ACOTAR.

I find that oftentimes, many books aren’t even marked YA anymore. Fourth Wing, other than its sex scenes, felt extremely YA to me and yet it’s marked as Fantasy, New Adult, and Adult on Goodreads. Sure, the characters are 20 and there are two sex scenes, but that’s the only thing separating it from YA.

So while I agree that it would be nice to know ahead of time, I assume many people don’t know themselves and/or would not be able to call it YA if they looked it up. The lines between genres are getting a bit blurry, which is fine because things change over time, but it does cause some issues lol.

I replied to the original comment but can confirm, I am a woman and I don’t like FW.

Agreed, sometimes books are just bad.

Am a woman. I very much do not like Fourth Wing. I have a creative writing degree and while my opinion is obviously not the be-all-end-all, it is pretty easy to call this bad from a craft standpoint.

But that doesn’t mean people can’t enjoy it anyway. Plenty of people like Twilight and ACOTAR and other things that are pretty bad from a craft standpoint. That’s okay. They’re allowed. I’m also allowed to call it bad in my personal and professional opinion (I’m an editor and have been for nearly 10 years).

You’re right in that simple and easily accessible content is not necessarily or inherently bad, but there are much better examples of simple and easily accessible than FW.

It’s okay to like something and also okay to dislike something. I’m not calling anyone a moron for liking FW. Not everything has to or can be amazing from a craft standpoint.

Personally, there are lots of things I like that are not categorically “good” from their respective craft’s standpoint. But that does not and should not stop people in said craft from being critical of it.

I loved Eragon and its series while a teen but I think I would have a hard time rereading them now without nostalgia glasses. Not that they’re bad at all, I just reread them so much as a teen and now I have a creative writing degree, I don’t want to taint my memories of them by seeing what could have been done better.

That all being said, I’m so excited to read Murtagh, which came out this month. I’m hoping Paolini’s writing has grown with him so that I don’t find it too young for me now (I’m almost 30).

And I promise I’m not trying to shit on Eragon, I adore it and it was very formative for me!