Why I don’t like a lot of popular Young Adult fiction

I’ve tested different sub genres of it and always come away with a bad taste in my mouth, which is ironic because it’s one of the genres I write. But I only discovered that after thinking about my characters ages and the target demographic for a series of mine. So it wasn't on purpose. It begs the question, why does so much Young Adult Literature turn me off?

It tends to be incredibly predictable: 

This doesn't have to be a bad thing–certain tropes like an underdog main hero with a harsh life, and a Byronic hero love interest with a mystery about his past can be done well. So can the “normal” guy or girl who realizes they have a great destiny and they’re  the “chosen one” trope. What makes these problematic is when I know the move the author will make before they make it at every beat, and it's unoriginal in its exhibition. To give some examples. In the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead there are so many tropes filled in unoriginal ways it's not even funny.  I experimented with the first book and found every beat to be stereotypical and predictable all the while smutty (which is also a YA trend I don’t care for).

• We’re supposed to believe Rose is a normal 17 year old girl but she’s physically described as being a voluptuous beauty with perfect skin and flowing hair who every male in the story wants. 

• Rose’s primary love interest is a guardian or a teacher type figure who’s a vampire and much older than her–though he’s physically only in his twenties. Dimitri is supposed to be stoic and live by a strict code though he has suppressed passions and a deeply tormented romantic soul.

• Rose is the chosen one under of course she and Dimitri can’t be together (though I’m not sure what this means because they do everything but have sex repeatedly). Therefore there’s several other gorgeous vampire and human men in the series who she has to be physical with until the writer allows her and Dimitri to be together. 

All of this was something I discerned from skimming the first book and seeing exactly what kind of YA it was. I didn't need to be told anything other than “It’s a book with this girl who's like the chosen one in a world with vampires…”

 And I stopped my brother right there.

Without knowing anything else every detail I just listed is one I guessed and then flipped through the novel to confirm my suspicions. There’s always a normal girl who's some sexy baby and all the men in the story want her. There’s an older mentor, teacher, guardian, or whatever who I’m supposed to believe is so mature and stoic but he’s having a sexual flirtation with a young girl. Now I’m a professed Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan and believe the first half of the series is still great TV. But there are vital differences between what the show did, which was original and way ahead of its time–and what we’re mass producing now. Buffy came out in 1997 and there hadn't really been a female action hero as a star of her own show at that time, let alone a show with supernatural elements and horror. The fact that there was a female hero who was a real person and maintained her femininity was bold and there’s a reason people are still watching it. This leans into my next reason for the dislike of most YA.

It does things to create tension or overplayed emotion and not because it what actually would happen:

Buffy and Angel was a forbidden vampire human romance that actually addressed the stakes of their dalliance, the consequences of it and ultimately the tragedy which it had to become. Buffy and Angel’s relationship realistically takes turns which lead to an inevitable outcome:

• Angel is in love with her but staying away because he knows it would end badly. Buffy initially tries to accept this.

• Buffy, being a teenager, is at unrest with staying away from Angel and pushes the subject till Angel is forced to make a choice. If he’s going to hang around and help her they can’t just be friends.

• They get into a relationship and when they’re physical it ends badly (he loses his soul) and they’re forced to forget the idea of maintaining a relationship at all. 

• Eventually Angel is forced to confront the reality he and Buffy can never have a normal life and he leaves her.

The point of all this is that Buffy and Angel relationship takes realistic and at the time surprising turns (none of my siblings or I expected Angel to go evil and lose his soul as a consequence for he and Buffy sleeping together). And every point in the relationship/story is leading to something not simply for fanservice. When Angel is staying away from Buffy he actually stays away from her in the sense they don’t do anything except kiss in one episode of the first season. In YA books it’s like the story takes a backseat as do characters, and for the sake of sexual tension or “the feels” we let anything happen. When that content slipped into the Buffy show, it was obvious and stood out in a series that otherwise tended to not cross lines for fan service. In Vampire Academy you’d be hard pressed to turn to a random page and not see character being physical with every other person all the while claiming they either “can’t be together” or that they’re “in love with someone else.” Again, if the character really does love someone else–if Rose loved Dimitri–she wouldn't be physical with other guys all because she can’t have Dimitri. It’s like the writer knows the reader wants sexual tension so they have it in any way possible. This was the same thing that turned me off to Mortal Instruments in the second book of the series. This book fell prey to many of the YA turn offs for me. Not only could I predict everything about the second book before I even got there, but the forced tension was so obvious it pained me to read it.

