There’s often a debate around some books and whether or not they are classed as Young Adult. I’ve read a couple of tweets by authors voicing their annoyance at their books being classed as YA when they were written for an adult audience. V.E Schwab and Erin Morgenstern have often voiced their frustration on Twitter about their books being mis-profiled.

I think some of this misconception is due to people my age (so mid-20s to late-20s) still reading YA books when they are meant to be aimed at those 10 years younger than us. I mean, why wouldn’t we still read them when there are some amazing books out there that happen to be written for teenagers? (And mid to late 20s is still classed as young adult, right?) YA books are so much more diverse and forward thinking than most adult books. But with adults reading YA books, and with the emergence of bookstagram and booktube where we see readers photographing YA and adult books side-by-side, I think this has meant that there is some confusion around whether some books are YA or not.

Another reason I think we have confusion around whether some books are YA or not, is because often people assume that books featuring teenage or young adult characters are aimed at the same audience. Which is not correct. I can still remember a friend asking me whether Games of Thrones was YA because Bran was one of the narrators… I still feel shocked by his assumption now. Despite this, you can have adult books that feature young protagonists and they can still remain adult books. The key deciding factor is the content of the book.

So what makes a book YA?

Books that are aimed at the YA market deal with themes that are of interest to a teenage or young adult audience (that’s about from the age 14 to 18 – although I think I started reading some books that would be likely classed as YA now when I was 12).

That’s the key difference.

This is not to say that teenagers are not interested in reading about adult themes – when I was 14 I started reading Jennifer Fallon, who is definitely doesn’t write YA fiction – and adults can be interested in reading about YA themes.

If I was going to give an example, Forever by Judy Blume is always upheld as one of the first YA books, because it was one of the first books that was written aimed at that audience – for an audience that was experiencing, or about to experience, sexual relationships and love for the first time. For the very few of you who haven’t read Forever, the book is about Katherine, who meets Michael at a new years party and experiences her first sexual relationship. Something that, typically, teenagers are interested in and want to read about.

Other examples of YA books and the themes they explore would be You Should See Me In A Crown (which explores sexuality and learning to go against societal norms), Aurora Rising (found family and friendship), Punching the Air (injustice and racial profiling), Black Flamingo (self discovery), and The Places I’ve Cried in Public (abusive relationships).

Sexually Explicit

There is one other key deciding factor that would decide whether a book is classed as adult rather than YA aside from the themes the book explores – and that is the level of description of sexual content. YA books can of course contain sex – and on the page sex and not just fade-to-black scenes – but they don’t tend to be over steamy and over descriptive.

A good of example of this would be Sarah J. Maas’s books. Her Throne of Glass series was marketed as YA when it first came out. I read four out of the five books in the series (and then dropped it because I found to be like too much of a Hollywood film where everyone was too good-looking for their own good), and those books were definitely YA material. There was sex on the page, but it wasn’t very descriptive. At the same time that Throne of Glass was coming out, Sarah also started to release her A Court of Thorns and Roses series. The first book of that series was marketed as YA – I read it and would have also classed it as YA. And then the second book came out…and when the marketing team read it I bet they cursed their past selves. Because the second book contained a lot of on the page descriptive sex, which made the book adult rather than YA. Something that would not be a problem for an older teenage or young adult reader, but for those 12 year olds that are foraying into YA for the first time… Yup. Not as as appropriate.

I would assume the marketing mistake was made because either 1) Sarah J. Maas hadn’t decided to make the series adult rather than YA, or 2) booksellers and marketers decided her new series was YA rather than adult because her previous series had been, and A Court of Thorns and Roses featured a young adult protagonist (so therefore must be for a YA audience!).

Cross-over appeal

Just to make things more confusing, there is also something in book marketing terms that is known as cross-over appeal. These are books that are classed as appealing to both adults and teenagers. They are normally adult books that don’t have too much explicit content (especially sexual), but feature young protagonists.

A good example of some books that have this cross-over appeal would be V.E Schwab’s Shades of Magic series. This is the series that V.E Schwab gets so frustrated about being classed as YA when it isn’t. The Shades of Magic series does feature young adults as the protagonist of the story, which would make most people think is it aimed at a YA audience, but the themes the series explores aren’t aimed at a YA audience. They would be of interest to them and any age group as its all about saving the world from evil, but the series doesn’t explore any themes that are specific to a YA audience.

New adult

A quick note on the new adult genre. This a new-ish genre (I mean, it started to make an appearance 10 years ago!) that was designed to be the stage between YA and adult fiction, aimed at readers in their 20s. I’m not sure how much it’s taken off in ten years, since most bookshops don’t have a new adult section, and still just have adult fiction and then YA fiction, I guess it hasn’t broken through as a new defining age group like YA did.

One of the few new adult books I have read was Losing It by Cora Carmack, which is set at university. The university setting is an interesting one, since it can lend itself to YA books (such as Alice Oseman’s Loveless) and also adult books, since its that strange stage in life where you’re meant to be an adult but still feel like a teenager! Losing It main theme is experiencing sex for the first time – much like Forever – but the content of the book and the level of description meant that it was written for an older audience. There are, of course, young adults who go to university who haven’t experienced sex for the first time, so the theme is just as relevant to them, but the perspective and their experience of it would be different to that of a teenager or younger young adult.

What books have you mistaken for being YA, or have often seen mistaken for being YA? Comment down below. Let me know.