Young adult fiction

[cheesybeans1234]

Hello! Summer after A levels has started and my now 18 year old teen wants to rediscover reading. She used to be a prolific reader until tictok etc took over.

Based on liking dystopian tv shows like Game of Thrones, The Last of Us, Stranger Things would you have any book recommendations please? Ideally a collection of 3 or more. Many thanks

Louise Welsh Plague Times Trilogy - not YA but great dystopian fiction and my teens loved them - they’re not a hard read

the Hunger Games books are better than the films. YA

the Divergent series are ok but get worse as they go on. YA

the Maze Runner is ok but tails off fast. YA

Silo trilogy by Hugh Howey is great and keep its energy up through the series. not just YA

stand alones

She is old enough to read The Road by Cormac McCarthy - it’s excellent and awful. Not YA

if she fancies going old school Sci Fi - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and I Am Legend are better books than their respective films

Game of Thrones is fantasy rather than actually being dystopian, so based on that I'll recommend some fantasy that I've read,

For true dystopian check out Victoria Aveyards Red Queen series.

Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse series may also appeal.

Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy is wonderful. She also has a duology Strange the Dreamer.

Throne of Glass by Sarah Maas is a series of 8, I absolutely loved it.

Samantha Shannons Priory of the Orange Tree and a Day of Fallen Night is a masterpiece.

I loved The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden but it is more folklore than fantasy.

I'll list some more authors that may be relevant, you can check them out and read blurb/reviews on Amazon or Waterstones.

Brigid Kemmerer
Holly Black
Mary Pearson
Hannah Whitten

Goldy Moldavsky. Kill the Boy Band, the title explains it all really. It's very funny. Lord of the Fly Fest, it's a Fyre festival gone wrong storyline. Again funny and kind of dystopian.

Fourth Wing (and sequels) by Rebecca Yarros. There's at least 3 in the series so far. It's more towards the fantasy but has a bit of the Hunger Games vibe about it.

At 18 why not read adult books rather than YA which are aimed at young teenagers?

How about some classics like The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein or Dracula? Or The Time Machine or Brave New World or 1984 (if she hasn't studied it at school) or Fahrenheit 451 or Player Piano or Catch 22?

Also Samantha Shannon - The Bone Season series, which is now into five books. It's immersive urban fantasy, and very violent in places. Fans and commentators often refer to it as YA, but it's probably more suited to those who really are adults, young or not, than ten and eleven year olds.

These are brilliant thank you all so much we'll work our way through the recommendations and get ordering.

Re young adult vs adult, I guess because she wants easy read escapism and she's craving a slightly more grown up version of the joy she got from reading Percy Jackson or Warrior Cats type books.

Can’t she go to the library for a browse? Or the nearest Waterstones?

I'm in my 50s and still enjoy Percy Jackson. Particularly the Hoover Dam jokes 😂.

Yes, I was going to say this. Good recommendations as well😁

I'd maybe add The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and also Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Maybe even Great Expectations – there is something creepy and gothic about Miss Havisham. Then of course there is Tolkien.

More generally, how about some short and easy to read classics? Orwell's Down and out in Paris and London, for example, is a great book for young people.