I’ve been reading a lot of different genres of books but I’ve noticed that I’ve essentially stuck to YA with the occasional adult novel.
A while ago I tried to pick up a book that was pretty much geared towards middle schoolers (and younger) and I realized that all the characters felt much too young for me. It was before my blog grew and it was one of the very first DNF reviews I’d ever written. That book was the first Copernicus Legacy novel, The Forbidden Stone. I remember that a lot of my complaints had to do with how young the characters were.
Looking back, I think I should’ve realized right then that I had grown out of MG novels. But it took a few more attempts for me to realize it.
After reading The Forbidden Stone, I picked up about three more MG novels. Those were The Blood of Olympus, The Rithmatist, and The School for Good and Evil. While I didn’t mind reading the last one, the other two were very difficult for me to enjoy.
I loved the Percy Jackson series. It was one of my favorite series back while I was in middle school. I followed Rick Riordan’s writing like he was a god (bad pun sorry xD). But by the time Mark of Athena came out, things were changing for me. I’ll be the first to admit that MOA was my least favorite book in the second series. I was starting to realize that I didn’t actually like his writing style or humor all that much. And when I read Blood of Olympus, the things that I originally found funny had devolved into something that I found… definitely not. I have some unpopular opinions regarding his series and maybe I’ll make a post about it someday but for now, I can just say that I probably won’t be following his upcoming Norse mythology series.
For Sanderson, I really need to read some of his books for older readers. The Rithmatist had one of the most juvenile romances I have ever read and made me cringe. It just screamed “little kid” to me.
By the time I really began to critically review every book I read, I had long since grown out of MG novels. The humor, relationships, and characters were written for people much younger than I. Sometimes I can get over that but other times, it becomes overwhelming to the point that I can’t.
What really gets me is when I am no longer able to enjoy the plot. I’m pretty logical when it comes to reading and I am definitely capable of suspending my disbelief. However, with MG novels, a lot of them don’t have logic. I can’t make myself read it without thinking that it’s dumb.
I know that there are a lot of adults that enjoy MG novels and maybe one day I’ll grow back into it. But for now, I like reading YA because a lot of times I’m at a similar age as the characters and I can relate to them. I think that a huge reason that I’m not super into MG anymore is because of how big a difference there is with YA.
One of the hardest things that I’ve had to do with growing out of MG is that I don’t even know if I consider my old favorite books as favorites. When I read them, I had adored them and instantly labelled them as favorites. Now, I’m hesitant to do so because I know that if I go back and read them again, I might not enjoy them as much.
I’m also scared that once I get older, I’ll end up growing out of YA and I really don’t want that to happen. I started reading YA back in seventh to eighth grade before I even knew what it was. Right now I love YA a lot. I don’t want that to change. Becoming interested in YA and the online book world was one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself and I know that if I end up losing interest in YA, staying active in the blogging community and with other bloggers will become more difficult. On top of that, I love the amount of emotion and how every book I pick up can have so many opinions attached to it.
So this was pretty much just unorganized word vomit that unintentionally ended up being about me. The original purpose was to talk about growing out of certain books. Oops. I’ll rewrite this post to be less about me sometime haha!
Anyways, it obviously happened with me but have any of you guys grown out of MG, a genre, or anything else?
Dancing Through the Pages 