever disagreed with one of your hot takes. I hope my message of disagreement isn't harmful to you in any way. I just feel very strongly about this topic given my upbringing, and I feel that it's important for someone to represent this viewpoint among the masses.
I think we agree more than we disagree, honestly! I tried to make it clear that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with there being sex (even more explicit sex) in books that teens are reading; like I said in the video, I think it’s healthy for teens to learn about sex in a safe environment at home reading a book. My concern is with depicting unhealthy/toxic/coercive etc. behaviours and presenting them as normal and desirable in so many of the books marketed to teens, including potentially dangerous acts like ch*king and bl**d play as par for the course (both of which can be fatal if engaged with incorrectly). “Dark romance” is becoming more and more popular, and I've noticed some troubling trends in how young people seem to react to reading about this kind of dynamic.
Twilight is not even remotely on the level of the books that are coming out these days, and I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with that in a general sense. Still, I do think there is a potential danger in promoting those books to underage readers. Perhaps we disagree on that point, which is entirely okay.
I appreciate your opinion and your sharing it, even though it felt like going against the tide!
I definitely agree on the fact that we shouldn’t police what kids and teens are reading bc they’re going to seek it out anyway. I think the issue at stake is providing teens with the resources to know what they are reading in these “dark romance” ya novels are not something to be normalized and idealized. I believe that is also Elizabeth’s central message in this video, that the industry itself is being harmful.
I agree that the "clean" label is just as problematic (do we really teach kids that sex is dirty??), but overall, sex written for adults (to turn them on, mostly) should be different from sex written for teens (by adults).
I agree, sex is an important theme that should not be crossed out of YA books. But the problem is how these books are selling unhealthy behaviours such as age and power imbalances, physical and emotional abuse and a lack of healthy communication as desirable. What lessons do you think teens who have very little experience will take away from this? "Oh the book says this is good/acceptable so it must be what I should tolerate and seek out in relationships". They won't critically examine the text, I've seen this happen before.
Instead, YA books need to clearly communicate "Hey, this behaviour is toxic" or show examples of healthy relationships (I think this is done very well in Heartstopper). Anything else would be irresponsible. Especially younger teens aged 12-15 are so impressionable.
(I work at a library and just confirmed this book’s marketed reading level is “Ages 14 and up. Little, Brown and Company.”)
I am also a big fan of YA and YA Fantasy. I am also often surprised when the YA book I am reading sounds incredibly similar to an adult book I just read. It also makes me uncomfortable reading YA spice as an adult- let alone letting kids read YA spice.
In my interpretation, it seems the OG young adult novel fans (who are now adults, myself included) want the nostalgia or simplicity of YA while also getting their adult spice fix…and that could be why there’s such a blurring of the lines now. And I agree this is totally uncomfortable and why it is SO important for people to do the research into what they’re reading or what they’re going to read.
I haven't watched the video but as a teen girl, I do steer clear of books with spice or I just skip the scenes. The only "Adult " books I read are thrillers fantasy or mystery etc. not romance (for obvious reasons) but I know girls my age reading haunting Adeline etc. In my opinion the age of the YA matters a lot because as a 17 year old I don't really want to read middle grade esque books and I do recognize the the writing etc. Ppl need to remember YAs are not all the same age.
I know the word "spice" was born from algorithms shunning more explicit words but I can't stop feeling like the word itself is to blame for a lot of this. People are just a lot more comfortable saying they want more "spice" in YA, than they are saying they want more explicit sex in YA. Same goes for the sellers and publishers of fiction: it's much less weird to put a spiciness level next to a novel, nicely visualized with hot peppers, than to list all the sexual kinks and fetishes this specific work depicts. A lot of parents probably don't even know what it means when they buy their 15 year old teenager a book with a 5/5 🌶 level.
I don't think these kinds of problematic age gaps in YA romance with a barely legal FMC and ancient MMC is the cause of young women glorifying relationships with older men (entirely), but rather a symptom of a more systemic problem.
Teenage girls often actively seek out and WANT to read these kinds of romances, and I was one such teenage girl. There is a reason why these stories became so popular, and a big chunk of the audiences that make these stories popular are self-admittedly young women and teens.
From a young age, we are often pressured and expected to be and act more adult than boys and young men, creating a mental gap between us and our male peers. We are raised to grow up too quickly, leaving us to feel less connected to boys who are allowed to just be children longer. Not to mention how predatory men and society manipulate us by praising us for being so mature and telling us we need a more mature man, making us feel special and grooming us into seeking out these kinds of relationships. I used to be mostly bullied and ignored by boys my own age, but older guys would be nice to me and praise me, so I found myself gravitating more towards them for a long time.
