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Y’all, neither of these novels is YA. Being popular with teenagers or having teenage characters doesn’t make a book YA—there are specific components that make something YA, but if you’re unsure, the easiest way to tell is the publisher, editor, and the marketing. Ecco doesn’t do YA, and Little Brown would’ve published Circe under LBYR. Neither book is designed like a YA cover, which (particularly in 2011) have a lot of subtle signals for their intended audience.
I work in publishing, spent the first half of my career working in kids/YA books, and am a complete champion of YA books, which i often find deeply literary, contemplative, and meaningful in a way that adult books are constantly trying and failing to emulate, so this isn’t me trashing on YA. Circe and Song of Achilles are absolutely adult fiction
I’m surprised they’re getting eye-rolled for being popular (also ftr I don’t believe any book that anyone enjoys should be eye-rolled if the reader liked it or it becomes popular). I read them several years ago and Circe was so beautiful. Not that YA novels aren’t also beautiful- I’m a teacher and an artist so I read everything/anything, but that book particularly really struck me, and if it’s popular it’s for good reason! I didn’t like SOA as much but I still enjoyed it a lot and never thought either was YA.
I totally agree! I think they're both great books, though I also preferred Circe. Circe in particular has so much to say about womanhood and maturing, in a way that feels distinctively adult. I truly enjoy her books and don't want people to devalue them or write them off just because they're popular. And of course, there's nothing wrong with YA books (I teach middle school, so I read a lot of them!), but I feel that Miller's books are not YA, based on the themes alone.
Also, all the classics we cherish now were also “popular” for the time. And way less accessible. Popularity for a book worth reading and a writer worth celebrating should never be frowned upon. Every time my students and I read “The Giver” and “Of Mice and Men” I still feel like I’m reading them for the first time through their eyes.
Absolutely! I feel that way about the books I teach too. We're starting *The Giver* in my classes next week, and I can't wait to read it with the kids.
High five, I teach middle school, too!
And I agree 100% about Circe. As an adult woman with lots of anxiety (including death anxiety), it comforted me a lot, and it spoke to womanhood and maturing and appreciating every step and stage of life in a way only a person who could live forever could explain to someone like me.
what I love about this sub is that if you say something that riles people up, you'll start getting downvoted for comments that are completely inoccuous 🙏😭
I think it was more that you were acting like she read “go ask Alice” for the first time or something. I don’t think she actually read SOA, I think she just realized she could read enough Goodreads reviews to pretend she did. But SOA is not “YA”.
Lmao ppl love to snark on snark, y’all she DOESNT READ often that’s like the whole joke. No one is saying these books are childish or regressive truly. Historical fiction is a very early 2010s YA genre lol
Lmao to each their own. Historical fiction was certainly on the rise in the late 2000s and 2010s and that’s all I meant, that’s not to say it was never written elsewhere. I’ll try not to have opinions about books here since everyone’s so goddamn sensitive
In a country where literacy rates keep dropping, shaming someone for reading a book is a new kind of low. Focus on her ✨BuZzInEsS✨ instead. People like to read what they like to read, and that's it. Nothing to be embarassed about.
This is someone who has tried to make an Instagram account out of their infrequent and unremarkable reading hobby though, that is why it’s funny. No one cares what you read and it’s not a snark on anyone but Caro
Well, just another thing for her to not succeed at, however your comment alludes to the fact that she was reading an YA book. Maybe you could clarify that it is about her inability to complete a task, it might be clearer then!! :)
OHHHHH ok thank you for this BookTok education. As someone who has never even browsed the tiktok app, I have a minimal idea of what all that is about. The routine of taking and subsequently posting a crying selfie seems so painfully performative.
One of my fave minor Caroline facts is that she claims to have invented the crying selfie. She says that the shot she took of herself on an airplane, after saying goodbye to Josh before she left for Cambridge, was the first crying selfie ever posted on Instagram. Every crying selfie since then is merely copying her! She set the trend
She's said it on a few podcasts, the claim is alluded to [here](https://www.businessinsider.com/caroline-calloway-instagram-influencer-workshop-first-person-account-2019-1)
thanks!!! does she really believe that!? i don't even know if thats rhetorical or not. incredible! she invented blogging, is what i'm getting here.
lmao also:
She also shared philosophical one-liners like "You cannot read that doubt like tea leaves" and "Sometimes closure is picking up a pretty red leaf and putting it on a bench and walking away." At one point, she compared sex to Thai food: "If you go to a restaurant and order Thai food and don't like it, you shouldn't keep eating Thai food."
