In fact I have a full page warning, right in the front of the book, that no one under the age of eighteen should read this book and no one should even turn the pages if they are sexually conservative or erotically deprived.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've never read a young adult novel, though. I'm sure I would love it, but I've never read one.
In the case of my book, I don't think it's really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed, even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy, he betrays his teacher, the only adult man with whom he's enjoyed a sexual experience, etc.
I read 'Pushing the Limit' and 'Dare You To' by Katie McGarry. Fantastic stuff. I had never read young adult before, but now I'm a believer.
The age of the book is almost gone.
I focus a little more on pacing when I write books in the young adult category, and of course there's the great American fear of anything sexual, so that's somewhat backed off in YA.
The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.
It's insulting to believe that teens should have a different kind of book than an adult should.
I don't know how the editors are going to take it or how it may be received. But to some extent I'm hoping that with the next book, when people pick it up and read it, it will scare the pants off of them.
As an adult, I'll give a writer 50 pages. If the book doesn't interest me in 50 pages, I'll say the heck with it - there are just too many other things to read. A child won't give you 50 pages.
Readers have always read high and low, and to fight that urge is to fight the freedom inherent in the act of reading itself. The only arguments that have any traction, as best as I can see it, are about whether the genre classification of 'young adult' should exist at all.