Young Adult Vs New Adult

New Adult is all the rage nowadays! I remember when New Adult was a newly emerging age range and you could only ever find Contemporary books in this age range. Now, it’s definitely a huge age range spanning multiple genres. With the rise of New Adult Fantasy in particular thanks to the likes of Sarah J Maas and Jennifer L Armentrout it’s becoming more and more popular.

I’m here to discuss what I love most about Young Adult books and New Adult books and which ones I prefer.

Young Adult

Young Adult was definitely my first love. If you’ve followed this blog for any amount of time then you will notice how I mainly read YA books. I absolutely love them. Here’s a few reasons why:

First Love is So Pure
A lot of Young Adult books no matter which genre often have a first love storyline. I absolutely love this. I love experiencing, through the characters, those butterflies they may feel, the wondering whether the person may like them. I know some people feel like this is very ‘young’ or ‘innocent’ but I love that innocence. I love seeing the characters experiencing that first love because you never forget your first love and it’s such a great storyline for me.

Seeing Young Teens Develop and Find Purpose
I know a lot of my reader friends get frustrated at this young 16/17 year old being the one to save the world. I love it! I love seeing how their experiences can make them develop as a person so much more. They can become more independent and confident in themselves. I love seeing this characters growth and development. I feel like character growth happens on a bigger scale in a young adult book, as they aren’t ‘set’ in their ways and characters can be in NA/Adult books. I just adore that development, especially if it’s throughout a series.

More Plot Driven
This is specifically for me regarding Fantasy or Paranormal Romance YA books. I feel like they are very much more plot driven with the romance being an additional storyline secondary to the plot. I am a very plot driven reader, so I love that! I find in NA books because of the older characters the romance, and in particular the physical aspects of that romance take more centre stage. While I don’t mind romance, I am a plot driven reader so I will always prefer for the romance to take the back seat to the main plot.

Favourite Young Adult Books

This was actually ridiculously hard as I have so many favourite young adult books, but here is a selection of some of my favourites.

New Adult

New Adult is definitely a bridge between Young Adult and Adult. Here’s some of the things I love about New Adult.

I Can Associate With The Characters More
As an almost-30 years old, I definitely associate with some of the character’s lives a little more than I do in YA now. When they may have stress at work or something like that, it’s so easy to feel for them when it’s possibly something that you’re going through, or it’s possible for you to go through in your normal life. I really like that. Especially in Contemporary novels.

The Darker Themes
I feel like NA gets away with exploring darker themes than YA books. In YA authors need to be mindful about their audience and they can’t explore the depths of some themes while staying appropriate for a younger audience. I love that authors are able to delve more into the darker elements of love, relationships and mental health.

More Meaningful and Realistic Relationships
This one kind of links to my first point. Focusing more on the romantic relationships, they feel more realistic than in YA. With YA you have that cute first love storyline, which I live for, but in NA they focus more about the highs and lows of relationships. It’s more mature, more realistic and real. I feel like you can definitely associate with them more. And as a hopeless romantic I can get more involved and believe that it can be a happy ever after forever. A happy ever after in terms of romance feels way more real with characters of an age range of 20-30 years than it does for a 16-year old!

Favourite New Adult Books

Here’s a few of my favourite NA books. I discovered I haven’t read a whole lot of NA fantasy so most are contemporary.

So Which Do I Prefer?

I’ve told you what I love about both, but which do I prefer? 100% Young Adult! Although I love a good NA book in between to explore those deeper relationships and such, I just have this insane love for YA. It was my first love when I first started blogging ten years ago and it is still to this day my favourite. I love everything about it.

However, I do admit that I have a love for NA Contemporary. Contemporary is not my favourite genre, it will never be my favourite genre but I can admit that if I was to read a Contemporary I prefer a NA over a YA. YA does feel too young for me when romance is the main storyline, when it’s the secondary storyline to something else YA will always be my favourite but if I’m reading a pure romance book, New Adult would win out!

What do you prefer?

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