#ya lit

[theliterarygnome]

Edward Cullen + text posts

Twilight (2008)

[marzipanandminutiae]

you know sometimes I remember that there was a book I absolutely loved in high school where a girl catches her mother and boyfriend fucking, runs away to New York City, gets addicted to shooting up fairy dust with a group of homeless goths, and then uses the power of lacross and a crush on a troll to get really good at sword fighting

late 00s YA urban fantasy was a delightful mess

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

Turning YA book selection into purely romance and romantasy needs to be studied, as well as tiktokification of reading. Skipping paragraphs without dialogue, finding simple plots too difficult to understand, not even remotely analyzing the text, ignoring inconsistencies and blindly following trends and what author spoon-feeds the readers, etc. It essentially boils down to wanting to read just porn without saying you want to read porn. Nothing wrong with that, except instead of admitting it, people have turned to doubling down that these objectively bad books are the pinnacle of self-care, progress and being a girlboss.

I’ve seen booktokers on tiktok (before I deleted tiktok) say they “didn’t get” older booktok books like Cruel Prince, Six of Crows, Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and other good books or had to DNF them because it was too “boring” and "too much politics, no smut”. People have been tiktokified or have never read a book that wasn't romance or YA to begin with, so please go read one. It's good for you to broaden your horizons. Besides, YA never has a lot of politics, it's YA. Not even when YA dystopian books were thriving did it have too much politics.

I'm not shaming anyone for wanting to read smut or smutty books but there is no need to turn YA into just a combination of tropes. YA is an age category, it doesn't need dumbing down or becoming more sexual. There are plenty of smut books in YA, new adult, adult, etc. There is no need to shit on and make good YA books unpopular. Writers are getting hurt because the publishing houses would rather publish same mediocre books over and over with slightly different plot and names than good ones. And teenagers in that age category need to have a variety of books to choose from. Instead, they have the same thing over and over, mediocre smut with problematic undertones. Y'all realize Wattpad exists for that and it's free, right?

[bones-clouds]

books i read in 2025:

"hazelthorn"

c. g. drews

"he is not clever; he is not poetry. he is just a boy who speaks too bluntly when what he wants most is to figure out which pretty, magical words will finally make him understood."

[myclutteredbookshelf]

I'm using my new Pagebound account for a worthy cause:

View the full list here (suggestions are welcome and highly encouraged).

[shesalittlelost]

it's hilarious to see sjm nation having a proper meltdown because they have only now realised that she doesn't have a single intellectual bone in her body, has zero self awareness and genuinely believes that her books are feminist works like... how fucking shocking that the author who frequently plagiarizes from superior works bcz she has never had a single original thought in her head, is known to bench her female characters in favour of men, writes about faeries with bioessentialism and pro life pregnancy plotlines without even realising they're pro life is a smooth brained, talentless hack with literally nothing interesting to say. who could've seen that coming.

[dandyreads]

oh so you're romantically obsessed with a guy who regularly hurts you? Get in line

[doyouknowthisbook-poll]

Do you know which book this is from?

.

i’ve read this book before, and I like it!

I can tell what this is from based on this excerpt, but I haven't read it

I started reading this, but didn’t finish it (or I am reading it currently)

I haven’t read this book, but I like this excerpt!

I've read this book before, and I don't like it

I haven’t read this book and I don’t like this excerpt

Voting ended onMay 6

Please reblog the polls, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people read the excerpt with an open mind 💖📚 Title and author will be revealed after the poll's conclusion.

Thank you @redribbonofficial for the submission! 😄

Edit: The results are up here!