About FYA
hey guys! i’m sarah, and i created this website because I LOVE THE PANTS OUT OF YOUNG ADULT BOOKS. and, actually, i should clarify. i love the pants out of good YA literature, not the crap which will go unnamed cos i don’t want a lot of sparkly vampire lovers sending me hate mail.
i should ALSO mention that i’m an adult. well… supposedly.
over the past few years, i realized that i’m not the only “adult” (i really can’t use that word without quotes) on the planet who adores drinking martinis while reading books about high school crushes, teenage angst and that whole “coming of age” thing. so, i made this site to serve as a home for people like me, in the hopes that we can dish about our favorite books, swoon over fictional high school boys and mutually shake our fists every time someone asks if we ever read “real literature”…and we can do it all WITHOUT SHAME!
so, whether you’re a hardcore sarah dessen fan-4-life or a newbie that just picked up “hunger games” and realized that it’s AWESOME, i want to welcome you to forever young adult. now, grab a drink, and let’s get down to some Serious YA Business!
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Have you reviewed any of PC Cast’s books in the House of Night series?
haven’t read any! but i will look into it…
I have quite a collection of YA novels that I first became addicted to in 4th grade….and yes, I still have them all! This site is so fantastic–good to know I’m not alone in this guilty pleasure…
Do y’all take suggestions on titles? I have some doozies I’d like to recommend
hey lisaB, welcome to FYA! we’re always looking for new sources of angst and romance, so please, recommend away! send us an email or just leave a comment on one of our posts, and we’ll dig right into those doozies!
I found this site today, and I am so glad I did! I love YA novels, and currently I’m reading Catching Fire! I love it! The Hunger Games was great, this one is even better! Can’t wait for the last one! Anyway, I’m excited to check out your reviews and find new stuff to read!
holla elise!!! i’m glad you found us amidst the bustling internet, and make sure you leave yr two cents in the comments for HG & CF (you’ll find posts about these two books are PLENTIFUL on this site, kinda like this tomato plant that my mom put in our garden when i was a kid and then like we had a zillion tomatoes and even when winter came, the plant totally refused to die. just like our passion for peeta, katniss & gale!).
Ok, here’s a few for starters:
“Confessions of a Teenage TV Addict” — Ellen Leroe
“The Cat Ate My Gymsuit” — Paula Danziger
“Remember Me to Harold Square” — Paula Danziger
“Can You Sue Your Parents for Malpractice?” — Paula Danziger
“Dicey’s Song” — Cynthia Voigt
“Bummer Summer” — Ann M. Martin
These are oldies for sure, but goodies…funny how the stories of yesterday (okay, the 80′s) still hold their relevance today…haha!
I wasn’t allowed to watch Dirty Dancing or Top Gun, but I could read all the Sweet Valley High as a 6th grader that I wanted–the joke was on my parents! =)
Favorite YA book when I was younger “Princess Ashley” by Richard Peck, not sure why but I read that book constantly when I was younger.
paula danziger YES!!!!! i still have my old paperback copy of “remember me to harold square,” so you can definitely expect a flashback here on FYA in the near future. i loved cynthia voigt and richard peck, too. and can i get a what what for ellen conford?!!
I hope you caught up on Top Gun and Dirty Dancin’–those were two seriously important movies in my middle-school years. And we share many of the same favorite books from that era. Hmm…are you my secret online twin?
I’m so glad that there are other “adults” who are as addicted to YA as I am. I just think adult books are too depressing. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE start adding L.J. Smith’s books to your reviews and blogs. All her stuff is getting reprinted and while The Vampire Diaries on the CW does NOT in anyway stand up to the awesomness of the books, it’s a good starting point. My favs include The Secret Circle trilogy and The Night World series (9 books out with the 10th VERY soon to come out!!!)
kristina, i feel you on LJ smith! she was my fave YA author when i was *actually* in high school. i’m planning on reviewing the forbidden game trilogy as well as my all time fave, dark visions, featuring one of the original bad boys, gabriel the psychic vampire!!!!!!
Hahaha. That’s perfect. I started reading them at 13 and I re-read them all through the years. I knew I’d finally matured when I stopped liking Rob the wonderboy best and realized the magic of bad boys like Gabriel.
If you are interested in book suggestions, i would really love to see what you think of Holly Black. She has a 3 book series; Tithe, Valiant and Ironside. I loved them! The second book is a different cast of characters but it doesn’t take long to fall into the story and the third brings them together.
thanks for the suggestion, jenifer! i actually read “tithe” a while ago (before this site existed) but given black’s popularity, we should probably review at least one of her books! i might pass this off to jenny, cos i consider her our resident faerie expert (and also cos i don’t like faerie books– I KNOW, I KNOW, it’s like breaking a girl rule, but i can’t help it).
