LIBRARY BLOG

New adult fiction isn’t quite a genre, but isn’t quite an age range, either—so what even is it? 

If young adult fiction entails teenagers and all the themes that come up around the rough age range of 13-18 (like the absolute chaotic mess that is discovering alternative music in middle school or graduating high school), then new adult covers the themes typical of the age range 18-30 (like starting college, a first marriage, or the beginning of a career). 

Young adult, new adult, and adult fiction do have thematic overlaps, making new adult fiction tricky to define. When in doubt, just go by the age of who the story is following. If the character is, say, 23 then there’s a good chance the plot lines—no matter the more specific genre—will reflect the milestones and issues a newly-turned adult will face. That being said, the age of the character doesn’t always define the classification. Confusing business, that is. 

It’s a relatively new genre-not-genre and not one that’s widely used as a classification. New adult books are scattered around young adult and adult collections. Here’s a few examples of new adult books from our collection: 

Join us for our first New Adult Book Club meeting on Tuesday, June 29 at 6:00 pm in the Creative Lab at the Main Library!

We’ll be discussing M. L. Rio’s If We Were Villains. Discussing is such a formal word, though. We’ll be sitting around a table talking about a book we all read. (Analytical journal[s] not required, but appreciated by the host.) There we go, that’s better.

If you don’t have your own copy, you can get the book in these neat places:

Physical Library Book    Hoopla Audiobook

The New Adult Book Group is open to anyone age 18 and up!

Lillian, Reference