Before you scoff at the teen section of your local book section, shake off any reluctance, because young adult literature had a great run in 2013.
YA novels have well written prose and dynamic characters just like adult lit, and certain titles also include plenty of sex and violence (as evidenced by the fact a book on this list is titled Sex & Violence).
See also: 15 Books to Add to Your 2014 Reading List
So add some YA to your reading list. And don't tell the cashier it's for your niece. (They'll know.)
After you read Reality Boy, you'll never look at reality TV the same way. When he was 5 years old, Gerald's family was on a nightmare nanny show. His anger -- and his habit of using the table, his mom's shoes, and the floor as a toilet -- was broadcast for all future teachers and classmates to see. At school, his childhood reputation is inescapable, but it's still better than home, where the source of his 5-year-old rage never changed.
Leonard Peacock has exactly one friend (who just happens to be his elderly neighbor), one (sort of) friendly acquaintance, two absentee parents, and one World War II pistol he intends to use on his ex-best friend before turning it on himself. Clear a whole day for this book.
This year, both of Rowell's YA novels earned spots on the New York Time's "Best of 2013" list, but it's her first novel for teens -- and it's most heartbreaking, and most romantic. Eleanor and Park fall in love on the bus rides to and from school, where Eleanor can forget about her dangerous home life and Park can forget everything but Eleanor.
After the death of his father and his sister leaving for college without ever looking back, it had been just Danny and his mom for years. When she dies of cancer just weeks before his high school graduation, a summer in his empty house stretches before him. So when the opportunity arises to spend the summer in Japan, where his mother spent some mysterious months looking for a cure, Danny jumps at it.
Henry David has no memory of anything before waking up on the floor of Penn Station holding a copy of Walden Pond. After taking the author's name, he somehow manages to get to Walden Pond, hoping that's where he'll find answers. It's only as his memories begins resurfacing that he wonders if a blank slate was the best thing that could have happened to him.
A 2014 finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, Sex & Violence tells the story of 17-year-old Evan and the soul-searching journey he's forced to take after he and his dad hole up in their rural Minnesota cabin after he's attacked.
In this memoir, Aaron Hartzler accounts his childhood, which was spent in a conservative Christian household. Hartzler recalls his adolescent understanding of all the things he had to give up to live by his parent's rules.
Carey and her little sister live in the woods in a broken down camper, and even with their mom's absence, they make it because they have to. But when they're discovered and brought out into the world beyond the forest, Carey worries she won't be able to protect them from their new challenges, as well as the ones that were easier to hide from while they were alone.
Flick is just trying to make it on the street after running away from his abusive father, and it seems like he's finally found some kind of home with a beautiful runaway and the street kids she looks after, when he's picked up by a man who offers the opportunity to enter an elite academy. The academy is full of teenage criminals, who will be groomed into the most powerful white collar criminals in the world.
At 17 years old, Cricket knows the time before his adult life is running out, and if his delinquent adolescent at a Catholic Boy's home is any indication, that life isn't full of promise (unless it's the promise of jail). As Cricket begins to weigh his options, a new girl presents some unexpected ones.
James Whitman finds comfort and solace in Walt Whitman, and he needs a lot of comfort in the face of his abusive dad and the hole left by his big sister's departure. Yawping, like Whitman, doesn't fix his considerably messy life -- but it does annoy his dad, which is a small comfort.
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