Hands up how many of you have read a young adult novel in the past year. Some of you will be teenagers, (like, duh), but many of you will be well past the age of adolescence, if not the angst part. And you are a major reason why teen fiction is doing so well. Thanks to Harry Potter, adults need no longer feel ashamed to pick up a book for "children". While they should actually be ashamed of picking up a book about sparkly vampires and vapid heroines, those days are long gone. In fact, publishers are now packaging books with separate covers for adults and teens.
This, my friends, is the age of the crossover. Now that the stigma of reading teen fiction is gone, so is the writing of it. Every big-name adult author is writing for teens now - Philippa Gregory, Elizabeth George, Harlan Coben, Gena Showalter, John Grisham, James Patterson, Jodi Picoult. They're all at it. Once Lee Child figures out how make his sentences any shorter, no doubt he'll get round to it too.
If you're like me, you probably want to forget your adolescence entirely, but the teenagers in the best of today's books are dealing with a lot more than what to wear to the prom, and the stories are generally easier to get into than the stuff written for adults. They're perfect escapism with bite. Ignoring The Hunger Games, which I've already written about at length, there are futuristic books in which evil regimes are overthrown, by heroes with complex problems. There are fantasy quests (think the Eragon series). There's historical fiction with intrigue. There are even stories based on real events, about refugees and concentration camp survivors.
And lots of paranormal stuff, of course.
So here it is: a list of crossover YA and adult books that will appeal to all audiences. Give one a try!
