Best teen & young adult fiction books according to redditors

http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Girl-Sheba-Karim/dp/B0045JK6I8

Pretty sure this is it.

This is hardly an example of great literature, but the book Skunk Girl made me realize that my experience growing up was similar to a lot of desi women in North America. Highly recommended to current teenage girls who get confused about where they belong.

Maybe Girl Meets Boy: Because There Are Two Sides to Every Story?

Life is Funny by E.R. Frank?

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Funny-R-Frank/dp/0142300837

Rimwalkers by Vicki Grove. Owned and read it a lot as a kid. :)

It might be aimed a bit younger of an audience. But Being Emily by Rachel Gold is really great. Plus I live in literally the same area that it is set in so it was fairly magical for me haha.

Amazon Link:https://www.amazon.com/Being-Emily-Rachel-Gold/dp/1594932832

Reading two books at the moment, one audio and one aloud.

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr is the book my wife is reading to me. The main characters are odd and hard to like, and it alternates between them each chapter, but it makes for a compelling story.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Steifvater is what we are listening to together as an audiobook, and woooo boy. It's very gothic and creepy, and I'm loving it. All of the characters have been enjoyable so far, it's almost as if Poe or Shelley decided to write YA. I'm hooked, and my wife is enjoying the fact that she just finished The Raven King, so she knows what I have in store for me.

ROCK-A-BYE-BYE, BABY… Fellow podcaster Dara Katz (Done) joins Kelly and Katai to discuss A. Bates’s “Mother’s Helper,” prom dress textures, who’s kidnapping whom and why, and the politics of being eaten by a whale.

Check out Dara's podcast here!

...

Next week's book: Lo Dunc's Daughters of Eve

Wow! Great contest. Happy belated birthday!

This book is fantastic because I'm pretty sure I'm in love with Jason Myer's and his writing style. My name is Alicia! I'm sorry, am I telling you why I'd like the ebook or the kindle? It's a little unclear. :3

^This ^is ^kind ^of ^what ^I'm ^trying ^to ^do.

There's also The Door in the Wall (partial paralysis in the middle ages, MG historical fiction), Breath (cystic fibrosis and the Pied Piper, YA historical fiction), and Half a King (physicial deformity + YA fantasy viking quest).

I recently read the ARC for Half a King (3.5/5), but I haven't read the others yet.

I've read and loved almost all of the recommendations already here (TAMORA PIERCE). But to add some that haven't been mentioned (and trying really hard to not overload you with 20 books at once), I read and reread Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown and its prequel so. many. TIMES. Maybe even more than I reread Tamora Pierce. Patricia McKillip, Maria Snyder, Patricia C. Wrede (Dealing with Dragons quartet), Althea Kontis, Francesca Lia Block, Libba Bray and Susan Fletcher (Dragon Chronicles) are similar authors to check out for awesome female-driven fantasy, with varying degrees of lightheartedness. Wrede, Fletcher, Snyder and Kontis all wrote books that lean a little less epic/serious, Block writes a lot in prose that's also a very quick (but more intense) read, McKillip tends to be more wordy but beautifully so, and Bray can kind of go either way depending on the series.

For more contemporary fiction, RACHEL COHN (of "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist"). Her Gingerbread series has content a good deal more mature than Angus, Thongs, etc., but her style is similarly irreverent and witty and really fun. Seriously, check her out. Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons is like a much younger version of Cohn, still zingy and sweet. For a quieter modern-day read, Garret Freymann-Weyr writes realistic (more mature) young adult relationships, and introduced me to the idea of bisexuality in a sort of roundabout way.

Julia Alvarez relates stories about the Latina-American experience incredibly well, although I think the first book I read by her takes place solely in the Dominican Republic. According to my reading list, I guess young me got sick of reading about other white people, so I'll add Marjane Satrapi's hilarious graphic novel Persepolis and the more sedate Shabanu series by Suzanne Fisher Staples.

