Is this young adult anymore? The lines between the age categories is blurring

The line between the age categories is blurring, as the publishing industry pushes authors and books in the Young Adult section that are not actually suitable for the age category. We all understand why this is happening, as YA books have been wildly successful in the last twenty years. The age category attracts readers from all ages, not only the intended group between 12 and 18.

Lately, I have been wondering if this marketing trick of putting everything off as Young Adult will backfire at some point. There is already talk about it in Facebook groups, with people requesting clean books, without smut for themselves or their children. Initially, I was surprised by the question in general. I have read a fair amount of Young Adult books in my time, most of the earlier YA did not have any sexual content in them. Thinking of books like Beautiful Creatures, The Vampire Academy and Divergent, talking about the first books in these series, as for most of them I haven't finished reading the entire series yet. I do know that all these have romantic plot lines, however nothing explicit.

My opinion started changing when I read books like Throne of Glass and Kingdom of the Wicked. Both are initially marketed as Young Adult, however, the explicit content in these books makes me wonder if these should be categorized as young adult at all. The main characters in Throne of Glass fit the young adult age range, however, my issue lies with how explicit the content becomes throughout the series. You would not want a 12-year-old to be reading about forced pregnancy, in my opinion. Yet up until this date, the series is still categorized as young adult. And I hope one day it will be pulled off the young adult shelves, like they did with A Court of Thrones and Roses, and market it to the appropriate age range, being 18+.

The thing is with series that sometimes it may start as young adult, but grows into adult over the course of the series, taking Throne of Glass once more as an example, the first 2 books are not that dark that it could be read by an audience say 15/16 years old, however up from there the world expanse a lot more, the story becomes a rich epic fantasy world and the content becomes a lot darker to the point where I was thinking this should not be available for the lower young adult ages 12 to 15 years old.

The same can be said about Kingdom of the Wicked, the first book is clean content, nothing to disturbing if you ask me, however from the second book, it becomes more explicit I as an adult found it very exciting however a younger audience that has not had the pleasure of joining in sexual activities or just started exploring this field, might find this too intense. And I imagine that if you are a teenager struggling with growing up, you would not want to read this yet. This book does not come with trigger warnings, the synopsis and cover don't tell you anything about how explicit the content is. And here in lies the problem, any young adult could pick this up, within the range of 13 to 18.

When I started reading Kingdom of the Wicked, the first thing I told my partner is that it does not feel as young adult, the characters feel older, not 18, more 20+ than anything else. I am not sure if the age was mentioned in the books, but just from the conversations and the setting, you could tell they were not teenagers anymore. From the second book onward, there is also a large amount of sexual tension and some smut. If I could choose an age category for these books, I would not have gone with young adult, new adult would have been a more appropriate category for it, this is also where you will find it in my webshop.

Why did publishers put it in young adult category can be explained by several things.

One of them being the fact that most of the bookish world does not recognize NA (new adult) as a proper age category. It is mostly associated with smutty college romance books only, and does not carry over to other genres. This is a pity, as it would solve a lot of the issues I am currently having with the young adult age range, which is now crowded with books that should not be there.

Another reason why publishers like to pull it off as young adult, is that the age range is not only read by teenagers age 12 to 18 but also consists of a rather large part of adults. The age range has become so popular that marketing it as young adult makes it easier to sell a large number of books.

My biggest issue with this new trend is that it has become a very confusing space for young adults, especially for the younger readers of the spectrum. Also, for parents who are not readers and therefore do not know what kind of content a young adult book might contain, it can be shocking to learn how mature it can be. It should be a safe space for the teenagers to explore, and it has become a minefield with lots of books that should not be there.

It makes me very angry that it has become a cash grab of the publishing industry, without consideration of the teenagers themselves. I don't have a solution to how the publishing world could make this clearer, however, they could start with categorizing adult/new adult books as they should be.

What do you think of this? Would you call Kingdom of the Wicked and Throne of Glass young adult? Or would you agree that these better fit for the new adult or adult age range? Let's have a discussion below.