It's crazy to think about, but almost exactly four years ago, I started my little blog, i swim for oceans, and when I did, I had no idea what I was doing. I do, however, know that it was right in the middle of the Twilight book series, and it was honestly pretty much the most recent heyday of the paranormal genre. Some of my very first reviews were of the paranormal genre, the first of which were:
The genre trended for a while, too, with The Mortal Instruments series hitting the shelves and taking the YA realm by storm. Vampire Academy remained a fan favourite and books like Paranormalcy, Need and Claire de Lune hit the shelves at an all-time high. But I watched as the genre started to shift, too, as it crossed over and merged with dystopia - a genre in its own right that would really take the literary world by storm in the past couple years.
With the influx of series like The Hunger Games and Divergent, dystopian fiction really consumed much of the latter half of 2011 and 2012 for me. It was this rich, oddly voyeuristic genre that felt almost tangible, but it held me in its powerful, captivating grip, teasing me with broken worlds that I wanted desperately to understand. Novels like the following really hit hard on my radar:
But along the way, contemporary really hit its stride with novels from the likes of John Green, Deb Caletti, Kirsty Eagar and more. As someone who's avoided the genre for a long, long time, I was surprised to find that contemporary, and really powerful contemps at that, were finding their place on the young adult market.
However, the biggest trend I've seen as of late is the influx of science fiction, which I'm totally loving, by the way. Sci-fi is my jam, so you'd better believe that I'm thrilled about it. I've seen a lot of upcoming novels that I'm thrilled about, as well, so I absolutely can't wait to see if sci-fi really is the next big thing in YA. Here are some of the books I've read, I'm reading, or I'm about to read in the wonderful world of sci-fi:
I love that the literary world is constantly evolving, and just when I'm getting tired of the same old, same old, something new comes along and spices it up, or we resurrect and old genre and breathe new life into it. What sort of trends have you seen throughout your time as a blogger (or before), and where do you see things going next?
