Recently I took a break from all my YA reading and read a new Barnes & Noble Recommends selection, The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Steadman. This was a very good book; beautifully written and intriguing. However, it reminded of the main reason why I mostly stick to YA these days: because "adult" literature is just so freakin' depressing! Life is hard enough when you're an adult, so why would you want to spend your few hours of escape submersing yourself in the depressing "adult" problems of others?
One of the reasons I love YA books is that they're so refreshingly free of adult problems like marital strife, or dealing with the loss of a child, or all the other horrible things that we're forced to cope with when it's time for us to grow up. I get tired of being a grown-up and having so much responsibility, so it's nice to get away from my life by spending a few hours here and there with characters whose problems range from worrying whether or not a cute guy is checking her out to wondering if that same cute guy is a vampire.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to slight teenagers or act like they don't have problems of a different kind that are all their own. I remember the mean girls from junior high and high school and I wouldn't go back to that time in my own life for anything.
All I'm saying is that YA books don't bum me out the way "adult" fiction does. If nothing else, you can usually at least count on a neatly-wrapped happily ever after, and lately for me, that makes it worth a read.