We need to stop treating girls like mini adults and let them be kids just like we do with boys.
the fact is women are writing this spicy stuff without any thoughts or research.
@@taefee4919 I agree, though the way you phrased your reply makes me feel like it's meant to discredit my comment. Both things are true, in my opinion.
@@SolarmatrixCobra no no I dont mean to discredit your writing. I agree with you. but, all I was saying that it's crazy that grown ass women write unhealthy stuff for teen girls.
@@taefee4919 ah! sorry for the confusion! Yes, I completely agree. Especially for YA, writers need to be much more mindful and aware in their writing, IMO.
I’ve been waiting to talk about this. A friend of mine (we’re both 20) recently asked me what a healthy relationship is. Wanna know why?? Because her whole life she’s consumed media with toxic couples in romanticized relationship at the center of the story. She wanted to see if her friend’s relationship was healthy (my mother studied psychology and mentioned to my friend’s mother, who was speaking very highly of this relationship, that some behaviors were unhealthy). I’ve been saying this since I was a teenager and I’ll keep saying this: no, young people can NOT separate fiction from reality. And I know it because for a long while I thought that control, that possessiveness and jealousy was romantic. I’m not sure what happened then, but I was lucky enough to grow up early enough not to end up in stupid situations.
I actually completely agree with everything you've said. I have 2 teenagers and I have opened up to them about how a lot of my unhealthy ideals came from the media I consumed when I was young. As a teenager I was learning about relationships from books and movies without realising it. I understand fiction isn't real life and I know people enjoy reading as an escape of sorts, but young peoples brains are gathering information to fill in gaps all the time without them even knowing it. I try to make sure my kids know how to consume media with their brains switched on. They can read about whatever they want but they need to understand what messages they're receiving and be able to question all of those messages critically to get valuble conscious learning from it. That's not something all teenagers can easily do. Honestly, I only properly learnt how in my late 20s.
You sound like such an amazing parent! All teens deserve to have parents as engaged as you are and as willing as you are to have these conversations with them. I, too, didn’t develop the ability to identify coercive behaviour and red flags until I’d already experienced some very unhealthy relationships that, to be completely honest, traumatized me. I wish my parents had been able to have these conversations with me, though they met and got married very young and I’m not sure they had the same experience as I did.
Thank you Elizabeth ❤ I too got myself into some very problematic relationships and I'm just doing my best to help my kids to avoid making the same mistakes I did. They're both so much more mature than I was at their age. I'm very proud of them.
As a teacher I have observed the same, there are some very popular amazing fantasy books that my students are reading but I am concerned because they are exposed to the level of content that is not suitable for their age level. Not only the spiciness but the violence and certain other concepts makes the books more adult than high school level. I used to read Dan Brown and Nancy Drew books as a teenager but they are going full romantasy.
Also a rating system like we have for movies would be great for books! As a parent, I would like to be aware of what kind of content is in everything my kids are consuming
The very easy fix would be for authors to age up their characters to mid/late 20s, or even 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. A lot of readers want the conventions found in YA writing, but also want more mature subjects in their books. It would be SOOO easy to just... market books with more adult themes as adult fiction, regardless of how closely they follow YA conventions. But as you say in the video, it isn't as easy as just making sure the label matches the content. I wouldn't be surprised if the bigger publishers either pressure authors to write about characters in their late teens with their 400 year old vampire/fairy boyfriends, or if the companies just go ahead and market explicitly adult fiction as YA, whether the author's are cognizant of the fact or not.
YES! I read Immortal Dark last month and I thought it was an adult book because of the spice. I remember thinking “there’s no way this is YA..?” Especially the bath scenes??
100% agree and have felt similarly for years. When I came across a sexually explicit sex scene in YA for the first time, I got the serious ick. There is no reason for adults to be writing such sexually explicit material about teenagers. It is problematic. I know not all love interests can be cinnamon roll characters, but I totally agree that age gap romance in YA might really impact some teens into thinking a romance with older adult males is normal and acceptable.
I also started reading adult fiction when I was quite young because there wasn’t a lot of options in YA. I read books that had explicit sex, but it was almost always in the context of a relationship which progressed the plot or in a romance book. Looking back on it, even though it was explicit and geared towards an adult reader, it was a lof more vanilla than what comes out now. It feels like there’s more and more romance/romantasy that reads like borderline erotica. I think my experience reading earth’s children at 12 is a lot tamer and age appropriate than what some teens are experiencing reading YA right now. I think being a teen is hard enough without adding confusion bdsm, dark romance or romanticized age gaps
I also read the Earth’s Children series very young - starting around 7 with the first book. It’s easy to make fun of the romance in those books, but the way it was handled set me up for success in a lot of ways with how focussed it was on reciprocal pleasure and boundaries and communication and consent! Those books were the first books I ever read with sexual content and they’re much healthier than the average YA romantasy being published today.
