Surprising absolutely no one, many YA readers are over age 35! This obviously explains the runaway success of series like The Hunger Games and Divergent. (Yes, the parents read those books too. Shhh.) And now we have the proven category of “New Adult” as well.
Continuing on my summer book explorations, today I offer some exciting YA/NA novels that you can read with or without your offspring!
Some are new releases, and some are just new to me because Amazon recognized my browsing patterns and served them up to me.
YA is such a broad category with some of the picks being gritty and dark, more post-apocalyptic and others being very sweet or more light hearted.
For your reading pleasure:
First up – Cindy Pon’s Want. I loved everything about this setup. Futuristic fiction set in an exotic locale (Taiwan), a modern day Robin Hood with a plucky youth. It’s an “edge-of-your-seat sci-fi thriller, set in a near-future Taipei plagued by pollution, about a group of teens who risk everything to save their city.”
For those who like their YA/NA science fiction books on the grittier side, you will love Mahaffey and Sloan’s latest offering Absolution: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller (Blood Runners Book 1). I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic thrillers, so this was a sheer pleasure to read. I enjoyed the heroine, Marisol. “Absolution: A system of law in which young men and women, “Runners,” are paid bounties, or blood money, to become suspects in crimes committed by the wealthy. The way they are proven innocent? Evade, escape, and survive their hunters.”
Next up, S.J. Pajonas delivers a fun and fresh futuristic NA novel with her newest release, Crash Land on Kurai (The Hikoboshi Series Book 1). Meet Yumi, “a disgraced journalist trying to clear her name, her job is to document the mission to the Hikoboshi system, and she’s determined to get it right, despite all the trouble she causes. But when unknown vessels fire on their ship, and Yumi’s life pod crash lands on a dying moon, she’s separated from her family and friends, and her mission falls to pieces.” A hothead, an idealist, Yumi is a wonderful protagonist and you really root for her.
And for something a little different, a time travel story by the very talented and award winning Chess Desalls.Travel Glasses (The Call to Search Everywhen Book 1). When we meet Calla Winston, she is is perhaps the one teen in the universe who is avoiding her using her cell phone. In a move that would horrify parents everywhere, she meets a hot guy while out for a run and then agrees to meet him for a date that same evening. He takes her out to a nice dinner and it turns out, it’s not a date afterall. Awkward. Then an attack on Calla occurs and her new friend tries to save her life. As they flee, he takes her to 1812 to escape their attacker. Then Calla’s adventure truly begins.
- Last, but only because I was apparently living under a rock, is Lindsay Buroker’s fantastic series opener The Rogue Prince (Sky Full of Stars, Book 1). It has nearly 200 reviews on Amazon! Our heroine is the young and headstrong Alisa Marchenko. She’s a young cargo pilot undertaking ill-advised rescue missions when we meet her. She teams up with her childhood friend Thorian, prince of the now defunct Sarellian Empire. Young Thorian is in trouble with Alliance law and needs her help. So right away, we’ve got the winning elements of space travel, royalty, conflicting loyalties and an aging spacebucket of a ship (the Star Nomad). I’m already cruising through book 2, so I hope you enjoy this series as much as I have.
