These 5 Adult Books Have a Gold Tick From Teens Too. And One to Skip

Share with your kids or indulge in them yourself

Every day, my two teenage daughters and I read aloud together. I know that seems a little unusual for teenagers, but we’ve done this since they were babies and it’s always our favourite time of the day.

We also recommend books to each other, passing them around and taking turns to read.

We’ve discovered several incredible kids and teen books, some surprises, and of course, some flops.

Holes by Louis Sachar is an all-time favourite. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins was an exciting series to read aloud, and Kate DiCamillo’s novels are devastatingly beautiful gems. Now they’re older, we’ve added more adult books into the mix.

Here are 5 adult books we recommend:

Everything Sad is Untrue

Daniel Nayeri

With the state of the world right now, Everything Sad is Untrue felt even more important. It’s a story of life as a refugee, religious persecution, losing your connection to family, and finding your identity.

His mother converted from Islam to Christianity and had to escape Iran with her two children, eventually settling in the USA, but it’s so much more than a refugee story.

Nayeri’s memoir contains gorgeous writing and a twist. I think the author would possibly describe it a little like this:

“Like a Persian rug, the stories are threads interwoven in vibrant colours and patterns, slowly revealing a rich tapestry full of tears and laughter, adventures and fragmented memories, the most beautiful and also the ugliest things the world has to offer, and of course, a Persian flaw because nothing is perfect.”

Anyway, that’s what I imagine he’d say.

The story is creatively based around the idea of 1001 Arabian Nights, with stories within stories: Myths and other people’s stories woven around the author’s life. It felt right to have it told orally the way old stories would have been told. (This book is also available as an audiobook narrated by the author himself).

I think there are benefits to whichever way you choose to hear/read this story and share it with the teens in your life (just make sure you do!)

One of our favourite delightful surprises of the year.

The Night Circus

Erin Morgenstern

Just. Wow. We’re halfway through The Night Circus, but IT’S SO GOOD!

A mysterious black-and-white circus where no-one ever ages. A secret high-stakes contest between magicians. A forbidden love. A ghostly father with dark intentions. Multiple perspectives, intrigue, and stunning writing.

What’s not to love?

We’re not dark magic fans (or even Harry Potter fans — gasp!) While there is magic, and even dark magic in The Night Circus, the focus is very much on the characters and their other-wordly circus.

I can see it wouldn’t appeal to every reader. It’s an intelligent book: descriptive, beautiful, imaginative, and takes off-the-track tangents that sometimes leave you wondering where the story’s going.

This is not one for action-loving readers — but for us it’s a hard book to put down.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Gabrielle Zevin

“This is the story of Sam and Sadie. It’s not a romance, but it is about love.” - from blurb for Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Sam and Sadie, Marx and many of the other side characters in this book are so well developed they feel very much like real people. I love it when I forget I’m reading a novel and feel like I’m reading about someone’s life.

Broken into parts, this book felt epic. Perhaps a little longer than it needed to be at times, but never boring.

The gaming details are fantastic and although none of us are gamers, we couldn’t resist playing a few of the ones mentioned in the book — many of which are 70s and 80s classics and available free online. My 17-year-old and I had fun figuring out how to survive Oregon Trail, how to shoot for our food (although, as Sadie says, never shoot the Bison), and cross dangerous rivers. We even made it to Oregon without dying of dysentery!

I’ve seen this advertised as YA, but I wouldn’t recommend Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow for young teens. It has sexual abuse, drug use, and other adult content. There were several parts that made me uncomfortable as a woman (a relationship Sadie has is toxic and abusive) and I wondered if the author was going to address them, which she does near the end to some extent — although I would have liked to have seen Sadie cut off her ex completely.

I’d say it would be better for older teens or adults. It certainly didn’t feel like a kids’ book. I personally enjoyed this one a lot.

