Reading YA

I write YA. I love reviewing YA on tNBW. I work with YAs. But for some reason I don't read YA, well at least the ones that are selling.

3 years ago, writing YA was probably the furthest thing from my mind. I hadn't picked up a YA book since Sweet Valley High was the big seller. Then the movie Twilight came out and I'm a sucker of cheesy teen romance movies. I dragged my husband and infant daughter to see it. And I loved it. The fact that it came from a book was even better, because to me reading was and still is one of my favorite things to do.

The next day, I picked up Twilight and was done before the end of the day. By the end of the week I had read all four books. And yes, I admit it. I loved the books. Not because they were amazingly well written, and not because Edward and Jacob were so beautiful and perfect. I loved them because they were an easy read, yet managed to give that feeling of being a teenager again.

About two weeks after I finished the series, I started writing. Stephenie Meyer made it look so easy.

It wasn't. I wrote and then scrapped the first 30,000 words I wrote, starting over again. When I joined tNBW, I thought I had some great piece of writing - Uh, NOT! Since then I've grown so much in my writing from all the feedback I've had. Just as significantly, I've seen better YA then Twilight. I'm not going to rag on the issues I now see with Twilight, because it doesn't matter - teens/people read it, she's a millionaire. The point is that on tNBW I've managed to read a number of YA books - fantasy, paranormal, romance, realistic - that I never would have read before. Yet, I know I need to read more. I can usually tear through a book in a couple of days, why not use it t broaden my knowledge of what I'm writing.

So, if you have a favorite YA book/series or you've written one, pimp it out here and I'll add it to my list to read.