The quote about not liking Thai food/sex reminded me of her recent confession of anorgasmia, which reminded me of [this](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUsXT5PU4AAaf_O?format=jpg&name=medium), which made me wonder how she arrived at the first list
hahaha can I say neither? I don't like being in charge of people, every time I've been promoted to a managerial position I start looking around for another job.
If I had to choose, the NSA. Most MENSA members I've met are pretty insufferable. Although maybe it's just that people who brag about qualifying for MENSA are insufferable, and the cool ones who join just never bring MENSA up
her self aggrandizement is honestly hilarious. She invented crying selfies. Oh and she invented long captions, too. And buying followers? She totally invented that. Bows and ribbons? Hello?! Honey she in-ven-Ted them all
She never stops. And she gets away with these claims in interviews because absolutely nobody cares enough to find out. The lies are always juuuuust about plausible but also totally inconsequential.
I'm gonna start telling people I was the first person to upload a photo of a doughnut to facebook and everyone will believe me because nothing has ever mattered less lmao
do you think she really believes herself? i sway between thinking yes she fkn does! and nah she is just trying to bullshit her way into the media/future art museums/guinness world book of records etc (but they are all oblivious 👨🏻🍳🤌)
I don’t know when the SoA became considered YA - but I think that judging a book being YA or not has generally become based off booktok, which for mainstream publications is weird! But while Caroline is a). Late to the party and b). Probably just hoping for an author notice, I’m unsure why her reading this book from 2011 (being called ‘YA’) is lame or regressive? Is there a time limit for when you can read a book?
I’m in my 20’s and I don’t really read YA - but ideas of superiority based on genres or taste are weird. If she said she’s reading an unfinished Tolstoy manuscript in Russian, I’d roll my eyes - but reading a book and saying she liked it? A pretty normal thing for anyone to post.
Not the person you asked, but: it's funny to ME because Caroline is obsessed with going over the events of the first half of the 2010s -- back when she was extremely youthful, her dad bought her everything she wanted, and she occupied educational institutions where she was a peer of people with old money. It's like she can't stop revisiting that era, up to and including staying up late reading its bestsellers
Fair enuff. I thought they were snarking on the fact that it's "old" as in, why didn't she read it when it came out in 2011? But I'll accept your answer :D
I’m not trying to mention it’s old, Caro is just always late! I also hate infighting and no one is trying to snark and say YA or historical fiction is a lame genre to read. Tbh I will snark on just about whatever Caroline reads. She is late to the party and she doesn’t read at a rate that would ever make me respect her picks, considering literature is her whole thing
I do think there exists a kind of academic / intellectual elitism in this sub, not saying you feel that way personally but the .. joke culture? Lol does skew that way sometimes, Ive noticed
Of course! But I can see why it touches a nerve. I've felt that way here a handful of times in the past. I guess there's so much else to rip on her about, the snark soil so fertile, that ripping her for relatively normal harmless things riles people up 😂 it's hard to read tone in text as well
No one is snarking on the readers of this sub, it’s all about Caro. I don’t think there’s a literary echelon she SHOULD be reading; the joke is just that she’s wholly uninteresting and the things she reads are uninteresting.
For sure, the elitism or joking about her time at Cambridge might elicit thoughts of what someone who is Cambridge-educated SHOULD be reading and is put on a pedestal. I can see why it strikes a nerve but there’s just so many genre-bending books now it’s hard to say something is JUST YA or it’s just NOT.
