Adult Fiction for YA Readers!

I've met quite a lot of readers in the past who read only YA and want to read a little bit of adult fiction, but don't know where to start. So today I thought I'd recommend some adult fiction for YA lovers by selecting a few adult books that share some similar themes to certain YA books!

The Gargoyle is Andrew Davidson's debut, and so far only, novel, and I fell in love with it when I first read it. I'll admit it's nothing like A Thousand Nights, really; the main character is a severely burned and suicidal pornographer. So why do I recommend it to fans of A Thousand Nights? Well, it's another book with a nameless protagonist and one that is heavily reliant on oral storytelling. While in the hospital, the protagonist of The Gargoyle meets another patient who claims they were lovers in a past life, and she continues to visit him to tell him love stories from throughout history. In some ways she is his Scheherazade. It's a stunning book, and I highly recommend it!

I only discovered Robin Talley this year and I think she's such an important voice in the world of YA. I thoroughly enjoyed Lies We Tell Ourselves - you can check out my review here! - and when it comes to adult historical LGBT+ fiction then I can't recommend Sarah Waters enough. Waters has written six novels, all historical fiction, and five of those six have a queer female protagonist. Fingersmith is a wonderful place to start with Waters' work; it's a fantastically twisty and turny novel, highly inspired by the Victorian sensation novels that Waters loves to read, and like Lies We Tell Ourselves it has a wonderful LGBT+ couple at its centre. You can check out my review here!

It's been years since I read Things I Want My Daughters to Know, but I absolutely loved it when I first read it. The Year of the Rat and Things I Want My Daughters to Know are very different novels, but at their heart they're both stories that tackle grief, and in particular the grief that comes with losing a mother.

I admit these two may in fact have more dissimilarities than similarities; one main protagonist is a teenage girl while the other is a grown man, and one focuses on travelling through space while the other barely focuses on the travel at all. That being said, I do think fans of Across the Universe, and any other YA sci-fi like it, should give The Book of Strange New Things a chance. There is a lot about Christianity in it, but it isn't a Christian book; the main character, Peter, is travelling to a new planet to preach the Bible - the 'Book of Strange New Things' - to the natives there while, back on earth, his wife Bea begins to struggle with her faith. It's quite a slow-moving book, but it's fascinating.

Which adult books would you recommend to YA readers? Alternatively, which YA books would you recommend to people who don't read much YA?

This Week in Books | 18/11/15

This week I'm joining in with Lipsy @ Lipsyy Lost & Found to talk about the books I've been reading recently!

NOW: Last night I decided to pick up The Falconer to see if I was in the mood to read it, and ended up reading the first hundred pages in an hour. It's not the best thing I've ever read, and I do fear there may be a dreaded love triangle, but it's a lot of fun! I haven't really read any books featuring fae and it's been a long time since I read a book set in Scotland, so I'm planning to finish this one soon. I'm also currently reading Eileen Pollack's memoir The Only Woman in the Room, and I'm enjoying it so far.

THEN: I finished, and really enjoyed, Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked at the weekend; it was very interesting to see how the story of Little Red Riding Hood has changed over the centuries, and how it's been used as both a moral tale and for advertising. I recommend it, especially to any fairy tale fans!

NEXT: The main reason I picked up The Falconer is because I received an eARC of the second book in the trilogy, The Vanishing Throne, from NetGalley. The Vanishing Throne is actually released tomorrow, but November slipped away from me before I could try and read it in advance. I'm hoping to finish The Falconer very soon, though, and then I'll jump straight into this one and review them both! Also you should all check out Elizabeth May's Twitter account. It's brilliant.

Review | If I Stay by Gayle Forman

If I Stay

by Gayle Forman

My Rating: 

In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen-year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make.

I've mentioned before on my blog that I don't tend to read an awful lot of contemporary, and I read even less YA contemporary, for no other reason than that some of my favourite genres are historical fiction, magical realism and fantasy, so contemporary tends to pass me by!

Reading If I Stay reminded me that I should try to read contemporary more, because I usually end up enjoying what I read; I read If I Stay in a day last November and enjoyed it a lot more than I initially thought I would!

Mia's narrative was very easy to fall into, so much so that even though this book is relatively short as far as novels go I felt like I knew her very well by the time I turned the last page. I loved the constant seesawing throughout; one moment we were seeing this kind of limbo that Mia finds herself in, and the next we were being told about one of her memories regarding her family, her friends and Adam, her boyfriend.

I'm not always keen on the love interests in contemporary YA, but Adam I liked for the simple reason that Mia and Adam's relationship felt like one of the more realistic relationships I've come across in contemporary YA in a while. They had disagreements and they worked through them like a real couple do, and I appreciated Forman's honesty in that respect.

I loved Mia's parents the most. They made me laugh more than once, and knowing that neither of them survived the crash really tugged at my heartstrings.

All in all I really liked this book. I loved the way that it ended, and the only reason it got 4 stars rather than 5 is because it didn't completely blow me away. But I still recommend checking it out if it's on your TBR!

My End of Year YA TBR | Twelve Days of Christmas!

I don't think I'd ever say I've grown out of YA because I don't think it's possible to grow out of a genre that isn't meant for just teenagers/young adults anyway. I'm 23 now. I might not be as young as I was when I was 17, but I certainly still think of myself as a young adult rather than an old one.

