#TTT 11/5/21 – You Know It’s A Young Adult Book When…

Posted byHundreds&ThousandsPosted inReading ChallengesTags:,

This is not posted on a Wednesday. Your eyes decieve you.

As always, this great tag was originally created by The Broke and the Bookish but is now hosted over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Yesterday Today’s prompt is for books with nature on the cover… of which there is a worrying amount of Young Adult books. Of which there is a worrying amount of recurring tropes… that I’m going to talk about here! There’s a link there somewhere.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Young Adult books. I love that there’s a genre where people progress past awkwardly holding hands, but can still go go on fairytale adventures without exploring the meaning of life. Is something bothering you? There’ll be a dozen Young Adult books on the subject and I just love it. But there are definitely some recurring tropes going on here, of which I’ve listed my top ten. Can you think of any more? So some of these Young Adult things boil your blood? Let me know in the comments!

10. Parents? What are those!

Whether it’s an obscure boating accident, or cancer, or my personal favourite as victims of the mythical beast the hero has to defeat at the end. Either way, the parents are rarely around. Or if they are, they never seem to care what their child is up to?

See the source image

9. Unimaginable trauma…that’s never dealt with

I WANT TO GET SO MANY OF THESE POOR CHILDREN INTO THERAPY.

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8. Inconsistent sizing

The first book will be 200 pages… and the last will be 750. Plus, if it’s any good Young Adult book then there will be at least 9 books in this world… or it will be a duology. There’s no in between.

7. ✨ Connections ✨

Everyone’s related to everyone else? The best friend will be related to the High Chancellor, or the hero will secretly be the long lost child of royalty (been there, seen that so many times). I guess it saves time trying to find the Head of Police when she’s your brother’s boyfriend’s mum, but it feels pretty unrealistic.

6. Protagonist who can’t understand why people think they’re pretty

But I’m so ugly! Honey, you’re probably a New York model who is complaining about her arm fat. Come on, body positivity!

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5. That one POV that’s SO unnescessary

Why do I need to hear the perspective of the protagonist’s least favourite teacher? (No, this is not necessarily a Snape-bashing). But Young Adult books, especially the ones from multiple perspectives, always manage to throw in the POVs you don’t care about during the best plot points.

4. Token/Stereotyped Diversity

It can get really complicated where token diversity ends and inclusive, well-written diversity begins. But the charatcer is incredibly stereotyped, then I don’t belive it can be progressive.

See the source image

3. “I let out a breath I didn’t know that I was holding”

Needs no explanation. I don’t see this a lot, but whenever I do it just obliterates the quality of the book.

2. Quirky Characteristics

Why are there so many resemblances between Y/N and the heroines of YA books? Sometimes, I just want to shake some of these authors and yell, ‘Being clumsy or tidy can’t be someone’s entire personality trait!

And Number One Goes To…

1. EVERYTHING IS A SCIENCE EXPERIMENT!

Do you have a lot of plot holes? Here’s an easy fix: blame it on the evil group who will be revealed in the last book to have created the plot of this entire series as a psychological experiment. Boom.

Published by Hundreds&Thousands

I’m a teenager (and a Hufflepuff) from Manchester. I like oversized jumpers, music that isn't on the radio anymore and books. Pretty much any book I can get my hands on but my favourites are Young Adult, fantasy and science fiction. One day, I decided to share some of my opinions on some great - and not so great - books to people around the world. And here it is! I really enjoy it and I hope you do too. The aim is hundreds and thousands of book reviews (see what I did there?) but I’m not quite up to that. Yet.

31 thoughts on “#TTT 11/5/21 – You Know It’s A Young Adult Book When…”

  3. Haha this is so accurate! Every time I see a sentence about their breathing I always laugh.

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  5. HA I love this post! The ‘let out a breath I forgot I was holding’ makes me cackle every time I read it, and I totally get what you mean about the trauma never getting dealt with, the authors put these characters through some traumatic events!

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  8. I found myself shouting ‘yes!’ after reading most of these! I’ve never really considered some of these, although I had picked up on the absent parents and the ridulous family tree tropes. Have you also noticed that these teens hardly ever use Google when they have a question (the Internet is never available) and that mobile phones get smashed/lost before every novel climax?

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  9. I love how creative you were with this weeks prompt! I agreed with every trope on your list, as I definitely see them all the time in YA books. Keep up with your awesome creativity!!!

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    1. Haha I’m so glad you agree! A book will rise in my expectations so much if the characters actually *go to therapy* (because boy do they need it sometimes*). And I wish my parents were as laid back as some of these lol

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