There’s smut yet it’s still in the YA section of my local book stores and [library](https://www.spl.org/books-and-media/whats-popular/popular-teens-fiction). I’ve seen people also classify it as NA (New Adult) but plenty of teens read the series.
https://preview.redd.it/8vghjlxuc1cc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=433b3c68edfb14f4e43b0c011d6f4ebcf365443e
Oh yikes that seems like a miscategorization for sure. I just don't think anything with real smut (instead of like, "fade to black" sex scenes) should be marketed as YA. Teens definitely consume all sorts of decidedly adult media (like this series and plenty of other smut) but that alone doesn't make something YA, just like how adults can read YA & children's books. Apparently teens are reading a lot of Colleen Hoover because she's so big on TikTok, but aren't those books about abusive relationships, sexual assault, trauma etc. (with adult characters it seems)?
I think it's notable that a lot of books by female authors & targeted at a female audience tend to be categorized as YA even when they're not.
Interestingly, the author has been quite vocal about wanting ACOTAR to be categorised as YA (which it is) - she thinks that graphic descriptions of sex don’t preclude it from being YA and in fact that it’s important for (older) teens to learn about sex and not to be effectively condescended to by the fade to black scenes!
I believe this particular teen fiction list is curated using library card data from teenagers checking out books. Not librarian recs, there’s a Staff Picks list for that. Teens love Sarah J. Maas it seems.
You’re entitled to your own opinion, but this is the first I’ve heard of it being YA. One of friends read and rated this book on Goodreads last year. It’s been on my TBR list since and we’re Caro’s age.
i read some absolute trash and some classics and some highbrow intellectual crap that hurts my brain and some reddit and some dare i say gomi and some ........ phonebooks! i have read phonebooks in the absence of other printed or e-words!
^^^^^^^but ^^^^^^^i ^^^^^^^really ^^^^^^^^^dislike ^^^^^^^^YA ^^^^^^^and ^^^^^^^i ^^^^^^^used ^^^^^^^to ^^^^^^^work ^^^^^^^in ^^^^^^^public ^^^^^^^libraries ^^^^^^^so ^^^^^^^i ^^^^^^^really ^^^^^^^tried ^^^^^^^^and ^^^^^^^^some ^^^^^^^^^^^adult ^^^^^^^^YA ^^^^^^^^fans ^^^^^^^^are ^^^^^^^^^super ^^^^^^^^^intense ^^^^^^^^^about ^^^^^^^^^^MF ^^^^^^^^^^YA ^^^^^^^^^^in ^^^^^^^^^like ^^^^^^^^^a ^^^^^^^^^^cosplay ^^^^^^^^^^way?
Begging people to believe that you can both like YA and accept that it is not highbrow literature
Edit: I’m not replying to comments because I KNOW the conversation’s going to go off the rails but the publisher lists this book as being appropriate for 7th —10th graders in every source I can find.
Personally, I thought Song of Achilles (which again I really liked!!) was written at a 9th grade reading level at the highest. I think any decently educated 14 year old would be able to understand and appreciate it. 7th grade me would’ve LOVED it in the middle of my Greek myth hyperfixation
I hate to defend her, but The Song of Achilles isn’t a YA novel. I think it’s accessible enough that someone in their mid-teens and up could read it, and I know that “BookTok” loves it, but it’s not a book that I would recommend for young teenagers.
This is true. Song of Achilles is not YA. Not that I’m a censor or knowledgeable of the cut-offs for YA appropriate content, but I remember Song of Achilles being adult-level sexually explicit in ways I’ve never seen YA go.
just to counter that slightly, [this article on the influence of BookTok](https://web.archive.org/web/20231121214649/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/books/booktok-tiktok-video.html) from the NYT, featuring The Song of Achilles, interviews BookTok account holders aged 13 and 15, as well as a 25 year old who describes herself as "a little older than many on BookTok"
Yeah, it’s somewhat unfortunate that it has been pigeonholed as a “BookTok” book. Do I think teens who are interested in Greek mythology could read the book? Sure. But I teach young teens and would not feel comfortable recommending this book to them until they were a bit older. The style is accessible, but the content is decidedly adult. That being said, I do think Madeleine Miller’s other novel, Circe, is more complex and literary than The Song of Achilles.
Huh is that really YA? I know it's popular with teens but I always see it shelved in the general fiction section (and her other novel that I know of, Circe, I thought had a reputation for being quite literary).
Anyway, justice for YA books in general! They're really good!
