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7 YA Book Trends in 2016

ya book trends

2016 is an exciting year!

There’s a lot of goodness coming from YA as a category and I’ve been keeping careful watch of what’s doing well and what’s coming up. After running my ideas with publishers and talking with authors and readers, I’ve compiled a list of 7 book trends to get excited about!

First, a couple over-arching trends worth noting…

Historicals of all types—Historical fantasies, historical suspense and mysteries, twists on historicals, as well as straight-up historicals will be big next year. I also see this trend play into the time travel theme mentioned below.
Fantasies attract new readers—There are lots of great fantasies coming next year and I’ve been seeing an influx of new readers giving the genre a try, especially romance readers who are loving the romantic component in these fantastical stories. Some exciting titles include: Passenger by Alexandra Bracken, Truthwitch by Susan Dennard, The Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard, The Shadow Queen by CJ Redwine, Riders by Veronica Rossi, Beauty of Darkness by Mary E. Pearson, A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas, and A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir.

Time Travel

Move over Marty McFly, we’ll be seeing characters with super special abilities bend and travel through time, experiencing new dimensions while on epic, heart-pounding adventures.

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TBD-Oct

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Fairy Tale Inspired

This past year was definitely one where some of our beloved fairy tales were given new life with exciting flips and twists. It was thrilling to see how authors redefined well-known stories, making them feel new again. The trend continues with some much-anticipated sequels and new titles!

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*Note Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi is a middle grade, but I’m betting a lot of loyal YA readers will be picking up the book nonetheless.

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Classics Redux

An extension of both retellings and historicals, there’s a trend of reawakening time-tested classics and giving them a whole new twist.

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Royal Fantasies

Royal intrigue, political machinations, power, romance, secrets, lies… we can’t get enough, and lucky for us, we’ll have lots of awesome books to keep us reading.

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Gritty Contemporaries

Stories that deal with real-world problems, tough situations. Yes, I’m talking morally complex and challenging stories. YA is already great at coming up with stories that will grip us, and we’ll see more books broaching these topics next year.