So lately I’ve had several book recommendations here and in other subreddits for novels or audiobooks that sounded great, but when I pursued them, I found these were young adult novels. Despite long discussion threads, no one mentioned this.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the occasional YA book. But it seems like something people should mention it is YA, like you might mention if something was softcore. It makes me wonder: Is this is not a big deal to people? Or do people not even realize these are YA?

The most recent was Red Rising, which was suggested as an audio book recommendation. One comment mentioned that they found this after looking for something like Game of Thrones . This is a fun book, and the audio narrator is great, but it is definitely YA and nothing like Game of Thrones, lol.

Anyway, just a thought…

  • dear-mycologistical@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago
    1. The majority of people who buy YA books are adults (source). YA is marketed to adult readers as well as teens nowadays. I’m not saying you have to read it, I’m just saying it’s not unusual for adults to read YA, and therefore it’s not wildly unreasonable for people to think you might read YA if you haven’t explicitly said otherwise. If you don’t want YA, just say that in your recommendation request.
    2. There are also some books where people disagree whether they’re YA or adult. For example, Gideon the Ninth was intended to be adult fiction and was marketed as adult fiction, but the main characters are teenagers, there’s no sex in it, and some readers refer to the book as YA. It’s normal for many categories to have fuzzy boundaries, and since YA is a marketing category, it’s not surprising that there are gray areas.
    3. People often make confusing requests. For example, they’ll say “I’m looking for a YA romance, something like [book they liked],” but the book they name is neither YA nor romance.
    4. I wouldn’t “mention if something was softcore.” I assume that if you’re old enough to request a book recommendation on Reddit, and you don’t explicitly state that you’re a kid or that you don’t want any sexual content, then I can recommend books with sexual content in them (especially if it’s only “softcore”!).