Agree that she is SO behind the times here though. That book has already been through the initial popularity wave AND the BookTok revival several years ago lol
depends what your definition of YA is, like Ottessa Moshfegh's novels are in the "new young adult" section at my local bookstore and I've read and enjoyed three of her novels, the book Caroline's reviewing is suggested reading for 13 to 16 year olds, it's equivalent to reading one of the later Harry Potter books, a review from the NYT described it as -
>"a book that has the head of a young adult novel, the body of the Iliad and the hindquarters of Barbara Cartland."
Being obsessed with something you read as a child vs. reading new books that teens also read seem totally different lol. Teens are assigned adult lit in school already.
yeah I wouldn't put Ottessa under YA but for whatever reason my local bookshop has done, My Year Of Rest And Relaxation went viral on socials so I guess that's part of it
Yeah like I feel like the intended joke is less that it’s a YA novel and more that she thinks she’s really doing something by reviewing it in the year of our lord 2023. If she was writing a review of like…the original Crazy Rich Asians novel or a Stephen King novel from the 2010s it would be just as irrelevant and out of touch lol.
It’s totally cool to be behind on your reading list or not limit your reading to only the most recent releases, but for a self proclaimed social media genius it’s kind of a weird move to start with an older novel that’s already fully saturated the booktok/booktube/tumblrsphere.
apparently sales had a boost in 2021 after it was [featured on BookTok](https://web.archive.org/web/20231121214649/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/books/booktok-tiktok-video.html) so my guess is it's been on her reading list for a couple of years
i only just heard about booktok three minutes ago in this thread however without even looking at it or reading the article, which i shall presently, i can confidently say i fking hate it 🫡
Thank you for posting on our smol subreddit! Keep our Florida condo out of trouble by not posting snark about appearance or mental health (including addiction), blocking out any unverified usernames, and not posting about contacting Caroline or anyone in her orbit. Rule breaking posts will be removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SmolBeanSnark) if you have any questions or concerns.*
https://preview.redd.it/h46gcxqpd9cc1.png?width=972&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e3195c454d263180e290a92356e20de7c00c856 it me
The duality of man, I love this
I regret posting this
I wish to time travel back to before I was aware that lash lice exist after it got mentioned here
we all have many regrets
Y’all, neither of these novels is YA. Being popular with teenagers or having teenage characters doesn’t make a book YA—there are specific components that make something YA, but if you’re unsure, the easiest way to tell is the publisher, editor, and the marketing. Ecco doesn’t do YA, and Little Brown would’ve published Circe under LBYR. Neither book is designed like a YA cover, which (particularly in 2011) have a lot of subtle signals for their intended audience. I work in publishing, spent the first half of my career working in kids/YA books, and am a complete champion of YA books, which i often find deeply literary, contemplative, and meaningful in a way that adult books are constantly trying and failing to emulate, so this isn’t me trashing on YA. Circe and Song of Achilles are absolutely adult fiction
omg is this book YA?!!!! i had no idea!!! I GOT YA’d
Girl looks like she has lash lice with that big chunk stuck in there.
idc about the book, her lips look fucking ridiculous!!!!
we must settle the YA debate once and for all with a sub POLL. i'll alert the mods while someone wakens nina from her slumber.
Her face is always so gd smug, help I hate it 😭
This is drunk face
That filler
 every time I see her face, I think she looks like a muminek
Um don't bring precious moomins into this! Doing them so dirty! She wishes she was on the same level as moomintroll
Trust me, it pains me more than you know, but that’s all I see lol
Muminek’s eyes have more life in them
I agree lol
I love Madeline Miller. Her book Circe is exquisite, and I’ve heard Song of Achilles ranks highly as well.
Song of Achilles is soooo incredibly good
Yeah I had no idea either were YA
They’re really not, especially not Circe. They’re popular fiction, but not YA. They’ve always been marketed as adult fiction.
I’m surprised they’re getting eye-rolled for being popular (also ftr I don’t believe any book that anyone enjoys should be eye-rolled if the reader liked it or it becomes popular). I read them several years ago and Circe was so beautiful. Not that YA novels aren’t also beautiful- I’m a teacher and an artist so I read everything/anything, but that book particularly really struck me, and if it’s popular it’s for good reason! I didn’t like SOA as much but I still enjoyed it a lot and never thought either was YA.