Ohhhhhhh I love this blog. I “grew up” and got married several years ago and became a mom, etc. All of that is lovely, wonderful adulty stuff…but I love me some YA. Is it because I married my high school boyfriend that I am able to sit on pins and needles for every YA romance, hoping against hope that the high school-aged heroine will get her happy ending? My favorite series of all time is Princess Diaries (moment of silence for Meg Cabot please) and I have the most ridiculous crush on Michael Moscovitz. I went to a Meg Cabot book signing recently (using my 8 year old daughter as a beard so she could get her Allie Finkle books-also hilarious-signed) and told her of my crush. She said she wrote PD for herself and friends who were all in thier 30′s at the time (and was surprised that her agent sold it as YA). So, I felt validated.
tammy, what is this “growing up” that you speak of?!! and using yr daughter as a beard? thank god you found us so you don’t have to be ashamed any longer! EMBRACE YR INNER YA!!!
obvs anyone who’s met meg cabot is automatically an awesome person in my book. welcome!!!
Awesome! I totally love YA, and I’m not even close to Y. So glad I found your site — looking fwd to browsing thru the posts!
My cousin recommended this site to me–soooo fun! I’m reading the new Candace Bushnell book ‘The Carrie Diaries’ about Carrie before her “Sex & the City” days in NYC…it’s VERY much a “sweet valley high”-ish book and I LOVE IT!!! If you haven’t read it yet, you should definitely check it out–it’s great writing for a teen-oriented book. It’s a great escape!! :–)
well, come on in, kristie, and make yrself a cocktail! perhaps a cosmo is in order?!
any book described as “sweet valley high-ish” OBVS needs to be on our list!! thanks for the rec!
So glad to see good YA books still appreciated as folks get older. Good writing is good writing!
I am old enough to remember Judy Blume and Robert Cormier as favourite YA authors. I also remember two individual stunning books: “Fly Away Paul” and “Poor Jenny, Bright as a Penny”, but don’t remember the authors’ names.
Full disclosure: I just had my first novel, “His Sweet Favour”, published last fall, and it’s a YA. Here’s a review:
http://reviews.skbooks.com/?p=633
I hope you and your readers will check it out and enjoy it.
Diane
hey diane, thanks for stopping by! isn’t it amazing that “the chocolate war” is STILL one of the top YA books on the banned list? amazing and LAME. censorship is for suckas!
congrats on yr first novel! we’ll definitely have to check it out.
It was great meeting you at the Book Blogger Convention this week. I loved your red bag, it reminded me of Dorthy’s slippers
Anyways, I hope you had as much fun as I did!
hey meaghan! it was lovely to meet you as well.
unfortunately, i haven’t figured out how to travel to alternate dimensions with my purse (uh, at least without the aid of alcohol).
So I must have been living under a rock for some time now, but I was introduced to your site yesterday and omfg I love all of you, seriously.
If you ever need a sort of adult-ish like person to add to your roster of amazingness, you just let me know.
Also — any L’Engle fans? She was my favorite growing up. Especially “A Ring of Endless Light.” ANGST AND LOVE. And boys. Hee. But mostly really amzn. It’s a once a year read that I still keep on the bookshelf, though the cover fell off a long time ago. Sad panda.
Oh Regina! A Ring of Endless Light is SO ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS EVER! I almost think I enjoy the O’Keefe generation better than the Murray generation of L’Engle books! And I will always be in love with Adam Eddington. Sigh.
If you haven’t read L’Engle’s adult fiction, you MUST MUST MUST read the Katherine Forrester series (A Small Rain, A Severed Wasp) and I really enjoyed A Live Coal in the Sea and And Both Were Young.
YES. Adam Eddington is like a swoonfest. I was definitely a bigger fan of the Austins than I ever was of the Murrays, except for all the badass nuclear physics biz (I like science AND reading, yay!). Each of the series had something glorious in it (like the cover of Many Waters? lolz. but seriously too) that made me jump at every single book I could get my hands on.
