Years ago someone asked me about Philip Pullman's books and I said I like them, but there's something weird about them. The more I thought about it, the less I could understand why a middle aged man chose to write about a precocious adolescent who is held back from the awakening of her sexuality by conservative forces.
I was posting on the other thread on Pullman in feminist chat last night, and saying something very similar to you @tabbycatstripy.
I thought the first book was good, but the second and third baggy and disappointing -- and I could never quite get on board with the whole titillating the reader with the coy do-they-or-don't-they implication that two twelve year old protagonists might be saving the world by having sex under a tree. He's always been very coy in interviews about whether that's intended, but in a way that clearly goes along with the narrative trajectory that it does.
Even when I first read them when they first came out and I was much younger, this kind of stuck in my craw rather and set off my ick factor somewhat. Okay if the protagonists were fifteen or sixteen, say, and he wanted to write about adolescent sexuality in a YA-oriented book. But twelve year olds? Nah, there's something off and a bit "in plain sight" about that; and it's always really bothered me to be honest. There's no especial need why that has to be the implied resolution of the story and I'm always surprised at how many people don't seem to think there's something weird about it.