

This is how i felt after i read beauty queens, after i read piper's son,which while they are COMPLETELY different kinds of books, did things to me that i didn't think could still be done to me, not in YA anyway. sure, loads of them are still silly and forgettable, but there are also complete gems of books out there for stronger, smarter teen readers looking to be exposed to something new, something challenging.Īnd this book delivers that with a brainpunch i'm still feeling. and when i finally came around on the contemporary YA fiction bandwagon, i was impressed with both the variety of topics and treatment of those topics and most importantly, the range of sophistication of the writing itself. they were either morally-didactic or cheesy horror-mysteries with very little intellectual fiber. when i was a teen, YA novels were largely disposable, empty-calorie entertainment trifles meant to keep us off the streets, off drugs, and not full of babies. YA has been breaking free of its presumed confines for years. i've lost half of you book snobs right there.

Patrick ness has written a game-changer that i'm not even really sure how to approach. This book treated me like a dog treats a ragdoll.
