At first, I thought I was reading a psychology book about children and then I realized this book is just what it says it is. You can’t sell a book without defining your audience. Unfortunately, in today’s world just writing what you want is not necessarily going to do anything but sit on your own shelf and no one else’s. The “audience” of young adult and middle grade kids is not what it was when we grew up. When I say we, I don’t care what your age is. Everything is changing fast enough that my statement is still true. Things aren’t as they were. Not being aware of the teens interests of today would be like writing a “Little House on the Prairie” book. If that’s what you want to do, no problem. These authors are on top of things and worth listening to.

This is also a book to help you lay out the frame or skeleton of your story. I was unhappy at first of the many famous author examples that were used but then again, what better way to explain how to do something to create a book from one we already know has sold. I’m not saying anyone should follow the examples verbatim nor should you lose your own identity. This is just a well-written book to help you. Either as a layperson for ideas or for well-seasoned YA authors. Then comes the ultimate, marketing. It is covered in depth here and should be the most important part of the book in my opinion. If no one knows you wrote a book or never sees it, never buys it, is it really a book?

I think this really is an encyclopedia and yet I also think it can inspire you to get started or move forward on your book. There is no author that doesn’t have that periodic moment of being “stuck”. This is one of those sources you use as a reference material and keep on your shelf.

A decent starting place for less experienced writers – especially YA fiction. Honestly it didn’t contain any eureka moments for me but then that could be experience related. If you are a writer who hasn’t fully grasped the hero’s journey in storytelling this might be a good start (Although Dara Mark’s Transformative Story Arcs is more erudite and thorough.) I feel more emphasis should have been placed on ‘story is king’ rather than on including diverse rep for the sake of it. It came across as a check box exercise and while some writers really are at the stage of needing to question why they’ve written a character the way they have, I really want to avoid situations where YA author’s are being diverse at the expense of characterisation and plot. That’s not diversity that’s tokenism at best and exploitation (using diverse characters as USPs) at worst. The book doesn’t exactly advocate this but it could have been handled better. All in all not bad and if you’re a newbie this probably contains a lot of what you’re looking for.

I am definitely in the target audience of The Young Adult Writer’s Journey. One of the already brewing works of mine is intended as a YA novel. I actually started a second one between finishing this book and writing this review. Additionally, as part of an active writers’ community, it isn’t unusual for me to be called on the give feedback on works intended for a YA audience, whether shorts or novels. The focus of this book is definitely primarily on the novel side of things, although some aspects of the discussion could easily be applied to development of the short.

I give this book 3 stars overall. I will start with what I liked then round off with the things I was less enthused with and why.

The section of the book I found most useful was that related to the hero’s journey and the different characters and situations that can usually appear along with it. I was so excited by this section that I would recommend the book just for this part despite my lower overall rating. It got my mind churning on the one YA I’d already started work on and how things could develop using some of these ideas. I am sure I will be rereading this section a few times as I work on the novels to get me back on track whenever I get stuck.

Some of the other sections about teen perspectives and society weren’t especially helpful to me, but I can imagine they would be to others.

Now for the negatives. Remember that section I loved? A lot of that content was “recycled” in the archetypes section. I instantly recognized it and found it annoying. But having a big chunk of repeated content makes the total book size misleading, since instead of each page being new information, some of it appears twice.

It might just be me misinterpreting or being overly paranoid, but I felt like diverse characters were recommended solely to check boxes for sale purposes and without sufficient consideration of the research and possible sensitivity readers needed to ensure these voices are portrayed accurately. It really bothered me that it seemed like cultural backgrounds were equated to a simple character quirk.

I believe we need to portray diverse worlds not because it will meet criteria for agents and publishers but because both our readers and our characters live in diverse worlds. While I do believe authors are capable of appropriately portraying marginalizations and diversity they don’t themselves possess, the importance of researching this properly must be emphasized. Otherwise we risk relying on stereotypes, making things worse for the communities we portray, and alienating readers.

I was surprised by the complete lack of reference to #ownvoices in this context and the value of using what experience and knowledge you do have to strengthen your characters.

As an avid reader who has, at times, come in contact with overzealous marketers of books, I also found that section somewhat uncomfortable. Yes, authors today need to do a lot of marketing, especially if they’ve self-published or are published by a smaller press, but the advice given was in the “this will make me unfollow, blacklist, or drop you from my contacts” category. If this advice were followed zealously by an author, they’d find readers like me tuning them out and even removing them from my circle. That would be unfortunate if a new author ended up alienating potential readers instead.

Finally, I found a number of word errors and awkward spots that annoyed me. However, because I read a prerelease ARC, I did not let these impact my rating. I’m hoping these issues will have been caught in final proofing before release.

Overall, I found a large section of extremely useful material that I will be referring back to more as I work on my own YA novels, but recommend authors think hard on how they approach some of the other material in the book. I also recommend following other YA authors and communities on social media so you can see the discussions and get links to great articles to fill out things like sales techniques and sensitivity readers.

As a writer, I am always skeptical of writing advice. I read a lot of it but take it with a grain of salt because writing is such a subjective process. There are quite a bit of helpful antidotes in here that could help you shape your novel. Most of the basics are covered, and even a bit of the business and marketing aspects of being an author. Which is an area I had no idea about when I started and had to train myself to do because it is such a huge part of things now days.

An entertaining read that I'm sure would have plenty of helpful tips for people looking to start writing YA. However, I'm a little tired of every book on writing treating the Hero's Journey like it's a sacred revelation. And I felt the author talked simplistically about teens and she got at least one detail completely wrong in an example about the Hunger Games. Useful for others, but not my thing.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

There's some good information here, but it's a little basic and the content itself is not written in a particularly engaging way.

The Young Adult Writer's Journey has a lot of good, basic information for writing a Young Adult book. It's an easy read that provides examples of various types and themes that many Young Adult books have.

The book covers the gamut of writing a book, from the actual writing of the book itself to marketing the book when you're done. It will give you something to think about, and it has all of the information in one place.

That being said, there is nothing really groundbreaking or earth-shattering in this book. If you subscribe to publications like Writer's Digest and read articles shared by other writers, agents, and publishing houses online, you're going to find a lot of this information. Also, the information you find online is probably going to be more current.

That is the one drawback that I can see to this book. YA is a rapidly-changing field. In the past few years, YA has tended to become edgier (some teens have actually complained that it might be becoming a bit too edgy). This is a book that you should take with a grain of salt. Take advice from it, compare it's advice to your work, but even more than that, read current YA articles from current publishers and agents, and continue to read current YA books. Other than that, this is a good reference for YA authors (probably in the beginning stages of their careers, I can't really see my favorite bestselling authors needing this work).

This is a great overview for someone considering writing a YA Romance. It covers everything from understanding just why certain YA books were successful to knowing how teens in this day and age thing. I found this to be a wonderful guide to help steer you through developing a powerful concept for a book. Fantastic for someone approaching the YA genre for the first time, I think those who've already written one might also find golden nuggets they could use.

I read this in one sitting because I've always been fascinated by YA as a genre. I'll say that it's a guide that's easy to understand with the first three chapters focusing on the core elements of YA and simply put, you've got to have an understanding of what teens are struggling with or experiencing before just writing for this genre.
I do wish that the book was structured with a section for take-away points and also that it had more insights or writing prompts to help guide a writer.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC, I'm glad I read this. It's insightful.