Is YA Becoming Too Risqué? Are young adult authors forgetting the younger half of their audience? Or do they just not care… Over the last few decades there’s been a surge in Young Adult Fiction, or YA. Between 2016 and 2017 sales for YA increased 4.4%, according to StatShot Annual Report from the Association of American Publishers. The amount of YA books published has more than doubled in the last decade, with 4,700 in 2002 versus over 10,000 in 2012. Now there are an average of 30,000 YA books published per year. This rise came out of nowhere and was likely aided by the movie adaptations of Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games as all are categorised YA. But what even is YA? It is often suggested that the genre is written for and marketed to those between 12 – 18, however, in a 2012 study around 55% of readers are over 18, with the largest segment aged 30 – 44. While some of these are likely parents buying for their children, it’s reported 78% of the time they are buying for themselves. Within the online book community there is a common feeling that YA isn’t even a genre, it’s an age range and the readership statistics support this. It is believed the 12 – 18 range is of the target audience; however, it could be argued that it’s actually the age range of the main protagonists. Harry Potter is 11 in book one and 17 before the epilogue of book seven. Katniss Everdeen is 16 – 18 in The Hunger Games and Bella Swan is 17 in the Twilight series whereas the age range of the readership varies. So how do you define YA when the age range it’s targeted towards isn’t even its largest consumer? And how do you write for it when the reader could be anywhere between 12 and 44? Over the last few years it has become increasingly obvious that the content for YA is changing. The stories of a teen going through school with various bumps along the road are long gone, the audience needs more. Authors can no longer rely on a plain storyline and a love triangle because readers will eat them alive for it. Some authors have taken to using explicit or darker content to make their books interesting. By using a more basic storyline paired with a dark twist authors ensure the readers will be able to understand the storyline but will focus and remember the twist. This is often seen in retellings such as A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas and A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer to name a few. But how dark is too dark? Damsel is 2019 Michael L. Printz Award Honour Book by Elana K. Arnold that puts a dark and wicked twist on your basic fairy-tale story. In this book, it has been the same; slay a dragon, rescue a damsel, wed her, impregnate her with one son, who will then turn around and repeat the process when it is his turn to be king, only the girl has no memory of before she was rescued. It sounds quite tame, until you read it. The book itself comes with no trigger warnings, yet contains mental and physical abuse, rape/sexual assault, animal cruelty, bestiality, self-harm and suicide. There is almost constant sexualisation and bereavement of women, three rape scenes and Prince Emery references his 'manhood' at least 20 times. This is a book placed in the YA section of bookstores, a section labelled 14+, alongside tween and Damsel by Elana K. Arnold children’s books. The idea of the damsel being the dragon all along is a fantastic idea, but this is not a book that a 12- year-old should be able to pick up without any content warnings. We are in the age of the internet so young people can go online and find things now that they couldn’t ten years ago. It could be considered a fool’s errand to try and ‘protect’ young people from explicit or sexual content when they could just find it themselves if they wanted to, but is that an excuse to further expose them in books? Films and TV shows come with age certifications and parental controls can be placed on devices, whereas books are harder to regulate. Parents and readers trust publishers and authors when books are placed in age categories with no warnings, so when a book like Damsel is categorised as YA when it features Game of Thrones like content makes the publishers look bad and is potentially harmful to readers. It is an adult book published as young adult. In addition, many young people are at their most impressionable stage during their teens. This makes the content they read in books all the more important. Holly Black’s most recent trilogy The Folk of Air features a highly questionable lead relationship. The characters of Jude and Cardan continuously berate each other throughout the first instalment and Cardan and his friends actually force Jude to eat faerie fruit that makes her do everything they ask, including strip and crawl on the floor like a dog. The two characters are continuously exchanging verbal blows and are at no point remotely kind to one another, yet this is a relationship that many in the book community adore and root for despite the toxicity it’s The Cruel Prince by Holly built on. Cardan is the faerie prince and hates Jude purely because she is a human. That is Black his excuse for years of bullying. To make matters worse the two characters begin a sexual relationship in the second book. What is this teaching readers? Abuse and bullying are not a form of affection. This is not to say that teens are stupid and won’t realise what is and isn’t the way to treat someone, but if you read a toxic relationship and see people supporting it sooner or later it will start to affect you. While this content doesn’t seem too bad compared with Damsel, it still has the potential to cause damage to its audience. Furthermore, the addition of sexual content is arguably the largest addition to YA in recent years. Many YA titles indicate to sex between characters but don’t actually show it or go into detail. This is how it has always been and also often happens in many TV shows and films. The two characters are together and alone, things start to get touchy-feely and the camera pans away. Showing not telling. However, some authors such as Jay Kristoff and Jennifer L. Armentrout have taken to adding rather explicit sex scenes – or even sex chapters, into their books for teens. Sexual content isn’t necessarily a bad thing and can be quite educational, but how far should an author go with it? Sarah J. Maas is an incredibly popular author and her debut Throne of Glass series and A Court of Thorns and Roses A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) trilogy have given her multiple #1 Best Sellers on the New York Times list and are by Sarah J. Maas being adapted into a TV show and film series respectively. Despite both series being high fantasy, it is Maas’ consistency for sexual content that fans comment on the most. This is arguably the trigger for many readers now questioning the appropriateness of YA content. Fans of Maas now expect moments within her books to be highly sexual and explicit and her Thorns and Roses trilogy comes with a sexual content warning on the back cover. It’s not to say there’s anything wrong with that – at least you’re getting a warning, but due to the over-the-top and unrealistic nature of these scenes its likely not the best content for the lower bracket of YA readers. The bottom line is, there’s no hard rule for what’s appropriate for Young Adult fiction and maybe there should be. Every reader is different so tailoring content to them is difficult enough without the wide age range of YA audiences. Everyone’s tolerance for profanity, sex, taboo topics etc. will be different so while it’s understandable why authors want to push the limits there needs to be some kind of warning so that those that don’t want to read it, don’t stumble upon it accidentally. Perhaps the solution is re-evaluating the age rating all together. New Adult, or NA, is one of the newest genres and was only established in 2009, featuring more mature content for those aged 18+. NA novels are practically guaranteed to feature sex and profanity due to the characters being university age and up so readers are aware of that. However, due to NA still being in its infancy and YA being so popular it is easier for publishers to categorise books as YA to market them to a higher readership. This is shown in Sarah J. Mass’ books as none of her lead characters act like teenagers and her content does toe the line. Many fans believe ACOTAR was written as NA but changed before publication to YA. This shows publishers have little care for effects of content on audiences and prioritise profit which could be potentially harmful to the audience. Avid readers are very aware of the content they do and don’t enjoy. Maybe the solution is in NA and publishers, authors and readers alike should be making moves to raise the profile of the genre.