5 Exciting Young Adult Books You Should Read as Adults

Keep the young reader in you happy

Do you feel overwhelmed by life sometimes? Even with the books you read? Want to take a break from an intense reading marathon? Want to lose yourself in the happy world of books? Try young adult novels.

Young Adult (or YA) books are those that you read as teenagers. Enid Blyton, Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew are the torchbearers of this genre. We loved these books back then. They comforted us.

Even today, I occasionally pepper my reading with YA novels. I read YA novels as an adult for three reasons:

• They’ve got this old, familiar vibe about them. When I’m reading young adult books, I get transported to a distant world unlike any I’ve witnessed in my life before but feel I have always been a part of.
• I don’t need to stress my eyes, look at every word carefully to grasp the context. Neither do I have to interrupt my reading and look up word meanings often. The language is so easy-going that I can simply curl up in a cozy nook with a book and not get up for hours at a stretch.
• They offer a much-needed escape from the harsh realities of adult life. These books focus on simple things that remind us life shouldn’t be taken so seriously after all.

Time and again, I chose to read a YA book for that much-needed escape. While there are books I keep re-reading, I’ve also discovered some new novels I’ve come across only recently.

In this article, I enlist 5 young adult books that embody all the above three qualities. Since the ones I’ve named above are unanimous choices, I’ve refrained from including them in the list and have come up with some lesser-known books instead. Not only will these books take you back to the carefree days, but they will also ensure that you add new books to your reading list.

1. The Children of Green Knowe Series

Author

Lucy M. Boston

Genre

Fantasy Fiction

Why Read?

Have you ever let your imagination run so amok that it built you a palace of your own in a faraway land? A palace with imaginary human and animal friends to play with? How about topping it up with a mystical grandma who cooks you tasty food, takes care of you, watches over you, and keeps you warm?

Just summarized your childhood fantasy, didn’t I? “The Children of Green Knowe” is your ticket to the fantasy world of your dreams as an adult. You won’t find any goblins or ghouls in this book, simply because they didn’t exist in your imagination as a child. But you will find three siblings and their magical pets, all of whom have died centuries ago but are alive within the walls of the Green Noah, a place hidden away from the world’s eyes. The old manor belongs to little Tolly’s great-grandma OldKnowe. Tolly see’s her for the first time when he visits her for the Christmas holidays. Right from the moment he steps through its doors, he can feel the magic fueling his imagination.

The best part about the book is, that nowhere does the author draw a line between reality and fantasy. She just brings her characters into play and leaves it for you to decide what’s real and what’s not, just like Grandma Oldknowe does for little Tolly.

When I learned that the story’s setting-the Green Knowe manor is based on the author’s childhood home called “The Manor” in Hemingford Grey, Huntingdonshire in England, I allowed myself the liberty to imagine that the characters I befriended along with Tolly in the books really exist there. And if I ever have the opportunity to visit the place, I might even get to experience them just as Tolly does.

Favorite Books in the Series

The complete series called “Green Knowe” consists of 6 books.

• The Children of Green Knowe
• The Chimneys of Green Knowe
• The River at Green Knowe
• A Stranger at Green Knowe
• An Enemy at Green Knowe
• The Stones of Green Knowe

As the series progresses, the books get darker and more intense. If you want to enjoy the happy, carefree phase of serendipitous discovery, you should go for the first and the second book. If you want to dive deep into the characters and learn about the history of Green Knowe, then latter books explain this in-depth.

2. Ruskin Bond’s Books

Author

Ruskin Bond

Genre

Adventure Fiction, Horror Fiction

Why Read?

As a former Indian convent school student, I had my first brush with Ruskin Bond long before I even read my first book. His stories and poems were an integral part of the English curriculum. As an adult, when I finally had enough liberty to head to bookstores on my own, I was surprised to see he was everywhere around me.

He was on the book stands at the railway station, he was on the pavements where they sold used books, he was there on the dusty shelves in public libraries. And I never came across any one of his books twice. There was always a different one each time on the stand. When I read the introduction to my first Bond book, I understood why.

Ruskin Bond has written over one hundred short stories, essays, novels, poems, and more than thirty books for children in his lifetime. Born to British parents in India, Bond had traveled to the U.K in 1951 but eventually came back to and settled in India because he realized that’s where his heart was.

You can spot his love for the kaleidoscopic country, mountains, and nature in his books. While some of them are an anthology of short stories spanning various genres such as children’s fiction, horror, mystery, and drama, some of them are complete novels. A few of them are also journal entries publishers and friends got together to bring the stories of his life and living out in the open. Bond decided long back that he was meant to live among nature and write about them. And that’s what he dedicated his life to.

Two stark qualities make his stories unlike anything you’ll ever read:

• He writes in a clear, lucid language. You hardly need to look up words in a dictionary when you’re reading Ruskin Bond’s books.
• All of them are inspired by the places he went to and lived in, the people he met, and the experiences he enjoyed. Bond leaves it to the reader to decide the extent to which his stories are fictional.

Favorite Books in the Series

If I’d have to recommend just one of his books, it would be “The Room on the Roof”. The book is a semi-autobiographical account of the adventures of a 17-year old Anglo-Indian boy Rusty. This is the book that made Bond the winner of the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and put him on the writer’s map.

