Wow this was a fascinating discussion! I definitely learned a lot, so thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts:
My take-aways:
YA is a marketing label so it isn’t that useful to treat it factually or to make decisions on it. I never really thought of that before, but this makes sense to me.
Putting the “YA” label aside, there is a lot of debate and disagreement on the nature of books written for a certain reading level. This is surprising to me since it seems fairly objective, but - something I will keep in mind and not take for granted in the future.
Best bet is to check a few third-party sources for their categorization if you really want to be sure what you are getting.
Also - I want to make it clear that I am not dissing “YA” books. There are several great books that are geared towards a teen reading level that I enjoyed and would recommend to anyone, so I have nothing against such books. Ready Player One, Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, etc. And if it wasn’t clear from my original post - I liked Red Rising! I will probably check out the other books in the series or other work from that author.
Wow this was a fascinating discussion! I definitely learned a lot, so thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts:
My take-aways:
Also - I want to make it clear that I am not dissing “YA” books. There are several great books that are geared towards a teen reading level that I enjoyed and would recommend to anyone, so I have nothing against such books. Ready Player One, Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, etc. And if it wasn’t clear from my original post - I liked Red Rising! I will probably check out the other books in the series or other work from that author.