YA Frenzy Tag

I was tagged in this by the lovely Jemima at The Bookaholic to do Icebreaker 694‘s YA Frenzy tag!

• Respond to this new tag in comments (so I know if you can participate).
• Read through my Q&A.
• Answer the questions I posted for my Q&A in your own post.
• Choose at least 3 to 5 other bloggers to participate!

1. What book got you started on the path of YA?

I adored the Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy (I still do), and, while the first three are more ‘older children’s fiction’ they mature throughout, and I would definitely say that they gave me my first taste of YA.

My first proper YA book though was probably John Green’s Looking for Alaska, which I threw across the room twice. Surprisingly, that meant that I loved it.

2. List 3 awesome book related gifs, add your own captions.

Trying to get your friends to read your favourite book/series:

Trying to stay calm when everything is going to hell in the final chapters:

This just sums up reading in general really:

3. What was the latest series you finished?

I haven’t read a YA series in a long time, unless you count Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl and Carry On as one series, which I sort of do. I’m about to start reading the Mortal Instruments though, as soon as I’ve worked out what order I’m supposed to read them in (original or prequels first? And where do these prequel-sequels fit?!)

4. What is one thing that you hate in YA? What is one thing you love?

I hate love triangles. Hate them. I always want to shake the protagonist, because they always have better things to do than mope around, like, I don’t know, saving the world! For me it detracts from the plot, and half the time the final choice is obvious anyway. Also, one of the love interests is always a ‘bad boy’ (or other gendered equivalents), which is basically shorthand for ‘genuinely terrible person’.

What I love about YA is that it’s the only genre I’ve found that really takes modern topics seriously, particularly those affecting young adults. Themes like LGBTQA issues, mental illness and the pressures of growing up do all appear in other genres, but are often badly handled (I’m looking at you Ian McEwan) The vast majority of YA fiction treats these topics with great sensitivity and insight, which is wonderful because I think that teenagers and young adults really need to see their lives properly represented. And then placed against a backdrop of magic and world-saving, because everything’s better with magic.

5. Take this Buzzfeed quiz and post your results. The quiz is “Are You Able to Identify the Real YA Cover From the Fake?”

You got 10 out of 10 right!

You did better than 100% of those who took this quiz!

Golden Bookworm

You’re a gold-standard bookworm! You can definitely identify your YA covers like a BOSS. Never stop getting your read on.

It took me forever to even work out what the difference between the Divergent covers was…

I’m tagging AdoptaBookAUS, it’sabookishthing13, and bookidote!