When I was 20, so a bit older than the typical target YA reader, I fell into a mad-love relationship: love at first sight, international borders, nuclear submarines, the Persian Gulf and even an impact from U.S. President Nixon’s death. (Okay, I’m romanticizing my romance: I was a Canadian university student dating an American serving in the U.S. Navy, during which time he was deployed overseas). But though there was no political intrigue, there were hours-long phone calls, cross-border get-aways, helium happiness and utterly, wrenching heartbreak. For all the drama and intensity, what we had was real.
But it wasn’t my happily-ever-after. If I’d been writing a romance, I would have left the story at our run-into-each-other-arms-moment when we’d survived the catastrophes of our young love. Except real life intruded. His needs and mine conflicted. Borders, submarines and the impossibility of making it work won out.
When we read YA literature—whether it’s about romance or not—we always want the best for our protagonists. Obviously. We’re in their story with them. We feel what they feel. And of course, we so desperately want for them what we want for ourselves: everything working out in the end.
What I love about YA literature is that often we do get some sort of satisfactory resolution. But what I also love about YA literature is how often we then pick up the sequel (or sequels) and dive right back into the lives of the characters we love so much—only to see them hurt and heal again.
That’s life. That’s what YA readers understand. We want more and more and more of our favourite characters, but we also know we won’t be getting more and more and more of (boring) bliss, and that helps us better prepare for whatever is around the corner for us.
Take The Last Huntress, (2022) written by my friend Lenore Borja. We meet Alice, a teen whose life suddenly takes a drastic, unexpected curve when she learns about magic portals, mirrors, realms, ancient Greek gods and goddesses—and Cithaeron, an ancient soul cursed, yet reincarnated for millennia. Cithaeron appears in the teen body of Colin, and when Alice first meets him, the spark is instantaneous. They are each other’s soulmate. Their story, and that of Alice’s new found sister huntresses, Olivia, Hadley and Soxie, is a wild ride of imagination that pushes and pulls at Alice and Colin’s love. They are destined to be together, but they are the very definition of star-crossed lovers.
I won’t spoil the end—buy it, read it!—but I will tell you I’ve had the privilege of a sneak peek at the sequel, The Lost Portal, coming out next year. The focus, this time, is on Hadley’s story, but we still learn what’s happened to Alice and her relationship. Though in book 1 she discovered her soulmate, we see in book 2, that true love, no matter how it looks, is never easy. Lenore writes this brilliantly!
It’s also why YA literature is so powerful. YA stories let us into all the complexity of growing up, and leaning into an adult life. We want our own fairy tale, but it doesn’t exist. YA authors like Lenore (and Katie and me, too) don’t shy away from that. Yes, we want our readers to appreciate a satisfying resolution, but, more importantly, we want our readers to feel like someone sees them. No matter their flaws, cracks, conflicts and mistakes.
As for me, it turned out I did find my soulmate. They do exist. It wasn’t love at first sight (we had actually met in high school), but it was a certainty before our first date (I have the note, my prediction of our relationship, to prove it—which I read out at our wedding!). My own story is long past the YA genre, and life, despite living with and loving my soulmate, still isn’t always easy, but ultimately, I’ll never outgrow YA lit. Because YA readers, no matter their age, know the truth in the intensity and emotions of teen protagonists: live, laugh, love—and when that fails, there’s always a sequel. 😊