If you’re one to read subtle horror, go for “A Face in the Dark and Other Haunting” and “When Darkness Falls and Other Stories”. “Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra” and “Time Stops at Shamli” feature the best of his short stories. “Rain in the Mountains: Notes from the Himalayas” is like a journal of his experiences from his life in the majestic Himalayas. “The Blue Umbrella” and “A Flight of Pigeons” are two of his novels you shouldn’t miss.

3. The House on Mango Street

Author

Sandra Cisneros

Genre

Coming-of-Age, Fiction

Why Read?

I remember “The House on Mango Street” being the third book I finally settled for after my restless mind picked and dropped two other legendary books within the first few pages of reading them.

Two things drew me:

• It was a short book-110 pages. I read the book from start to finish within a window of 12 hours.
• It was written in a simple style, unlike any I’d seen in the past. On reading the book meta, I learned that each chapter was written as a “vignette”-a brief evocative description, account, or episode.

In “The House on Mango Street”, these vignettes narrate the account of 12-year-old Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl settled in Chicago. Through the book, Esperanza sails through her days aboard the ship of her dreams. The story unfolds in layers and accounts of the lives of the people surrounding little Esperanza. But at the heart of the book is Esperanza’s precious dream of living in a beautiful house of her own.

Not a husband’s house. Not daddy’s. A house of her own.

Esperanza’s musings are so pure and her thoughts so profound, that they bring back the dreams and thoughts your once fostered but gave up or lost as you grew old.

4. Anne of Green Gables

Author

L.M.Montgomery

Genre

Coming-of-Age, Fiction

Why Read?

Have you ever been so full of energy that you feel the world exists because you’re alive? That it is out there for you to feel every ounce of it within your mind, body, and soul?

That’s Anne for you. 24*7 throughout the day, through the course of 6 books from beginning to the end. When you first meet 12-year-old Anne Shirley at the Bright River train station, clutching her ragged-bag and holding her emotions close, you cannot fathom the life that is about to burst out of this little bud in the next few pages. The freckled, red-haired girl is almost sent back to the orphanage where she came from as her to-be guardians: Mathew and Manilla Cuthbert wonder what possible use could she be of when they asked for a sturdy young boy who could work for them and take care of them when they age.

But they don’t. And this one decision determines the course of this orphaned girl who earns for her the title and becomes Anne of Green Gables from Anne of nowhere. Once that happens, there is no looking back for Anne. Old, young, boy, girl, teacher, student, grouchy, happy, sullen, smiling: everyone comes to love Anne. You must read the books to understand why.

Favorite Books in the Series

L.M.Montogmery wrote Anne’s story in eight parts.

• Anne of Green Gables
• Anne of Avonlea
• Anne of the Island
• Anne of Windy Poplars
• Anne’s House of Dreams
• Anne of Ingleside
• Rainbow Valley
• Rilla of Ingleside

While the last three books in the series are more about Anne’s children and the third, fourth, and the fifth about her life as a grown-up woman, Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea are perfect if you want to catch a bubbly young Anne in her growing up years. Witness Anne taking major life decisions and feeling intense emotions as she transitions from a lost orphan to finding her footing in these two books.

5. The Harry Potter Series

Author

J.K.Rowling

Genre

Fantasy Fiction

Why Read?

Can a YA book list be complete without Harry Potter?

How can someone be too old to read a story that sails through the ups and downs of a magical world spanning across seven heartfelt books and still ends with the following lines:

All was well.

You know despite all the bad things happening, everything is going to come together in the end. The book assures you it does.

You can’t help but make yourself a part of the Potterverse. As Harry goes about adapting to his life as a wizard, you too are fascinated with the new world that unfolds in front of your eyes. You find yourself making impressions of people Harry meets. You’re more excited than Harry to attend the magical classes and learn sorcery from the teachers. You can’t wait to root for your favorite team in the madness of the Quidditch matches. And when Harry comes face-to-face with the evil, you can feel the goosebumps on your skin.

That’s Harry Potter for you. At all ages. Rereading the books is like catching up with your friends.

Favorite Books in the Series

I’m sure everyone has read the Harry Potter books at least once in their life. If you haven’t, drop everything and start reading it in the next free hour of the day. There are 7 parts to this magical saga.

• Philosopher’s/Sorcerer's Stone
• Chamber of Secrets
• Prisoner of Azkaban
• Goblet of Fire
• Order of the Phoenix
• Half-Blood Prince
• Deathly Hallows

All of the above books are my favorites. But if you really want all the fun parts: the sneaking out, the mischiefs, and the curious unfoldings, the first three-part should be your pick. While there is a little darkness in every Harry Potter book, the first three books majorly focus on Harry, Ron, and Hermoine’s chronicles as they familiarize themselves with the wizarding world in the company of each other.

The Bottom Line

We all outgrew our teenage years whether we liked it or not. But the world didn’t stop publishing our favorite books. Even if we read from morning to night, we’d have never finished all the YA books even if we decided to.

That’s why a reader has no age.

That’s one of the best things about reading. You can read any kind of book you like at any time in your life. Don’t let the world ask you to be a grown-up reader. Keep the child in you alive and happy by reading a YA book once in a while. In the worlds of Chili Davis,

Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.

Follow me on Medium for more of my stories.