I'd also strongly second comments for Gail Carson Levine, E.L. Konigsberg, and did I mention Tamora Pierce?

(I tried to link a lot of authors to my faves from their work, but I won't be mad if you never look at any of them. Is your reading list long enough now? Also, I know you didn't ask for a ton of fantasy/historical fiction recs, but I think a lot of us defined our teenagerhood by and identified more strongly with one of those series or another.)

tl;dr my top three recs that haven't been mentioned yet are Rachel Cohn, Julia Alvarez, and that one duo by Robin McKinley.

Beauty Queen by Linda Glovach

Growing Wings?

Would it be Gingerbread by Rachel Cohen?

Here's the original cover also.

Maybe Growing Wings by Laurel Winter?

Books are awesome

Girl Parts price dropped to $1.99! And I find the premise super interesting and sort of relevant to today - that a girl commits suicide and her classmates are completely unaffected by it. That the generation is completely disassociated from each other because online interactions have replaced one on one conversations.

It's totally worth it. Like, the third book came out 6 years after the second, which was frustrating, but then when I got it I remembered that it was because it was filled to the brim with original artwork. Perfection.

I'm always down for those books, too! That's why I loved Realm of Possibilities. Also for the poetry.

Kinda in the same vein is Life is Funny. I don't remember too much about it, but I do remember liking it a lot!

Here it is on amazon I am going to buy it later.

This book because it is bugging the snot out of me that I don't know how it ends!!!

At least you don't have the hairy pakistani muslim gene. http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Girl-Sheba-Karim/dp/0374370117

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison.



The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown.

>if you want to look for it

There's wisdom in everything if you try to look for it. A person could probably find just as much wisdom in The Raven Boys if they tried that hard.

My name is Krystle and I'm an Ellen Hopkinsaholic. Fallout is a book in her long random serious of books that I'm dying to get my hands on soon. I've almost caught up in the books prior to it to be ready to read it. I honestly don't know why, but I adore this authors writings. They're really all young adult reading but I freaking love them anyway. I'm still a teenager at heart I guess.

Just off the top of my head these are three amazing YA books (all realistic fiction):

Looking for Alaska - John Green

Tales of the Madmen Underground - John Barnes

Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly

Destroy All Cars was a fun book. It's written from the perspective of an HS senior. I read it a few years back and even though I've been out of HS for a while, it reminded me of my 18 year old self.

As /u/dandyissues pointed out Nevada was surprisingly good for the internal bits of experience. Also Being Emily by Rachel Gold was good in that it included sections from the POV of the trans character, whereas a lot of YA fiction centered around trans issues doesn't feature trans POV characters. The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff is also interesting as its a fictionalised account of the life of Lili Elbe.


(Additionally to that I really don't think Seasonal Velocities gets nearly enough love, its an amazing collection of short written pieces set against four seasons, well recommended, its not really fiction but an unusually awesome account of transness related through all sorts of means)

My experience with trans-related YA novels is rather limited (see below), but overall I would just like to see (eventual) acceptance. If it's a story about someone in (early) transition, I would like to see all the feels and doubts and hopes about everything, so that it can be cathartic for the trans reader and maybe invoke empathy from the cis reader. If it's a story about someone who is post-transition, then please make them successful at the end, because frankly we need more positive stories.

The only trans-related YA book I've read is "Being Emily" by Rachel Gold:

https://www.amazon.com/Being-Emily-Rachel-Gold/dp/1594932832

I loved this book, and not just because of the title. I've "known" that I was trans in one sense or another since just before puberty, but I didn't accept myself until I was 44 years old. However, even if I had accepted myself when I was in high school, there is no way I could have successfully transitioned in mid 1980s Memphis, TN. So reading this book allowed me to reclaim a small part of my adolescence, and provide some closure. And yes, I cried several times while reading it.

Could it be Beauty Queen by Linda Glovach?

Vicki Grove's Rimwalkers?

It is an actual book > http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Girl-Sheba-Karim/dp/0374370117