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As this year draws to a close and I realise I’ve made it through 3 months of blogging now and am getting into the swing of this, I wanted to celebrate with my own Best Of awards for 2011′s YA books:
Best Vampire YA
The Radleys- Matt Haig.
This book has been placed and sold in the adult and young adult sections of bookshops, which in my opinion is about as brilliant as it gets for YA- showing the literary quality and authenticity of the piece (it’s my dream if I ever get my own book published to do this too). The Radleys wins points for being a sort anti-Twilight and is simply brilliant. A suburban family hiding the fact they are vampires? Such a fun idea and it is really well written. Okay, so it was technically published at the very end of 2010, but the majority of its sales, publicity and success has happened this year so I felt it warranted inclusion.
Best YA Sequel
Where She Went-Gayle Forman
If I Stay is one of the most powerful books I’ve read in the last few years and is incredibly well written so I was beyond excited to hear about a sequel being published. Where She Went does not fall short of its predecessor. If anything, I believe it exceeds If I Stay and is a stunning read taking place over one night about love, the past, the present and second chances.
Best YA Novel (Non-paranormal)
Wintergirls-Laurie Halse Anderson
A poignant, impressive and originally written novel about the difficulties of anorexia. Anderson breathes fresh life into this theme with her use of strikethrough, compelling narrator and exploring such a topic with sensitivity rather than as a way to create a romance.
Best Dystopian YA
Unwind-Neal Shusterman
This is just a terrifying idea and as Shusterman himself has commented in the afterword, it’s not that hard to imagine with the right technology and the fact organ donations are still hard to come by. This book follows three teenagers due to be unwound; where every part of their body is harvested and given to someone else in a sort of retrospective abortion parents can elect their child for as teenagers. This is more frightening than any scary legend because when we’re teenagers that is exactly when we mess up and our parents can reach the end of their tether with us. While I was a pretty good teenager, the idea if I screwed up that my mum could send me off to be cut into lots of little pieces? Yeah, stuff of nightmares.
Best Paranormal YA (No vampires)
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children- Ransom Riggs.
This book is indebted to its use of creepy vintage photography but the prose is engaging and fun. It is a little derivative, one review I read compared to Professor X’s school, but it has this brilliant atmosphere of the uncanny (Das Unheimliche if I want to show off my arts degree and sound very pretencious) particularly due to this photography. If you’re bored of werewolves, paranormal romances or vampires but still want a little bit of creepy in your book then this should be a refreshing read for you.
Best YA Debut
Divergent-Veronica Roth
A highly enjoyable dystopian novel and debut. The world is well built, the plot is engaging and fast paced and the romance in it doesn’t feel stuffed in to appease readers. Tris is strong and brave and a welcome heroine in the lines of Katniss in the Hunger Games.
Best Standalone YA
Entangled-Cat Clarke
Think If I Stay meets Stolen and consider this a truly stellar debut by Cat Clarke. At its heart as well, this novel explores depression and betrayal and this is really well done and sensitively handled. The narrator isn’t perfect, is capable of being selfish and makes mistakes, but you understand her and why she behaves like she does. Highly recommended!
Best Use Of Media or Alternative Styles of Narration in YA
Every You, Every Me by David Leviathon
The use of photography in this novel is really interesting and works in a way I don’t think Miss Peregrine… did so for me had to be mentioned in this category. Like Wintergirls it also uses strikethrough well and the entire novel is a really interesting exercise in form that as an aspiring writer and arts student I couldn’t help be really admire and appreciate.
What are your ‘Best Of YA’ choices for 2011? Do you agree with mine or is there a book you would have voted for or category you would have liked to have seen? Next year I’m planning to include at least one category that you can vote for, ideally more but I was unable to this year. I would love to hear your comments and suggestions for this year though!
The majority of these are over five years old from when I was technically a younger teen, some even more so, but these are the books that have influenced my writing and I deeply enjoyed. I hope you enjoy the list, and please feel free to comment with any of your own.