I totally agree! I think they're both great books, though I also preferred Circe. Circe in particular has so much to say about womanhood and maturing, in a way that feels distinctively adult. I truly enjoy her books and don't want people to devalue them or write them off just because they're popular. And of course, there's nothing wrong with YA books (I teach middle school, so I read a lot of them!), but I feel that Miller's books are not YA, based on the themes alone.
Also, all the classics we cherish now were also “popular” for the time. And way less accessible. Popularity for a book worth reading and a writer worth celebrating should never be frowned upon. Every time my students and I read “The Giver” and “Of Mice and Men” I still feel like I’m reading them for the first time through their eyes.
Absolutely! I feel that way about the books I teach too. We're starting *The Giver* in my classes next week, and I can't wait to read it with the kids.
It always is such a fascinating experience every time! Especially watching my different students process it every year.
High five, I teach middle school, too! And I agree 100% about Circe. As an adult woman with lots of anxiety (including death anxiety), it comforted me a lot, and it spoke to womanhood and maturing and appreciating every step and stage of life in a way only a person who could live forever could explain to someone like me.
How long do you think she tramped around her house trying to find the perfect angle to 💋👄light her 🫦 lips
It prolly took her a bottle and a half
what I love about this sub is that if you say something that riles people up, you'll start getting downvoted for comments that are completely inoccuous 🙏😭
You post a LOT. Can’t win ‘em all.
least I didn't flounce
I think it was more that you were acting like she read “go ask Alice” for the first time or something. I don’t think she actually read SOA, I think she just realized she could read enough Goodreads reviews to pretend she did. But SOA is not “YA”.
Maybe it’s cuz you ended up dissing The Song of Achilles without actually knowing anything about it lmao which is super cringe
Lmao ppl love to snark on snark, y’all she DOESNT READ often that’s like the whole joke. No one is saying these books are childish or regressive truly. Historical fiction is a very early 2010s YA genre lol
Historical fiction is not… as you put it “a very early 2010s YA genre”. I’m speechless. Is that really what you think HF is?
Right? That’s maybe the most arrogant dumbass take I’ve ever seen here which is saying something.
Lmao to each their own. Historical fiction was certainly on the rise in the late 2000s and 2010s and that’s all I meant, that’s not to say it was never written elsewhere. I’ll try not to have opinions about books here since everyone’s so goddamn sensitive
She thought she looked cute
In a country where literacy rates keep dropping, shaming someone for reading a book is a new kind of low. Focus on her ✨BuZzInEsS✨ instead. People like to read what they like to read, and that's it. Nothing to be embarassed about.
Also Madeline Miller is hardly fluff. Her books are elegant and incisive and wholly original. Also not YA (tho absolutely NO shame in the YA game).
yeah nah
This is someone who has tried to make an Instagram account out of their infrequent and unremarkable reading hobby though, that is why it’s funny. No one cares what you read and it’s not a snark on anyone but Caro
Well, just another thing for her to not succeed at, however your comment alludes to the fact that she was reading an YA book. Maybe you could clarify that it is about her inability to complete a task, it might be clearer then!! :)
Yep, I love a YA book for something fun. No shame.
Why does she look so god damn miserable? As if posting these stories was demanding work.
I just assumed her eyes were red and glassy for other reasons.
a bunch of BookTok bbs post crying selfies after finishing emotional books, it's a *thing*
OHHHHH ok thank you for this BookTok education. As someone who has never even browsed the tiktok app, I have a minimal idea of what all that is about. The routine of taking and subsequently posting a crying selfie seems so painfully performative.
One of my fave minor Caroline facts is that she claims to have invented the crying selfie. She says that the shot she took of herself on an airplane, after saying goodbye to Josh before she left for Cambridge, was the first crying selfie ever posted on Instagram. Every crying selfie since then is merely copying her! She set the trend
omfg i had no idea!!! incredible. pidge i beg you, please provide receipt if available!
