Polls for Our Souls discussion

Go with Cinder ... the lunar chronicles is one of the best...

I really like Brandon Sanderson for more "adult" fantasy :)
Chick flicks are really good for transitions as well :)

The Great Library series is one of my favorites, book one is Ink and Bone. Heartless is really good too! Eleanor & Park is another great one.

Miss pergrines home for peculiar children.
The lunar chronicals
Throne of glass
Hunger games
Divergent
Carrie and me
The maze runner
Nimona
Confessions of a shopaholic
Illuminae
The false prince
Outlander

I recently read Station Eleven, and I'd recommend it for a transition into reading some adult books!

Ninosy so true

Lux series
Lunar Chronicles
Shatter Me Trilogy
The Mortal Instruments
The Infernal Devices

Daughter of Smoke & Bones by Laini Taylor is definitely a good one. I highly recommend it.
I also recommend A Court of Thorns & Roses by Sarah J. Maas. I noticed you don't have it on your TBR list but it's a great series that is caught in between the Young Adult and New Adult genre.

honestly? if i were you, i'd jusy move on from the genre. i love ya books, but i'd be so glad to leave them for a while to get invested in literature.

The Shatter Me trilogy was amazing. The way the author portrays certain parts of the book was amazing. The wording and character build up through this series was great! I really think this would give you a boost to start reading YA again. The Shatter met trilogy is one of my favorite series.

i think the strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender is absolutely beautiful if you want to read something that's really different from most ya. i can guarantee you won't ever read a book like it again!!

Annesofie wrote: "honestly? if i were you, i'd jusy move on from the genre. i love ya books, but i'd be so glad to leave them for a while to get invested in literature."

I second this. Just move on from YA.

Vicious by VE Schwab is my favorite book EVVVEER! It's an adult novel, but it feels a bit younger because half the book takes place when the characters are in college. It's really amazing!!!!!

Shatter Me by Tareheh Mafi is a good YA series. It has a unique story format characterized by its poetic diction. She's also writing a few more books. :)

The Grisha Trilogy and Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom (these last two are part of the same series) by Leigh Bardugo are excellent. Cool world-building and full of complex, diverse characters.

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. It's a coming of age tale told about an adopted German girl during WW2. It's raw, rich, and real--plus it's written from the POV of Death who is without any kind of malignancy but just kind of IS. I definitely recommend reading it if you haven't yet.

Apart from books by my favorite YA authors like Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, ... ), Julie Murphy (Ramona Blue, Miss Dumplin') or John Green, I'd suggest reading:

- Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, a touching story about the friendship between two boys who are trying to figure out their goals in life
- The Chronicles of Alice by Christina Henry, a chilling and captivating retelling of Alice in Wonderland
- Big Mouth and Ugly Girl by Joyce Carol Oates
- Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang by Joyce Carol Oates
- Freaky Green Eyes by Joyce Carol Oates
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

As for books which help you "transitioning" from reading YA to reading new "adult" and contemporary fiction, I'd recommend reading:

- American Gods, Neil Gaiman
- The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Taylor wrote: "Reader Extraordinaire wrote: "Annesofie wrote: "honestly? if i were you, i'd jusy move on from the genre. i love ya books, but i'd be so glad to leave them for a while to get invested in literature..."

I didn't know YA existed until recently, I've been mostly reading children's literature up until 3/4 years ago. Obviously I've since made the switch to adult literature. Good YA is hard to come by even if you know where to look, if you don't know already it ain't what's popular. That much I'll tell you.

When I go to goodwill to pick up some books, I rarely check out the YA section that they have there. Instead I just swing by the Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Fiction and Literature, Horror and the Classic sections.

Definitely the ACOTAR series by Sarah J. Maas!
As well as Dark Elements by J.L.Armentrout
Ink series by Amanda Sun
And Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi. :)

This is where it ends is beautiful and addicting. You wont want to put it down.

The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee was excellent, and different. Could. Not. Put. It. Down. The sequel is out this fall too, and I'm so ready. I don't exclusively read YA, but this book was amazing. Favorite book I read in 2017.

Rainbow Rowell is known for her YA books but she has some really fantastic adult books with a really great characters and plots. I'd suggest Attachments by her simply because it is easy to read, swoon-worthy and interesting.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is fantastic as well. It's heartrending, simply heart-breaking, and very beautifully written. It focuses on the lives of young adults and their descendants, lives torn apart by the slave trade and colonialism. It is an emotionally heavy book but it is also very hopeful and rewarding.

If you're looking for good transition books and don't mind comedy, I'd suggest the entire literary repertoire of Sophie Kinsella. My favorites being 'Can You Keep a Secret?' and 'I've Got Your Number.' They are hilarious, cringe-worthy and fun but they also deal with topics like growing up, learning and standing up for yourself.

