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YA is short for “young adult” but increasingly the genre is widely read by adults too. You’re almost as likely to spot an adult commuter racing through the pages of a YA novel as a teenager.
The term YA was originally created in the 1960s as the official way to describe books aimed at young people aged 12 to 18.
In the years since then YA has been used to define a vast range of books – everything from The Outsiders by SE Hinton and Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy to The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.
Today’s YA literature titles comprise a host of beautifully written novels by authors who aren’t afraid to tackle hard-hitting subjects.
We’ve chosen some of the best YA novels that have been published over the past 12 months or so, judging them on their subject matter, originality and sheer readability.
The themes they cover are impressively wide-ranging. Storylines include a pair of teenage brothers who trek across the Yorkshire moors in freezing conditions, a young albino boy striving to win a place in Zimbabwe’s national swimming team and a homeless girl who strikes up a friendship with an old woman who’s suffering from dementia.
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Written in free verse, Toffee tells the story of Allison, who’s run away from her abusive father. Homeless and broke, she hides in the shed of what she assumes is an abandoned house.
But it actually belongs to Marla, a lonely old woman with dementia. Marla mistakes Allison for Toffee, a friend from the past, and invites her in – so Allison reinvents herself as Toffee and stays on. This insightful novel was published in paperback in February and is an outstanding YA read.
Jenny Downham’s tearjerker first YA novel, Before I Die, was turned into a successful film starring Dakota Fanning. In her latest book 15-year-old Lexi is wilful and difficult at home and at school.
She adores her mother and little sister but is at loggerheads with her manipulative about-to-be-stepfather. This compelling tale was shortlisted for the 2019 Costa children’s book award and for the 2020 YA Book Prize, with one critic describing it as “The Catcher in the Rye for 2020, a searing look at teen anger, frustration and apathy”.
For a book that will stand the test of time and we’ll return to again and again, Meg Rosoff’s The Great Godden gets our vote. But Anthony McGowan’s Lark is a close runner-up and not to be missed.