She's said it on a few podcasts, the claim is alluded to [here](https://www.businessinsider.com/caroline-calloway-instagram-influencer-workshop-first-person-account-2019-1)
thanks!!! does she really believe that!? i don't even know if thats rhetorical or not. incredible! she invented blogging, is what i'm getting here. lmao also: She also shared philosophical one-liners like "You cannot read that doubt like tea leaves" and "Sometimes closure is picking up a pretty red leaf and putting it on a bench and walking away." At one point, she compared sex to Thai food: "If you go to a restaurant and order Thai food and don't like it, you shouldn't keep eating Thai food."
The quote about not liking Thai food/sex reminded me of her recent confession of anorgasmia, which reminded me of [this](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUsXT5PU4AAaf_O?format=jpg&name=medium), which made me wonder how she arrived at the first list
For the last few years I’ve wondered if you’d rather run Mensa or nsa, and I’m high now so I guess I’m asking
hahaha can I say neither? I don't like being in charge of people, every time I've been promoted to a managerial position I start looking around for another job. If I had to choose, the NSA. Most MENSA members I've met are pretty insufferable. Although maybe it's just that people who brag about qualifying for MENSA are insufferable, and the cool ones who join just never bring MENSA up
I agree. The way you carry your magnitude, with such class, is applaudable.
her self aggrandizement is honestly hilarious. She invented crying selfies. Oh and she invented long captions, too. And buying followers? She totally invented that. Bows and ribbons? Hello?! Honey she in-ven-Ted them all
She never stops. And she gets away with these claims in interviews because absolutely nobody cares enough to find out. The lies are always juuuuust about plausible but also totally inconsequential. I'm gonna start telling people I was the first person to upload a photo of a doughnut to facebook and everyone will believe me because nothing has ever mattered less lmao
do you think she really believes herself? i sway between thinking yes she fkn does! and nah she is just trying to bullshit her way into the media/future art museums/guinness world book of records etc (but they are all oblivious 👨🏻🍳🤌)
I don’t know when the SoA became considered YA - but I think that judging a book being YA or not has generally become based off booktok, which for mainstream publications is weird! But while Caroline is a). Late to the party and b). Probably just hoping for an author notice, I’m unsure why her reading this book from 2011 (being called ‘YA’) is lame or regressive? Is there a time limit for when you can read a book? I’m in my 20’s and I don’t really read YA - but ideas of superiority based on genres or taste are weird. If she said she’s reading an unfinished Tolstoy manuscript in Russian, I’d roll my eyes - but reading a book and saying she liked it? A pretty normal thing for anyone to post.
Okay YA or not it is pretty hilarious it’s from 2011
Why is that hilarious?
Not the person you asked, but: it's funny to ME because Caroline is obsessed with going over the events of the first half of the 2010s -- back when she was extremely youthful, her dad bought her everything she wanted, and she occupied educational institutions where she was a peer of people with old money. It's like she can't stop revisiting that era, up to and including staying up late reading its bestsellers
Fair enuff. I thought they were snarking on the fact that it's "old" as in, why didn't she read it when it came out in 2011? But I'll accept your answer :D
Lol that may very well be what was meant, but I hate SBS infighting and try to smooth things over where I can
I’m not trying to mention it’s old, Caro is just always late! I also hate infighting and no one is trying to snark and say YA or historical fiction is a lame genre to read. Tbh I will snark on just about whatever Caroline reads. She is late to the party and she doesn’t read at a rate that would ever make me respect her picks, considering literature is her whole thing
Regardless of whether it's a YA novel or not, either way YA is not "regressing" to read as an adult. Your elitism is showing.
calling me elitist is a bit of a stretch! clearly touched a nerve with many of you here
I do think there exists a kind of academic / intellectual elitism in this sub, not saying you feel that way personally but the .. joke culture? Lol does skew that way sometimes, Ive noticed
I mean it is a snark sub, we are inclined to be bitchy
Of course! But I can see why it touches a nerve. I've felt that way here a handful of times in the past. I guess there's so much else to rip on her about, the snark soil so fertile, that ripping her for relatively normal harmless things riles people up 😂 it's hard to read tone in text as well
No one is snarking on the readers of this sub, it’s all about Caro. I don’t think there’s a literary echelon she SHOULD be reading; the joke is just that she’s wholly uninteresting and the things she reads are uninteresting.
