More YA Books Adults Will Love

Some of the best, most thrilling storytelling right now is unfolding in the pages of young adult books. Though once given a miss by readers old enough to vote (and by people who don’t want to be seen carrying a candy-colored paperback on the subway), YA has officially gotten its hooks into the reading public (thanks, Harry and The Hunger Games!). You no longer have an excuse to not read these amazing books right now:
Code Name Verity. What’s it like when your writing may literally save your life? Elizabeth Wein’s teenaged protagonist, a British spy during World War II, is captured on her first mission and forced to write down everything she knows about her comrade’s plans. The story she tells, over long days and nights of fear and torture, details the friendship between her and a young female pilot, Maddie, weaving a platonic romance with more depth and power than a million Twilight-style love stories. The book is meticulously researched and impossible to put down, with characters that will stay with you for days.
Anything by John Green. If you’ve ever had a crush, experienced heartbreak, or breathed air, then John Green’s books are probably for you. He gained crossover fame with 2012’s The Fault in Our Stars, but all of his books are worth reading. Lovers of TFIOS might want to try Looking for Alaska next; it’s an elegiac book about a boy trying to know the heart of the elusive Alaska Young, a girl he wishes could be his first love.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone. To all of you who think you’ve read enough paranormal romance to last a lifetime, I say not just yet. Taylor’s book is the best in its class, a genuinely aching story of star-crossed love that takes place partly in Prague and partly in an otherworld of demons and angels, living in a state of uneasy détente. Karou is a blue-haired art student who, in between classes and café trips, is sent on mysterious errands around the world by her foster father, Brimstone. He’s both a chimaera, or demon, and a collector of teeth of all kinds, for reasons unknown. But when Karou starts to encounter doors marked with burned handprints—and then meets the warrior angel who did the marking—she begins pulling apart the mind-blowingly inventive mystery of her birth. The follow-up novel, Days of Blood and Starlight, is just as good as its predecessor, and book three can’t come fast enough.
Midwinterblood. Sixty years in the future, a lonely journalist named Eric visits the island of Blessed, hoping to learn more about its secretive inhabitants. He starts falling for an oddly compelling woman named Merle, but things quickly take a dark turn for both of them. The story closes, and the timeline shifts. We’ve now jumped back many years, but are still on the strange island—and again, we’re told a story featuring two characters named Eric and Merle. Lifetime after lifetime, as we move more deeply into the past, these two people continue to meet—as husband and wife, mother and son, brother and sister. Sedgwick’s eerie, pagan-tinged prose is gripping yet clear-eyed, and each of the seven linked stories fully blooms and leaves a mark, despite its brevity. Fans of Cloud Atlas and its virtuosic structure will love this book.