I’ve read nearly all of her stuff too!! And Both Were Young = asjdfldkjasdhappiness. So excited that other people still geek out about these ones. I was so, so sad when she passed away.
so i stumbled across this website from Meg Cabot’s site (who is, btw, one of my fav authors of all time) and i am so excited right now i can barely stay in my seat. i love everything you girls are doing here and i hope it stays around for a very, very long time. i, for one, will continue checking back…if for nothing else than to converse with others who are equally obsessed with the Hunger Games trilogy (LOVE!). i am also an adult (i guess, i mean, i am 25…) and they still look at me weird at our local library as i consistently peruse the YA section at every visit. you let me know if you ever need another opinion
well hello there, erika! so glad you found us through our mutual bff, meg, aka LIGHT OF OUR LIVES.
we will be here as long as 1) the internet lasts 2) our love of YA overpowers our laziness. in other words, for forever.
if people look at you weird, you say, “you OBVIOUSLY haven’t read hunger games.” not only is it an excellent way to get them to stop staring at you*, but it’s also the first step in YAngelism!
*i have never tried this, so i have no idea. they might stare at you more. but whatevs! i pity the fool who hasn’t read HG!
Hi Sarah. I love your blog. I love all types of YA books… even the vampire one :0… Am glad to have come across your blog and keeping tabs on your updates on google reader. Have a happy reading week ahead.
Hi Sarah. I love your blog. I love all types of YA books… even the vampire ones :0… Am glad to have come across your blog and keeping tabs on your updates on google reader. Have a happy reading week ahead.
hey there!
so, first of all, I just wanted to say that although I’ve been reading/commenting on this blog for a couple ‘o weeks now, I realized that I never really dropped u guyz a line to tell you how much I LOOOOOOOVE this blog!! I am so glad I stumbled upon it. I was sooo excited about the book club, and have joined in time for the discussions of Life as We Knew It.
anywho, I’m a super huge fan, in fact I fear that I’m kind of swimfan-ing out on you guys!! I told my husband all about the blog and every day I give him updates on what topics were discussed, etc etc. I know, I know, fangirl much? It’s just so nice to discover other people out there who love YA lit as much as I do (that is, people who aren’t still YA themselves!!)
so, in summary: GREAT WORK! Keep it up!
p.s. any idea how to attach a photo to my user profile? i noticed some people have them, and I can’t figure it out (obvs my computer tech skillz leave a lot to be desired!!) I wanted to attach a screen cap from one of my favorite movies (Real Genius) which I feel sums up my beliefs/hopes/inspirations quite handily (it’s a pic of Val Kilmer’s character Chris Knight in panda earmuffs and some sort of plaid-shirt-as-cape situation, jauntily wandering through the dorm hallway while the dry-ice rink the science nerds created melts away. I sooo wish I went to Pacific Tech!! (even though it technically only exists in a movie)
hey samantha, glad you asked about the profile pics! it’s pretty easy to create yr own, thanks to this site: http://en.gravatar.com/
excellent! i shall try it out now!
samantha, we are PROUD to count you in our ranks of swimfans. esp. cos you seem v. cool and normal and not prone to violence.
aw, thanks Posh D !!
I just realized that, ironically, the students of Pacific Tech would have NO PROBLEM AT ALL figuring out how to attach a pic to a user profile. *SIGH* All the more reason that I want to be like them!
Hey!!! I found out about your site from Huffington Post. I’m 22 so I felt a little embarrassed about still loving YA. But when I saw a post for this on HF I came right to the website. I’m so glad there are others out there. I also love writing YA novels, can’t wait to catch up on my faves, and new series. Thanks for making this site!!
nakita, YOU are exactly the reason why i created this site. well, i mean, you in the inspiration sense. not, like, i started this site to get you to notice me. that would be creepy.
Lol totally get it.
Thank you yhank you thank you for the site!!! I needed the support. Loli feel odd walking into ya fic section at the library, though i look .like one, im no longer one technically. Specially since its comnected to the community college i go to. I ninja my books out though!!! I read the house of night so far!
Just wanted to say hi and thanks for the site! I had to search the internet for “adults” to talk about Mockingjay with. I got my Little hooked on YA, but it’s not quite the same to discuss the HG series with an 11 year old. But she’s totally my excuse when I’m buying YA in bookstores – “oh we’re buying two just so I can read with her” – when in reality, I’m totally the one pushing this stuff on her.
Anyway, I’m almost 30 and thought I was the only person who drinks while reading my YA, so I’m super thrilled to find this site. I searched a bit, but is there a list of your top five YA books? I’m looking for new reco’s and want a good series to help me suffer through TEABS from HG. (Great acronym, by the way!!)
we’re so glad you found our FYA oasis, rosey! throw off those chains of shame and grab a cocktail!
we tried to put together a collective list of our top 10 YA novels but… um… that’s like, really hard. so for now, check out our “required reading” category, which is a collection of books we feel are a MUST.
Thanks, don’t mind if I do!
I thought a top YA list would be hard as soon as I wrote that sentence, but thought I’d ask anyway. I’ll definitely check out that category!