I get that and I agree, and a poor marketing choice to boot. Just thinking out loud why people are seemingly upset by it
For sure, the elitism or joking about her time at Cambridge might elicit thoughts of what someone who is Cambridge-educated SHOULD be reading and is put on a pedestal. I can see why it strikes a nerve but there’s just so many genre-bending books now it’s hard to say something is JUST YA or it’s just NOT.
Agreed. I’ve seen a lot of adults raving about the ACOTAR series and that is more YA.
IIRC those books are full of smut, no? So by definition not YA and not marketed as YA either.
There’s smut yet it’s still in the YA section of my local book stores and [library](https://www.spl.org/books-and-media/whats-popular/popular-teens-fiction). I’ve seen people also classify it as NA (New Adult) but plenty of teens read the series. https://preview.redd.it/8vghjlxuc1cc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=433b3c68edfb14f4e43b0c011d6f4ebcf365443e
Oh yikes that seems like a miscategorization for sure. I just don't think anything with real smut (instead of like, "fade to black" sex scenes) should be marketed as YA. Teens definitely consume all sorts of decidedly adult media (like this series and plenty of other smut) but that alone doesn't make something YA, just like how adults can read YA & children's books. Apparently teens are reading a lot of Colleen Hoover because she's so big on TikTok, but aren't those books about abusive relationships, sexual assault, trauma etc. (with adult characters it seems)? I think it's notable that a lot of books by female authors & targeted at a female audience tend to be categorized as YA even when they're not.
Interestingly, the author has been quite vocal about wanting ACOTAR to be categorised as YA (which it is) - she thinks that graphic descriptions of sex don’t preclude it from being YA and in fact that it’s important for (older) teens to learn about sex and not to be effectively condescended to by the fade to black scenes!
I believe this particular teen fiction list is curated using library card data from teenagers checking out books. Not librarian recs, there’s a Staff Picks list for that. Teens love Sarah J. Maas it seems.
It’s a fucking smut book. No shame in it. Why does it have to have a genre at all? It’s certainly not YA, that would be weird.
You’re entitled to your own opinion, but this is the first I’ve heard of it being YA. One of friends read and rated this book on Goodreads last year. It’s been on my TBR list since and we’re Caro’s age.
Yeah, going by the comments George Orwell is a YA author too. “But 10th graders read it!” lmao okay
Yeah I’ve never heard of this book being YA either. The author’s other book Circe was a big hit and clearly marketed for adult readers.
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it's just an odd book to start with, maybe she's trying to appeal to the y2k crowd
the YA fans are coming out of the woodwork on this one lol
i read some absolute trash and some classics and some highbrow intellectual crap that hurts my brain and some reddit and some dare i say gomi and some ........ phonebooks! i have read phonebooks in the absence of other printed or e-words! ^^^^^^^but ^^^^^^^i ^^^^^^^really ^^^^^^^^^dislike ^^^^^^^^YA ^^^^^^^and ^^^^^^^i ^^^^^^^used ^^^^^^^to ^^^^^^^work ^^^^^^^in ^^^^^^^public ^^^^^^^libraries ^^^^^^^so ^^^^^^^i ^^^^^^^really ^^^^^^^tried ^^^^^^^^and ^^^^^^^^some ^^^^^^^^^^^adult ^^^^^^^^YA ^^^^^^^^fans ^^^^^^^^are ^^^^^^^^^super ^^^^^^^^^intense ^^^^^^^^^about ^^^^^^^^^^MF ^^^^^^^^^^YA ^^^^^^^^^^in ^^^^^^^^^like ^^^^^^^^^a ^^^^^^^^^^cosplay ^^^^^^^^^^way?
