YA-OK Adult Titles for Teens

These six titles may have been published for adults, but we think your teens will love ’em too!

MARLENA by Julie Buntin
An April 2017 Indie Next pick, a Barnes & Noble Spring 2017 Discover pick and one of Publishers Weekly‘s Most Anticipated Spring 2017 Debuts with FOUR starred reviews! An electric debut novel about love, addiction, and loss; the story of two girls and the feral year that will cost one her life, and define the other’s for decades. “Buntin’s prose is emotional and immediate, and the interior lives she draws of young women and obsessive best friends are Ferrante-esque.” — Booklist, starred review

WALKAWAY by Cory Doctorow
Two starred reviews! Cory Doctorow’s first adult novel in eight years: a “sweeping epic” (Booklist, starred review) of revolution, love, post-scarcity, and the end of death. “A truly visionary techno-thriller that not only depicts how we might live tomorrow, but asks why we don’t already.” — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

UNIVERSAL HARVESTER by John Darnielle
Two starred reviews! Life in a small Iowa town takes a dark turn when mysterious footage begins appearing on VHS cassettes at the local Video Hut. “Darnielle’s masterfully disturbing follow-up to the National Book Award–nominated WOLF IN WHITE VAN reads like several Twilight Zone scripts cut together by a poet.” — Booklist, starred review

IF WE WERE VILLAINS by M.L. Rio
A literary debut in the tradition of Donna Tartt’s THE SECRET HISTORY about a group of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts school who find their friendship turned into nasty rivalry that leaves one of them dead after a teacher switches around the in-character casting. “This novel about obsession at the conservatory will thoroughly obsess you.” — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

THE ROMANCE READERS GUIDE TO LIFE by Sharon Pywell
Two sisters, a murder, a bodice-ripping pirate romance, plus a cross-dressing talking dog! With shades of THE LOVELY BONES combined with the guilty pleasure of a pirate romance: a novel about two sisters coming of age in the 1950s, and what happens when one of them disappears. “Smart, funny, and compulsively readable: this one may finally win the underrecognized author the wider audience her talent deserves.” — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

OOLA by Brittany Newell
A provocative and impressive debut delivered with a uniquely sinister lyricism by a brilliant 21-year-old; a story about sex, privilege, desire, and creativity in the post-college years. “Newell’s rangy, circuitous tale is a kind of queer Nadja for millennials with a self-satirizing—and satisfying—bite. A dreamy and provocative exploration of sex, privilege, and self-discovery.” — Kirkus Reviews