I think the problem is that the 'genre' of these books that we call YA really started with millennials. So the people who grew up on the style are now in their thirties, still like it the style, and want exactly the same thing but with the adult themes. Which is fine, except that now people are using what used to be the age rating of the books as what is essentially a genre name which is just insane behavior. It's like how 'indie rock' became a genre even when bands were working with big production companies except in this case it's actually harmful. Imagine if people started using 'PG13' to describe a genre of movie. And like you say, publishers still treat it as an age rating because it sells more books. When you bring up indie rock linguists will tell you "that's just how language works" but someone needs to put a stop to this. 'YA' should not be a genre and 'YA Themes' shouldn't be a phrase used to describe these books. There needs to be a new word and the community needs to rally behind it.
I COMPLETELY agree! I haven't read Immortal Dark, but I have become increasingly disgusted with what publishers are putting out FOR TEENS. I am 22 (almost 23), and I don't even want that stuff in the books I read. At the very least, I think that publishers should embrace content warnings so readers of all ages can make an informed decision about what they want to read. I am not a parent, but if I had a teenage daughter, I wouldn't want her reading books with all of that in there and would want to be able to clearly see what kind of content is in the books she might want to read and be able to either say no or have a conversation with her about it. To me, that just seems like part of being an involved parent.
Intriguing video topic. When I was in my teens and 20s the fantasy genre (witches, vampires, etc.) was almost non-existent. The "Chic Lit" genre (rom-com novels for adults) became popular in my 20s, when I was the perfect age for them. I outgrew them and ignored this genre for many years; but just recently, in an effort to lighten my mood during a too-serious time, I sought out a few of these rom-com genre novels from the adult fiction section of the public library. I just wanted some light, fluffy, feel-good escapism. These are not fantasy genre books at all, and they are for adults (the characters are professionals in their 20s and 30s). What I was surprised to discover is that today's rom-com novels are a lot like the ones I read 25 years ago in terms of the storylines, writing style, etc...except now they all seem to have some soft porn sprinkled throughout them. It is very weird to me. Just when I am really enjoying the story, I'll come to another steamy scene that is way more graphic than anything I recall reading as a young woman. The whole genre, I'm guessing, has morphed into a hybrid of light, fluffy romance and soft porn! So disturbing. I would enjoy the romance and cutesy humour of the story more without words like "rock hard erection" thrown in there, you know? What happened to the fun of ROMANCE and LOVE in stories? Instead it sounds like there's hyper-focus on the lust and sex part - apparently even in YA books. But then again, today's kids have the Internet so there are a lot of 12-year-olds out there watching hardcore porn, apparently. So sad and disturbing for today's youth.
I couldn´t agree more! As a teenager, I read some books with more adult content that made a big impression on me. I realised that they were well ahead my life experience and out of my age range, I would say. The fact that now these topics are normalised, as you say, seem very dangerous to me. Not a big fan of too much spice in general, so I don't get the need of including it in YA books.
This was such a well articulated moment of WTF, thank you! I do find it problematic that because so many adults read YA, adult themes and content are now present in YA. Let the YA be for young adults and move that stuff to the adult section! If you’re an adult reading YA, it’s probably just a kissing book and that’s ok!
I go for YA to escape the spice that is so common in adult novels, now it's getting kinda hard to find YA without "spice"
I used to be a high school teacher, and I agree with everything you said. You can have dark themes in YA but it is going too far. I also do not understand how people can be okay with an immortal with centuries of life experience and their choice of partner is a 17-18 year old girl? Something about that is definitely very not right. There absolutely needs to be a reshuffle of category in publishing, like Middle Grade, Teen (13-17), then Young Adult (18-24). I have definitely seen an uncomfortable shift in the amount of sexual content in YA.
But a 18 and 19 old are still teens, just legal adults. This doesn't work as easy as you portrayed it.
I agree. It is my opinion that we need a rating system similar to the one we use for films, in the book industry. I think its healthy for adults to visit YA and for teens to visit adult literature, BUT the type of content in a book is no longer reflected in the marketing labels publishers place on books.
I was literally saying this to my sister yesterday when I finished it. I enjoyed it but I would not recommend this to my nieces who are teenagers because I thought the content was too mature to be YA
Exactly this! I can think of a demographic of adult readers who would love this book, but I would not recommend it to teens.