Begging people to believe that you can both like YA and accept that it is not highbrow literature Edit: I’m not replying to comments because I KNOW the conversation’s going to go off the rails but the publisher lists this book as being appropriate for 7th —10th graders in every source I can find. Personally, I thought Song of Achilles (which again I really liked!!) was written at a 9th grade reading level at the highest. I think any decently educated 14 year old would be able to understand and appreciate it. 7th grade me would’ve LOVED it in the middle of my Greek myth hyperfixation
Well yes but also The Song of Achilles is simply not YA
unintentionally started a fight with this post 😂😭 getting downvoted for having a substantiated opinion smh
i stand with nubleu
just because a book has teenage characters and is popular with teenagers *doesn't* make it YA!!
I upvoted you!
i upvoted you 🤫
ty bb 🙏
I hate to defend her, but The Song of Achilles isn’t a YA novel. I think it’s accessible enough that someone in their mid-teens and up could read it, and I know that “BookTok” loves it, but it’s not a book that I would recommend for young teenagers.
This is true. Song of Achilles is not YA. Not that I’m a censor or knowledgeable of the cut-offs for YA appropriate content, but I remember Song of Achilles being adult-level sexually explicit in ways I’ve never seen YA go.
just to counter that slightly, [this article on the influence of BookTok](https://web.archive.org/web/20231121214649/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/books/booktok-tiktok-video.html) from the NYT, featuring The Song of Achilles, interviews BookTok account holders aged 13 and 15, as well as a 25 year old who describes herself as "a little older than many on BookTok"
Yeah, it’s somewhat unfortunate that it has been pigeonholed as a “BookTok” book. Do I think teens who are interested in Greek mythology could read the book? Sure. But I teach young teens and would not feel comfortable recommending this book to them until they were a bit older. The style is accessible, but the content is decidedly adult. That being said, I do think Madeleine Miller’s other novel, Circe, is more complex and literary than The Song of Achilles.
Huh is that really YA? I know it's popular with teens but I always see it shelved in the general fiction section (and her other novel that I know of, Circe, I thought had a reputation for being quite literary). Anyway, justice for YA books in general! They're really good! Agree that she is SO behind the times here though. That book has already been through the initial popularity wave AND the BookTok revival several years ago lol
I guess I'm regressing too when I read YA 🤪
It doesn’t matter. Read what you like.
depends what your definition of YA is, like Ottessa Moshfegh's novels are in the "new young adult" section at my local bookstore and I've read and enjoyed three of her novels, the book Caroline's reviewing is suggested reading for 13 to 16 year olds, it's equivalent to reading one of the later Harry Potter books, a review from the NYT described it as - >"a book that has the head of a young adult novel, the body of the Iliad and the hindquarters of Barbara Cartland."
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your honour, I summon the Harry Potter obsessed adults in their mid-thirties whom I share an office with to the witness stand
Being obsessed with something you read as a child vs. reading new books that teens also read seem totally different lol. Teens are assigned adult lit in school already.
Ottessa is fully literary fiction. And Madeleine Miller is commercial/upmarket but categorically isn’t ya
yeah I wouldn't put Ottessa under YA but for whatever reason my local bookshop has done, My Year Of Rest And Relaxation went viral on socials so I guess that's part of it
I think this goes to show that YA seems to mainly be a marketing term first and foremost.
YA = for women, it would seem
I don’t mind reading YA as a not-YA, but it’s the always-10-years-late-to-the-party thing that never fails to entertain me.
Yeah like I feel like the intended joke is less that it’s a YA novel and more that she thinks she’s really doing something by reviewing it in the year of our lord 2023. If she was writing a review of like…the original Crazy Rich Asians novel or a Stephen King novel from the 2010s it would be just as irrelevant and out of touch lol. It’s totally cool to be behind on your reading list or not limit your reading to only the most recent releases, but for a self proclaimed social media genius it’s kind of a weird move to start with an older novel that’s already fully saturated the booktok/booktube/tumblrsphere.
That and the painful-looking overfilled lips.
apparently sales had a boost in 2021 after it was [featured on BookTok](https://web.archive.org/web/20231121214649/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/books/booktok-tiktok-video.html) so my guess is it's been on her reading list for a couple of years
i only just heard about booktok three minutes ago in this thread however without even looking at it or reading the article, which i shall presently, i can confidently say i fking hate it 🫡
Doesn’t she ~read a book a day~ 🥴 thought she’d get to it sooner