What more does a girl need than a pile of books and a bowl of chocolate? Let’s talk about what we’ve been reading and feeding our inner chocoholics.

Books and Chocolate

What more does a girl need than a pile of books and a bowl of chocolate? Let’s talk about what we’ve been reading and feeding our inner chocoholics.

While I haven’t been a young adult for quite some time, I confess I do indulge in the young adult genre. There are times when life feels so complicated that I just want a story and a world I can dive into and not have to work very hard to get into it. YA seems to do that more reliably than many other genres. Not to say that the stories are necessarily simple or lacking depth, but they are often more … accessible may be the right word for it. And recently I have needed that.

Here are a couple YA books I have enjoyed recently.

Just so you know, links below are Amazon associate links, so if you buy anything through them, I will get a couple of pennies from that.

First Born academy

This one felt a little like a mash up of Hunger Games and a standard fantasy academy trope. I was skeptical at first but it worked. The premise is that in this dystopia world, all family first borns are sent through a portal to never be seen again, and failure to do so is fatal for the family. We follow a first born and her friend through to portal to a training academy where things get interesting.

Where there was a certain academy tropiness going on, there was enough fresh and interesting detail added to keep me interested, including a sentient house with a short temper and definite issues with forgiving transgressions. I won’t spoil the reasons for the academy or who our heroine meets there, but suffice to say it was YA enough to be light reading, but the characters were interesting enough and the situation unique enough to keep me there.

I definitely recommend it when brain comfort/junk food is entirely necessary for sanity’s sake.

Confessions of a Queen *B

I have to say, I still can’t believe I read this one, and even more I can’t believe I liked it. High School was a perfectly dreadful time in my life and I usually prefer to ignore. I almost never want to be reminded of it in my reading.  I found a recommendation for this book elsewhere and was intrigued enough to pick it up. Why?

This one was all about the character. The heroine is broken in the way most teens are broken, but she is on a rather successful crusade to right social wrongs and stick up for the bullied and victimized through her investigative blog. That caught my attention.

Throughout, the heroine is convincingly portrayed as a teenager, albeit a rather self-aware one. She has her rough places and secrets, and manages to grow through an unlikely relationship. The growth was realistic, not heavy handed or moralizing, nor saccharine and sweet. I also liked how she remained true to character in the budding romance which had only just begun by the conclusion of the book.

For all her failings the heroine was an admirable character and it was really pleasant seeing a teenage girl presented this way. This was definitely a pleasant afternoon escape from the realities of adulting.

What about you guys? Any other closet (or non-closet) YA readers out there? Any YA’s you recommend?

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