Me Before You is an emotional transition novel about a quadriplegic.

The Incumbent is a really great political fiction novel that's hilarious.

I'd also recommend Passenger - which is sort of ya, but has some great historical fiction/dystopian elements to it.

Can’t go wrong with the Lunar Chronicles
Six of Crows Duology is amazing, as well
Anything Rainbow Rowell has written (both YA and adult)

haven't read it yet, but Nevernight by Jay Kristoff is supposed to be great and not entirely ya!

It's hard to be sure what to recommend, because apart from YA/non-YA, you don't reveal your specific reading tastes or what appeals to you. But here are some YA and some non-YA suggestions:

The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner. It's supposedly written for YA, but I think it was done a disservice, because it's an amazingly smart, subtle, interesting fantasy series that would appeal to any adult as well. There are five books (The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, A Conspiracy of Kings, Thick as Thieves). She just published the last, about a decade after she finished the rest of the series, and it's good but not as good as the first four, which build from good to great to amazing as the series goes on.

Laini Taylor's new book, Strange the Dreamer, was my favorite book of the year so far. It's the first in a series. Again, marketed as YA, appealing to anyone who loves this kind of fantasy.

Transitional books:
The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. It's about a girl who has just turned 18 and has aged out of the foster care system. She has lived a neglected life and is in some ways rather unlikeable, but had a year, in her childhood, of being cared for by someone who transformed her life enough to give her coping skills in the present day. It has drama, love, and an interesting personal story.

The Lock Artist, by Steve Hamilton. It's a book written for adults, but the protagonist is a teenage boy. He has been mute since an extremely traumatic event in his youth. He has an unexpected affinity for opening locks, and is taken up by an unsavory crowd and turned into a safecracker. It's a fascinating story, with a love interest that doesn't dominate the story.

Kill the Messenger, by Tami Hoag. A suspense/thriller with, again, a teenage boy as the protagonist. He's a bike messenger; he gets called to pick up some papers from a lawyer and deliver them somewhere, but after he picks them up, he's chased down and almost killed for them by a mysterious guy in a fast car. He then discovers the lawyer who gave them to him has been killed. Now he's playing hide and seek with a killer, as well as with the social services system, which is looking for him and his little brother.

Canary, by Duane Swierczynski. A girl who inadvertently gets in trouble with a cop over a drug bust and gets sucked into an underground world she never knew existed.

Also, the American Library Association publishes a list every year called the Alex Awards; these are books that librarians on the Alex committee have suggested as being books written for adults that will have appeal for teenagers. I suggest you check those out: http://www.ala.org/yalsa/alex-awards

I've been having the same problem lately. Now that I'm older, I'm finding it harder to get immersed and into the world of YA. So, I understand your struggle! Since I can't see your profile to see what kind of genre you prefer, I'm just going to recommend a couple of books I've found I loved and enjoyed. Some will be YA, others will be NA fiction. So I hope one of these are to your liking!

First, the YA books. Anything by Leigh Bardugo is a must read (Shadow and Bone & Six of Crows). She has a talent for writing YA in a mature and realistic light that isn't seen much in the genre. So older and younger readers alike will will find something to love and cherish within her stories.

Anything by Amy Harmon. She writes such beautiful prose that will just take your breath away. She writes in both YA and NA, therefore her stories feel like a mix between the two genres. I think she would be a good start if you're looking to transition from YA to NA. The books that I would recommend you read from her first would be Running Barefoot, From Sand and Ash, The Bird and the Sword, Making Faces, and Slow Dance in Purgatory.

Another YA series that I love is The Diviners. It also feels like more of a NA fiction series rather than a YA series. Libba often tackles hard topics and includes them in her stories in a respectful and knowledgeable way. Also, this series is just all around fun, enticing, and very well written.

I hope this helps you somewhat! Good luck (:

Unpopular opinion : I still don't get this whole YA category. I get "teenage" books which are centered on teenage characters and teen-specific matters (sexual orientation, bullying, puberty, socialisation...) But YA sounds like infantilising bullsh*t to me : I've been reading adult books since I was 12. Every "YA" I've read was either good books containing not much violence or more often dumbed-down mediocre ideas.

all of Maggie Stiefvater's book are great for transitioning from the undefined YA category to "adult" fiction.
Try Scorpio Races first

Scythe by Neil Schusterman was one of my most favorite books of this year! I would def recommend trying him out.

The Night Circus is an adult book that's easy to swallow as a YA reader. I'd definitely recommend it!

I just read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and I LOVED it. It's an adult sci-fi novel but pretty easy to read and understand :)