Trending Thursday: Dearly Departed


Welcome to Trending Thursday, an occasional feature in which I remark upon some trend in YA. 

At first I thought it was just me, and then I saw other people mentioning it. T.S. Eliot may have called April the cruelest month, but as I worked my way through my March books, I saw a lot of this:



And read a lot of this: "His brother committed suicide" or "Six months after her sister’s death..."

Just doing a quick and cursory count, I found six March books that feature the death of a main character's sibling, parent, or boyfriend.

I love YA contemporaries, and I know that having a character struggle with a loss or personal hardship is a mainstay of realistic YA. For some reason, all the literary doom and gloom started to get to me. I'm not usually a huge mood reader, but I just couldn't bring myself to get through some of the titles on my March review list. I set two of these books aside and put another two on my "read later" list.

I peeked ahead to April releases and felt a little better. I'm going to start some of those now....

Tell me in comments: are you a mood reader? Do you like to binge read a particular kind of book, or would you rather mix it up?

Comments

  1. I love the hard YA Contemporary stuff... but you definitely can't read it all at once!! It should be spread out of you'll get too down!! Good call putting some of them aside for later :)

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  2. I read a lot of tough contemp, but usually alternate

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  3. I definitely like to mix it up. I agree there have been a lot of death related YA books lately.

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  4. Oh I know. I was just thinking about that the other day. If it's not suicide, someone has a terminal illness of sort. Death, death, death all around. Sigh.

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  5. I am DEFINITELY a mood reader! That's why it's so hard to pick what's "up next" in the It's Monday, What are You Reading? posts! I have a kindle, so I'll go through moods where I ONLY read kindle books. Then I'll go through a mood where it HAS to be a physical book. I binge read beach reads like nobody's business...lol :)

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  6. I definitely mix it up! I usually read like three different books at a time. Also, I know this is a post on YA contemporary, but it seems like every MC in YA fantasy is an orphan, probably with a sibling that gets killed off down the line. Getting rather tired of it!

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  7. I'm like a semi-mood reader?! Mostly for genre though, not content. xD Like if I'm feeling exhausted/stressed, I do NOT want to pick up an epic fantasy that's going to take a lot of energy to devour. I go for a lighter contemporary. Except...CONTEMPORARY'S AREN'T SO LIGHT THESE DAYS. XD ahem. So I don't mind the death-of-someone-close-to-you plot device, but I often don't like those books. The characters are often really horrible because they're suffering, of course. I get that. But it makes it sucky to read books about unlikeable characters. D:

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  8. I am with you. Too much doom and gloom can put a damper on my mood. I only read them far and in between. I do love a good tear jerker but sometime they are hard. I would rather have the chic lit kind where yes someone went through something and quite possibly death, but the book is more of the hope and strength of moving on and so there is light and good to it too.

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  9. I am totally a mood reader. I am always in mood to read contemporary's, as for other books I try to alternate. I never read 2 fantasy books back-2-back, but everything else I can pretty much read whenever I'm in mood to read them.

    Anatea | Anatea's Bookshelf

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  10. Yep, mood reader. I once read a few dystopian books back to back and then I got sick of the similar plot lines after. YA contemporaries aren't really my thing though, don't like reading about drama because I get frustrated with the characters :)

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  11. Gosh, it always seems like these books are all released around the same time around particular themes. I always have to work myself up to reading these books dealing with death because I get really emotionally affected.

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  12. Contemporaries sometimes seem to deal only with rape as well. It becomes very annoying after a point and also seems to belittle the issue. I'd written something along those lines on my website (Writer and Tales).

    Now they seem to be focusing on dead people, That would get old after a while. I for one get annoyed if I keep reading the same kind of books. Only romance is a genre I don't mind reading almost the same story in. Great post Jen.

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  13. I actually don't mind this trope, but I definitely do like to switch it up. I almost never read more than one contemporary in a row; they tend to get too repetitive.

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  14. I love these kind of books, but I didn't know there were so many these days. I have to add some to my to-read list.
    Great post, Jen!

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  15. It seems dead siblings is a trend lately... I've also found that one of the parents being deceased is something that happens a lot in books! I really want to read Into the Dim and already own it so I am looking forward to it ^.^

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