But I'm absolutely rubbish at keeping up with the latest trends and newest releases in YA, and over the past couple of years my tastes have simply meant that I've been reading more adult books anyway. There are YA releases from two years ago that I still haven't gotten around to reading - never mind the ones from this year! - so as the end of the year approaches, here are some pieces of YA I'd like to try and cross off my TBR before 2015!
 
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater: This is the book I'm most eager to cross off my TBR. It feels as though every single book blogger I know has read and loved this series, and frankly I'm tired of feeling left out. I've actually already started this book, and enjoying what I've read so far, so with any luck I'll have it under my belt soon!

Half Bad by Sally Green: I love stories about witches, and I've owned my copy of Half Bad for a while now (though not as long as another book on this list) so it's really about time I read it, especially with the second book in the trilogy, Half Wild, being released in March!

Red Rising by Pierce Brown: In all honesty I initially had no intention of reading Red Rising when I first started seeing it popping up all over the blogosphere, but lately I've been hearing so many great things about it that I want to check it out for myself. Not only that, but lately I've also been getting into sci-fi - a genre that used to intimidate me hugely - so I'd love to expand my sci-fi knowledge just a little bit. I've seen a copy of this in my local library, so with any luck I'll be able to read it soon. Plus, like Half Bad, the second book in this trilogy, Golden Son, is due to be released in early 2015!

The Host by Stephenie Meyer: Behold, one of the longest unread books on my shelf. My sister bought me a copy of The Host when it first came out - I was still a Twilight fan then and I wanted Meyer's new book badly - then I got my wake up call that Twilight is actually a pretty dangerous series, because if you don't just laugh it off and decide to take it seriously what it's really saying is 'you are worth nothing without a boyfriend'. After that I felt less inclined to read Meyer's other book, but even friends of mine who despise Twilight have admitted that The Host isn't half bad (ha, see what I did there?). Ultimately I've owned this book for six years and I really need to read the poor thing.

Do you have any end of year reading goals?

Review | Legend by Marie Lu

Legend

by Marie Lu

My Rating: 

What was once the western United States is now home to the Republic, a nation perpetually at war with its neighbors. 

Born into an elite family in one of the Republic's wealthiest districts, fifteen-year-old June is a prodigy being groomed for success in the Republic's highest military circles. 

Born into the slums, fifteen-year-old Day is the country's most wanted criminal. But his motives may not be as malicious as they seem. 

From very different worlds, June and Day have no reason to cross paths - until the day June's brother, Metias, is murdered and Day becomes the prime suspect.

 
Caught in the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family's survival, while June seeks to avenge Metias's death. But in a shocking turn of events, the two uncover the truth of what has really brought them together, and the sinister lengths their country will go to keep its secrets.

If you'd like to see my review with spoilers, you can find it on Goodreads here!

I'd be a liar if I said I didn't step into Legend with high expectations, but I was hugely disappointed. As far as I could tell from the blurb Legend had a very interesting premise, particularly as it was claiming to be a modern interpretation of Victor Hugo Les Miserables. However, the only similarity between the two novels is that there is someone of authority in pursuit of a criminal, and if that makes Legend a Les Mis retelling then so is every other novel which uses two such characters. That sure is a lot of retellings.

Unlike the characters in Les Mis, June and Day are flat. They can do everything; they are intelligent, quick, strong and talented and it's simply unbelievable. Throughout the novel they were far too similar to one another in terms of character. In other words, they are pretty much the same person with different genitalia. I like depth and conflict in characters, and for me June and Day have neither.

The romance between the two protagonists was far too quick and forced. Let's be honest for a minute here: this is the start of a YA dystopian trilogy with one male protagonist and one female protagonist, of course they're going to fall in love. I would have been pleasantly surprised if Lu had simply developed a friendship between the two of them and the romance for later in the trilogy. They barely knew another; it was a severe case of instalove.

The relationship I enjoyed most was that of June and her doomed brother Metias. They had a closeness which was lovely to read, and I think Metias may have been my favourite character in the novel. There was something honourable, admirable and rather gentle about him, so I very much enjoyed his role within the story. It says something, then, if my favourite character was the one who was killed in one of the very early chapters.

Overall there wasn't enough character building in the novel for me - I found none of them, aside from Metias, particularly memorable - but I also felt a lack of world building, which is a shame because some of the aspects of the futuristic world Lu created intrigued me, but instead Lu seemed to ghost over all of the details.

In fact what Legend is lacking in plot and character development it seems to make up for in descriptions of what every single character is wearing - including the ones who don't matter! I love a good outfit just as much as the next person, but I'd rather read about what a character is doing than what they're wearing. Give me a scenario and I can probably picture an outfit for them myself! Unless a particular aspect of an outfit is going to be important later then I don't need to know what every single person is wearing all the time.

All in all I think it's fairly obvious that Legend is certainly not a novel I'm particularly fond of, and I doubt that I'll read the rest of the trilogy. If I don't care about the main characters in the first book then I'm not likely to care what happens to them throughout the other two books either. In terms of YA dystopia this was a disappointment for me but, despite my criticism of it, it would make a good read for readers out there who enjoy fast-paced, quick reads who are perhaps only just starting out in the dystopian genre.

As for my copy, I think it's going to find a new home either in a charity shop or in a library.