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline

My 13- and 17-year-old both loved Ready Player One. I enjoyed it as well, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have some critiques…

What was good: 1) The story is solid. We really enjoyed the pace (a little slow at the start, but it picked up). It was exciting and there wasn’t a point at any stage where we were bored. We always wanted to find out “what happens next!” which made it hard to do other things in our day.

2) The characters were mostly likeable, creative, and enjoyable to read about. We loved the supporting characters and their storylines. We enjoyed their stories and what happened more in the book than the movie — although the movie had some nice motivation and backstory for Art3mis.

What could have been better: 3) The writing wasn’t always great. The dialogue was weird in places and laughable in others. We just didn’t buy it at times — especially in early chapters.

4) The main character keeps mentioning how many hundreds of times he’s watched several movies and that he’s memorized all the lines from them, while also having worked his way through hundreds of 80s books, tv series, video games, music, all the information available on Halliday, and on and on, while also attending school and all in a 5-year period.

We got that he’s meant to be really smart and completely committed to the quest, but really? Is there enough time in the day to do all the things he claims to have done — memorizing most of it? It felt pretty unlikely and became a bit of a joke for us each time he mentioned another movie he’d watched 157 times.

But, if you put that aside and just suspend your disbelief for the sake of the story, it’s really quite an enjoyable book. Probably one of our favorites for the year.

It’s also fun to watch the Ready Player One movie and explore the 80s pop culture mentioned in the book, like the 1983 movie War Games which all three of us enjoyed.

Klara and the Sun

Kazuo Ishiguro

While this is an unusual book, my 17-year-old and I both agree there’s something very special and unforgettable about it. I’d consider it the best I’ve read from one of my favorite authors, Kazuo Ishiguro. Although I haven’t read The Remains of the Day yet which, if you go by Goodreads ratings, people enjoy even more. Klara and the Sun is the Nobel Prize-winner’s eighth book.

Ishiguro has a way of warping our world just enough so we can see it more clearly. He isn’t preachy or moralistic in his writing (which turns teens off just as much as adults) but he subtly places a mirror up on society and on what it means to be human and humane.

My 13-year-old hasn’t read this one yet, but my older daughter and I loved how different this story is and how it stays with you long after you read it. We read it a year ago and still talk about it.

YA fiction to skip

Chasing the Stars

Malorie Blackman

First up, I should say my 17-year-old daughter enjoyed the action in the second half of this book and she is the target audience, this being a YA novel. We’d both enjoyed the Noughts and Crosses series based on Blackman’s novels, and when we saw Chasing the Stars was a reimagined version of Shakespeare’s Othello set in space, we were excited to read it.

We read and watch a lot of rom-coms —often our first pick for Friday movies — but it was the love story in this novel that put us both off.

My daughter hated the first half and found the insta-love romance too hot & heavy, and cliche. Once it got less about the romance and more into the action, she started to enjoy it.

I’ve read a lot of great YA fiction, but I didn’t enjoy this one at all. The two main characters were unlikeable and annoying and it was my slowest read of the year. I only forced myself to finish so I could discuss it with my daughter.

What was so ick?

Teen marriage and rape. Let’s start there. Nathan and Vee are 18; they meet and instantly fall in love, have sex and get married within a few weeks. It’s over-the-top intense, but I wouldn’t have as much of an issue with this if it wasn’t for what Nathan does next.

The teen lead male character is initially sweet and likeable but quickly becomes an awful grudge-holding, stubborn, and aggressive idiot. There are a few scenes where he’s sexually aggressive, and it’s certainly not consensual. I get he’s a teenage boy injured by his past and by her (minor) actions, but really? Sexual aggression is never okay, even in a reimagined Shakespearean story. It’s certainly not something I want my teens thinking is a normal part of a relationship.

I don’t know what emotional journey the reader is meant to be taken on with this book. For me, it was an emotional journey of annoyance and boredom. And as it’s based on a tragedy, there’s not even a ‘happily ever after’ pay-off at the end.

Pass on this one and check out Noughts and Crosses instead.