Featured: 10 Ways to Expand Your Bookshelf: Young Adult

As teenagers, we all have books that we adore. We will read them back-to-front and some of us may even know the book cover-to-cover. Young adult books span a range of topics and cover a vast range of characters and plots and are aimed specifically at a young-teen audience, so are bound to be more engaging for younger audiences. This week’s Ten Ways focuses on ten of these young adult books!

1. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

A beautifully tragic coming-of-age tale, The Fault in Our Stars is a young adult book that has, as of late, captured the nation. Now a box office hit, John Green’s tale of two teenagers battling cancer is one that will leave you laughing, crying, and everywhere in-between.

2. There Is No Dog by Meg Rosoff

When Bob’s mother wins Planet Earth in a board game, she entrusts its care into the hands of Bob himself, a seventeen-year old with problems being productive and impartial. Being given the title of God is something for an adult, but for this teenage boy, it causes carnage. There Is No Dog follows Bob as he, his assistant, his mother and his pet eck, Eck, attempt to keep the world in one piece whilst dealing with the turmoil that is growing up.

3. Matched by Ally Condie

In a world where everything is controlled by the government, even love is manufactured. At the age of seventeen, the government pairs up other seventeen-year-olds into romantic relationships. When Cassia attends the Matching – a banquet set up to celebrate another round of teenagers being put into seemingly perfect relationships – she is matched, but a malfunction shows up another, second face for a few seconds. Matched follows Cassia’s choices between the two men she has been shown.

4. Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Being the court musician isn’t usually a high-octane job, but when sixteen-year-old Seraphina is drawn into the murder of the Crown Prince, her life is turned upside down. The murder itself seems to have been carried out by dragons, despite a peace treaty being signed between the two races years previous. Seraphina must keep herself safe whilst helping the land of Goredd find out what happened and prevent a full-scale war against one of the most dangerous species of animal on the planet.

5. Uglies by Scott Westerfield

For Tally Youngblood and the world that she lives in, being pretty is seemingly everything. Sixteen-year-olds are forced into operations to make them ‘pretty’, both physically and mentally. Just a few months shy of sixteen, Tally was looking forward to the operation until she met Shay, who introduced her to the true nature of the operation and to a group of mysterious runaways that call themselves the Smokes.

6. I’d Tell You I Love You, but Then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter

For Cammie Morgan, school is an exciting and exhilarating experience. She attends the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, an all-girls school that teaches girls everything they need to know about being an elite spy. They are taught almost everything, including how to hack into CIA databases and how to take someone down with a single punch. But what they aren’t taught is how to interact with the non-spy majority of the population and when Cammie finds herself falling for an ordinary boy from an ordinary background, she realises that she may be more out of her depth than she ever has been.

7. If You’re Reading This by Trent Reedy

For Mike, living without his father is a reality that he knows all too well. After being killed in Afghanistan under what can only be described as mysterious circumstances, he left behind a broken family. But as his sixteenth birthday rapidly approaches, Mike begins to receive a series of letters that his father wrote before his death, each imparting a piece of treasured advice on how to make it through his teenage years.

8. The Book of Bad Things by Dan Poblocki

For those that live in the city, summer breaks in a quiet and slow-moving community can be a godsend. For Cassidy Bean, Whitechapel is the perfect summer getaway from the hustle and bustle of New York City. But when she arrives for her usual summer break, she finds that everything has changed and when rumours of the local hermit’s newly-created ghost start circulating, Cassidy finds out that the sleepy town she has loved for years may not be as safe as she thinks it is.

9. Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz

Alex Rider has led an unusual life. His parents were killed when he was just a boy and for years, he lived with his elusive Uncle Ian, a man who is secretive about everything he does. After Ian is killed in what is described to the shell-shocked teen as a car accident, Alex is thrown headfirst into the world of MI6, an elite British spy operation that he quickly learns his uncle works for. Despite not wanting to become a spy, Alex is brought into the organisation and sent on his very first secret mission – to gather intel on a successful and highly dangerous man with a plan that could shock the population of the United Kingdom into complete submission.

10. The Things You Kiss Goodbye by Leslie Connor

A classic coming-of-age book, The Things You Kiss Goodbye follows the first love and subsequent events of Bettina Vasilis, a teenager with an unusually strict father. After the local basketball star convinces him to let Bettina and he date, Bettina finds herself wrapped up in a relationship she would rather not be in – that is until she meets a mysterious older man who seems to want to get to know her better.

Special thanks to Goddess_Of_Muse and silent hearts. for editing!