2016 is an exciting year!
There’s a lot of goodness coming from YA as a category and I’ve been keeping careful watch of what’s doing well and what’s coming up. After running my ideas with publishers and talking with authors and readers, I’ve compiled a list of 7 book trends to get excited about!
First, a couple over-arching trends worth noting…
Time Travel
Move over Marty McFly, we’ll be seeing characters with super special abilities bend and travel through time, experiencing new dimensions while on epic, heart-pounding adventures.
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Fairy Tale Inspired
This past year was definitely one where some of our beloved fairy tales were given new life with exciting flips and twists. It was thrilling to see how authors redefined well-known stories, making them feel new again. The trend continues with some much-anticipated sequels and new titles!
*Note Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi is a middle grade, but I’m betting a lot of loyal YA readers will be picking up the book nonetheless.
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Classics Redux
An extension of both retellings and historicals, there’s a trend of reawakening time-tested classics and giving them a whole new twist.
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Royal Fantasies
Royal intrigue, political machinations, power, romance, secrets, lies… we can’t get enough, and lucky for us, we’ll have lots of awesome books to keep us reading.
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Gritty Contemporaries
Stories that deal with real-world problems, tough situations. Yes, I’m talking morally complex and challenging stories. YA is already great at coming up with stories that will grip us, and we’ll see more books broaching these topics next year.
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Suspense and Mysteries
Suspense stories continue to gain momentum with some exciting, sleuthing, pulse-pounding titles hitting shelves.
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Historicals
Drawing on historical events and unfurling in fascinating time periods, we’ll see some gripping stories that are sure to leave a mark.
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a said:
Ummmm, Blood Passage by Heather Demtrios is not Historical. It fits better in Fairy Tale Inspired. And Jane Steele is an adult book.
VBB Post author said:
Hi! Thanks for the feedback. Blood Passage was given to me as a historical by the publisher, so I will make sure to look into that… it seems it’s more a suspenseful fantasy then? Same for Jane Steele, it was listen amongst the recs, but will remove. THANKS again!
marine5aang said:
You’re so lucky you got Blood Passage and a lot of these ARCS. I’ve been looking forward to that sequel for so long and loved the first book!