There's a New Category for Millennial Readers

There's a New Category for Millennial Readers

When was the last time you glance through a book or a magazine article? Do your reading habits revolve around Facebook updates, Tweets? If you are among the multitude of people who do not make a practice of reading regularly, you might be missing something substantial: reading has a lot of benefits.

There is little or no difference between someone who will not read and someone who cannot read. The result of either is ignorance. Reading is important for those who aim to rise above the ordinary. We must not allow anything to stand between us and the book that will change our lives.

New adult (NA) fiction is a growing genre of fiction with protagonists in the 18–30 age group. St. Martin's Press initially introduced the term in 2009, when they hosted a special call for "...fiction similar to YA that can be published and marketed as adult — a form of an 'older YA' or 'new adult'". New adult fiction usually focuses on issues like negotiating education and career choices, developing sexuality, and leaving home. The genre has become popular over the last couple of years, especially through books by self-published best-selling authors like Jamie McGuire, Colleen Hoover, Cora Carmack, and Jennifer L. Armentrout.

The genre was firstly met with some criticism, as many viewed it as a marketing scheme, while some believed the readership was not there to publish the material. On the other hand, some people reasoned that the term was necessary; a publicist for HarperCollins defined it as "a convenient label because it allows parents and bookstores and interested readers to know what is inside."

This genre is designed to be marketed to post-adolescents and young adults between the age of 18 to 30. This age group is undoubtedly the lucrative "cross-over" genre of young-adult titles that catch the attention of both the young-adult audience and to an adult market. Publishers of young-adult fiction now think more highly of this category as it comprises a far broader audience. The main features that differentiate the new-adult fiction genre from young adult fiction are the point of view of the young protagonist along with the scope of the protagonist's life experience. Perspective is acquired as childhood days innocence fades and life experience is gained, which leads to insight. It is this insight which is missing in traditional young-adult fiction. The other major contrasts are characters' ages and the settings. YA does not always include characters over age 18 or in college; however, these characters are included in new adult books. The new adult can best be labeled as the age category after the young adult.

Here are 7 books you need to read:

1. The Divinity Bureau by Tessa Clare

It’s The Hunger Games for new adults. This thrilling debut is set in a dystopian world destroyed by overpopulation, where a government bureau must decide who lives and dies. Things are complicated when a government employee working for the bureau falls in love with an activist fighting against them.

Roman Irvine is a frustrated IT Technician for the Divinity Bureau, a government bureau that implements random selection to make a decision on who lives and who dies. In a society where overpopulation has bring about pollution, a crippled economy, and a world in catastrophe, he has accepted the bureau's activities as a must... until he meets April McIntyre.

April McIntyre has valid reason to be suspicious of Roman. He works for the Divinity, a government agency, which sent her father to an early grave. But he's also loyal and sweet, and unbeknownst to her, he was able to save her life. As Roman and April fall deeper in love, the deeper they are thrust into the politics of deciding on who lives and who dies. Someone wants April McIntyre dead. And the bureau's method of random selection may not be so random in the end.

2. Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover

Maybe Someday is a contemporary romance that many new adults can relate to – from falling in love over texting conversations to roommate struggles.

At twenty-two years of age, Sydney has a terrific life: She is in college, working a regular job, deeply in love with her amazing boyfriend, Hunter, and rooming with her closest friend, Tori. However, the whole thing changes when she finds out Hunter's being unfaithful to her and she is left thinking about what to do next.

Sydney becomes charmed by Ridge, her mysterious neighbor. She cannot take her eyes off him or avoid listening to him while playing his guitar out of his balcony. And there is something about Sydney that Ridge can't overlook, either. When their irrevocable encounter happens, they soon end up needing each other in more ways than one.

3. The Wolf of the North by Duncan M Hamilton

Waiting for the next Game of Thrones? The Wolf of the North is an epic fantasy that will keep you enthralled.

The First series of the Wolf of the North trilogy by best-selling fantasy author Duncan M. Hamilton. It has been a long time since the Northlands have seen a hero that is worthy of the title. Many have made a claim; only a few have survived to defend it. Shy, vulnerable, and bullied, Wulfric is as unlikely a contender as there could be. A opportunity encounter with an ancient and strange object awakens a latent gift, and Wulfric's life transforms course. Against a backdrop of tragedy, war, and an enemy whose hatred for him has no limit, Wulfric will be forged from a young adult, into the Wolf of the North.

4. Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

At sixteen, Mina's lost her mother, her magician father is violent and cruel, and her silent heart has never fallen in love with anyone, in fact, but she always thinks it is normal. She never suspected that her father remove her heart and replaced it with that of glass. When she goes to Whitespring Castle and sees the king for the very first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king’s heart with her elegance and beauty, become queen, and finally know love. The only problem is that she’ll have to become a stepmother.

Fifteen-year-old Lynet looks like her deceased mother, and one day she discovers the reason: a magician created her from snow in the dead queen’s image, at her father’s command. But despite becoming the dead queen made flesh, Lynet prefer to be like her raging and regal stepmother, Mina. Her dreams come to life when her father makes Lynet the queen of the southern territories, displacing Mina. Now Mina starts to look at Lynet with something similar to hatred, and Lynet has to make a decision on what to do—and who to be—to win back the only mother she has ever known…or else defeat her for good.

5. Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire

Abby Abernathy does not drink or swear, and she is hardworking. Abby believes she has created sufficient distance between her and the darkness of her past, but when she gets to college, her hopes and dreams of a new beginning are quickly questioned by the university's walking one-night stand.

Travis Maddox, good looking, built, and covered in tattoos, is precisely what Abby needs - and wants to avoid. He spends his nights generating money in a floating fight club, and his days as the well-known college Lothario.

Fascinated by Abby's resistance to his good looks, Travis lures her into his life with a simple bet. If he loses, he will remain celibate for a month. If Abby loses, she has to reside in Travis' apartment for the same period.

A disaster waiting to happen? Or the start of something wonderful? Whichever way, Travis does not have any idea that he has met his match.

6. Archer's Voice by Mia Sheridan

When Bree Prescott gets to the sleepy, lakeside town of Pelion in Maine, she hopes against hope that this is the place she will finally get the peace she so anxiously seeks. On her first day there, her life collides with Archer Hale, a very remote man who holds a secret misery of his own. A man no one else sees.

Archer's Voice is the tale of a woman chained to the memory of one horrible night and the man whose love is paramount to her freedom. It is the tale of a silent man who lives with an agonizing wound and the woman who assists him find his voice. It is the tale of suffering, fate, and the transformative power of love.

7. Crazy for Alice by Alex Dunn

Donnie Darko meets Pleasantville in such a dark urban fantasy about sixteen-year-old Ben Howard. When Ben mistakenly kills his father and is sectioned after an unsuccessful suicide attempt, he escapes the sense of guilt by seeking solace deep within the recesses of his own mind. Waking in an odd ethereal white and black world, where a lot of people exist as living statues, Ben progresses from New York skyscrapers into African jungles without having a fear of injury, severed from his feelings, until he meets and falls deeply in love with Alice. But, no sooner will he settle into this mysterious, new existence, he is traumatically catapulted back to the raging reality he left behind. No one believes he has spent the last six months in a Gray World. Not his policeman brother Gawin, his neurotic mother, or his Wendy and Mitch, and probably not Dr. McKenzie who's threatening to give him more pills. All of them think he is crazy, and why wouldn't they when he has been in some strange coma locked up in a mental asylum?