• As soon as I learned Clary was dating her friend Simon in the beginning of the book I knew how that was going to go. She’s dating Simon as a nice, safe band aid because she can’t be with Jace (captain bad news boy who’s sitting on a mountain of teen angst and parental issues). But Clary will still be in love with Jace and eventually her desire for him will destroy her relationship with Simon. This is a trope done a lot, the girl who dates the safe nice guy because she can’t be with the one she really wants and I absolutely HATE it. You can probably guess I hated The Notebook. It’s not romantic to be cheating on a nice “boring” guy just because he doesn't wear leather and burns with lust every time you look his way. It’s annoying and all it’s setting up the reader for is to watch this girl do something shameful by being unfaithful. She can love who she wants, but why write her in a relationship that serves no purpose other than to create tension between her and the guy she really wants?

• Surely enough, when Clary returns to the Shadow Hunters she and Jace are burning with suppressed passion but she’s pretending she likes Simon and he’s acting like he doesn't care (again the angsty YA guy trope). This is also annoying because by this point in the book Jace thinks they’re siblings (or that they could be), but that doesn’t matter–the characters' passions must rule over all.

• And then in literally the most contrived kiss scene ever–Clary and Jace have to go meet the queen of the Faeries and Clary eats the food in that realm meaning now she cannot leave. The Faerie will let them leave on one condition, Clary has to have the kiss she most desires. Of course the queen tells Clary and Jace to kiss. Naturally Jace acts like it's no big deal and then becomes a raving passion monster when they kiss, and all of this is in front of Simon and other Shadow Hunters. There’s so much wrong with this that I don’t know where to start. First of all, an ancient Fairy queen is made excited by two teenagers kissing–it’s like a teenager wrote a book and let their hormones get involved with this scene. Secondly, the complete lack of self control on Jace and Clary’s part is kind of disgusting. Clary is in a relationship, and they both think they could be related. They aren't related–but the characters and the reader don’t know that. So it makes the moment impossible to enjoy for anyone except for Jace and Clary. And they would only be shamefully enjoying it because like the reader, they think they're doing something dirty. The entire scene gives off a feeling of “Ick” but again, it had to be done because in YA passion wins out over all moral reason, logic, and plot. And again, the kiss serves no purpose except to create more forced tension between Jace and Clary (which we didn’t need). At that point I put down City of Ashes and decided the whole series was probably going to be a horny teen fan service that would play into every YA trope ever.

Characters don’t typically act their age in YA:

I’ve already gone over how Rose in Vampire Academy acts like she's 25 (at youngest) but she’s supposed to be 17, but this is a running trope in YA. YA feels like it was written by adults for teenagers so they have a lot of sexual tension, angst, action and such–but characters never act their age in one way or another.

 In Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo most of the main characters are supposed to be 17 or younger. Now I loved the goat group (Kaz, Inej, and Jesper) in the TV show off the book Shadow and Bone, and from what I can tell they’re the best part of the book series as well. But when I saw the show I guessed Kaz was supposed to range somewhere in the age of mid 20s, and I heard Inej was younger (because he freed her from a brothel when she was a girl) so I guessed maybe she’s 18 at the youngest. In the books they expect me to believe Kaz is 17 and Inej is 16…..no. If Kaz were 25 he would still be incredibly young to be a crime boss owning his own club, and to have been well off enough to purchase Inej’s freedom. If I’m supposed to believe he’s 17, when exactly did he acquire any power or influence? It’s an insane stretch which I feel is solely for the purpose of maintaining the YA genre, meaning everyone has to be not quite an adult. Kaz acts like an adult not a 17 year old boy.