1. Speak-Laurie Halse Anderson. This book was one of those that had an incredibly profound effect on me as a teenager, it is relatable, tragic, realistic and beautifully written. Even though I had not endured what Melinda had, there was something of the everygirl in there you could relate to- not fitting in, depression, teachers who didn’t like you, etc. The style is beautiful and I simply adored this book. When I found out it was challenged in the states in schools, I was fuming as this is the type of book teenagers need to read, I certainly did.
2. The Outsiders- S E Hinton. Arguably the first ever YA book and an excellent tale of family, friendship and loyalty. With some murder, greasers, social class issues, gang warfare and so forth. A classic I adore!Tribes-Katherine Macphail
3.Tribes-Catherine Macphai There doesn’t seem to be much British YA on here but Catherine Macphail’s books in general were books I ate up as a young teenager. Tribes in particular comes to mind as one of her strongest books. Generally they are realistic novels however some like Different Me, Underworld and Dark Water had an ‘other-wordly’ sense to them.
Hunger Games- Suzanne Collins
4. The Hunger Games-Suzanne Collins. In my honest opinion, this has to be one of the best, most engaging and enjoyable YA series of the last few years. Katniss is a strong heroine, she is not passive and the love triangle, while at times predictable, was well handled. What I loved about that aspect in particular was there were times it could go either way. What I ultimately loved more was the plot and the fact this drove the series, not romance. Yes, there are a lot of similarities to Battle Royale and the Most Dangerous Game meets Big Brother, but it’s an interesting concept and the fact the contestants are so young adds a very uncomfortable sense to the series.
5. Noughts and Crosses – Malorie Blackman. This semi-dystopian series about race relations which reversed the point of prejudice to caucasians was huge when it was first published.
6. Tag/ The Snog Log- Michael Coleman. Tag was one of my favourite books when I started reading YA. It’s about two friends, Motto and Pete, two young boys with obvious father issues,who become involved in grafitti, turf war and gangs. More than that it’s about imbalance in friendships, I haven’t read it recently, but it is a book I really loved. The Snog Log is much lighter and is about a group of boys who create a snogathon, rating girls, etc. As you can imagine drama ensues and it is a light, comic read.
7. Feed- MT Anderson. A brilliant dystopian novel that feels incredibly believable. It is set in a world where teenagers have a feed in their brain that send them advertisements, chat messages, everything. Basically they have the entire internet in their head. It’s a brilliant concept, well-written novel and thoroughly engaging.
8. Gingerbread-Rachel Cohn. I really enjoyed this book as a teenager, Cyd Charise was a strong narrator and while she didn’t always make the best decisions, as a reader I felt behind her at all times. Cyd spends the summer with her father’s family after a number of events, including her exclusion from boarding school, and her attempts at getting to know a side of her family she did not know was sensitively handled. I adored her brother, he was probably my favourite character. Cohn has written two sequels, Shrimp, which I read and enjoyed just as much, if not more, than Gingerbread and Cupcake which I’m hoping to read soon.
9. Unwind-Neal Shusterman. The reason this is not higher up on the list is because I have literally just finished reading it but felt it warranted inclusion. It’s a brilliant YA dystopian novel and the concept is utterly terrifying: between the ages of 13-18 your parents can ‘unwind’ you, harvesting your body parts to other people. Abortion is banned and people ‘stork’ others, whereby a mother dumps her child on a doorstep and unless she is caught the person in the house is legally obligated to care for the child, finders keepers to the extreme. Unwind tells the story of three teenagers who are due to be unwound, Connor, Risa and Lev. my favourite character was Connor, he develops beautifully throughout the novel. I think this novel is so scary because between 13-18 you can feel so messed up and it’s where I certainly made a lot of my mistakes so far, the ability to be unwound because of puberty and teenage hormones? That’s terrifying.
10. The Harry Potter series-JK Rowling, I couldn’t not include this, could I? It’s arguably one of the most influential series of all time, inspired a generation to read and spawned a multi-million (or is it billion now?) dollar franchise. My favourite of the books, hence its cover being the one shown is The Prisoner of Azkaban as I loved the inclusion of Sirius, development of Scabbers and Draco really being at his most annoying. I also loved Oliver Wood, oh I missed him when he left Hogwarts.