Twilight has the same issue only in reverse. I’m supposed to believe Edward is old enough to be Bella’s great, great, great, great grandfather–but he acts like a petty jealous boy with no maturity sometimes. All because it’s a YA book do we have the old man acting like a hormonal teen because the leading lady is a teenage girl and we have to keep them on the same level.

Leading Ladies that are weak at best: This is another issue with YA. So many of their female heroes just come off as narcissistic and dislikable as well as unhuman to me. I’ve said why I don’t like Rose from Vampire Academy and why they ruined Clary for me, I won’t even attempt to get started on Bella Swan (though she was better in the books). Another female hero from a popular YA is Trish from Divergent. Once again, she comes off as selfish and materialistic in the book since she wants to be dauntless despite them all seeming like abusive violent jerks who get a thrill out of hurting or scaring people. The running problem I have with these YA girls boils down to one basic thing: They all start or become motivated by their own selfish desires and are moved by material things or personal passions. They lack conviction to put it simply.

The male love interests who are rebels with causes:

I touched on this with Jace from Mortal Instruments but it goes much deeper: The Cruel Prince by Holly black is another example with an absolute garbage, alcoholic, womanizing love interest in YA—but he has inner passions and sadness of which the world knows not so oh the main girl must love him….ick. There’s this issue in YA fiction where the love interest must have a specific set of traits:

-A dark and troubled past which usually includes issues with one or both parents. If he’s an orphan than he has abandonment issues and if a parent is alive they’re probably evil.

-He MUST be disturbingly and universally attractive to men and women whether he’s physically 17 or 35.

-He’s never been in love prior to meeting the female main protagonist and now she’s done something to him which no one else has. Whether its finally forced him to be emotional or vulnerable she and she alone can bring it out of him.

-He must typically be charismatic and masculine as well as sure of himself in all situations. Never allowing anyone to see weakness in him.

-His exterior insouciance masks a deeper pain and the soft heart of a child which longs to be loved or to show passion to someone, specifically a woman (who’s usually the leading lady protagonist).

-He can flip between a violent rage to a burning passion, or the attitude of a damaged child at any moment.

Understand none of these tropes or traits have to be bad, they can be done well. In the first Mortal Instruments, City of Bones—I thought some of Jace’s James Dean attributes were well written or endearing. In the final action sequence there’s a part where he sinks to his knees holding Clary, trembling and can only form enough words to say her name. For a characters who’s been so confident and narcissistic the whole book this was a tender vulnerable moment and played with taste. However by the second book Jace become even more of ana emotionally wrecked man-child and never matures out of it. It’s played as even a positive thing since Clary is still desperately in love with him while he’s being a jerk and throwing fits when she wont sleep with him (that comes later).It becomes repetitive and superficial when most guys in YA have to fill these tropes to be an desirable love interest, and it gets old. Not every love interest has to be this dysfunctional, melodramatic, passion fiend. If you are going to write a guy like that please, please, please address those traits as being unhealthy and have the character grow. But there’s this fascination with women when writing these guys to want to have it all. The guy’s confident, but passionate, sexy, but unloved, experienced with women, but has only truly ever wanted one girl….the list goes on. Please go watch the scene “Bewitched by Griselda” from The court Jester with Danny Kaye 1955 because it sums up everything YA love interests are in modern fiction.

In a nutshell:

Most of them are predictable, smutty, and they have things happen for the sake of angst and tension more than anything else. Characters are more for fan service than to tell a story and most are unoriginal. If this is something that appeals to you—fine, art is subjective in who it appeals to and I get this may not be my genre. This is not to condemn all YA fiction, Hunger Games is a huge exception and there will be an article on that. I’m not saying all young adult fiction falls under these poor tropes and trends, maybe I’ve had a poor sampling–but I tried to research the most popular ones and this has been my experience so just being honest.