Yes, New Adult is a real Genre.
You may have heard its name, whispered quietly in the shadowy corners of the internet, the nooks and crannies of Book Twitter: New Adult. More specifically, you may have heard that New Adult isn’t a real genre.
Bur first, for those of you who don’t know what New Adult is: St Martin’s Press first coined the term in 2009 as a bridging category between Young Adult and Adult fiction. Twentysomethings were ‘devouring YA’ and St Martin’s saw the demand for ‘fiction similar to YA that can be published and marketed as adult— sort of an “older YA” or “new adult.” ’
Aimed at readers aged 18 - 30 (or 16 - 30, depending on who you ask) it’s filled with stories about young people and the issues that tend to be relevant to them. Things like university, relationships, mental health, sex, finding your way in the world, feeling lost in life, and questioning what it means to be an adult. As Kristan Hoffman explains it, NA stories are about transition:
“There’s a period of time where adulthood feels like a new pair of shoes. The expectations of independence and self-sufficiency are still new, still being broken in. New Adults are the people who have just begun to walk in those shoes; New Adult fiction is about their blisters and aches.”
One of the common criticisms of NA is that it’s hard to market. I mean, they’ve got a point - walk into a bookshop and you’re not likely to find a shelf labelled “New Adult”. Publishers and agents have only Young Adult and Adult to choose from, so if your book doesn’t fit neatly into one of those, it’s a problem.
This is because NA is an emerging genre for an emerging audience. As human beings we’re living longer, which means we’re also buying houses later, settling into careers later, having children later. 25-year-olds like me gasp when we learn that our parents were married by our age. As our life expectancy stretches on, it’s more common for young people to spend (at least) a full decade before they establish careers and families. New adults are a newly-emerged category of human being - and guess what, that category wants to read. Give them something to read, people! It’s time to call the carpenter and build the dedicated New Adult shelf.
The New Adult genre is real, simply because people aged between 18 and 30 are real. Yes, twentysomethings can pick up a good crime thriller with a forty-three-year-old detective, and yes, twentysomethings can pick up some great dystopian YA with a sixteen-year-old hero who saves the world, but where’s the stuff just for them? Where’s the quarter-life-crisis books, the ones set at uni (and I don’t mean the ones with a middle-aged character reminiscing on uni, thank you very much). People in their twenties are notorious for feeling lost; so let them get lost in a book.
Three New Adult books you really, really, really should read
Out of Love by Hazel Hayes
A relationship told in reverse, from break up to first kiss. This debut from Hazel Hayes covers all the highs, lows, renting, dating, friends-getting-engaged, changing-jobs, do-I-want-to-have-a-threesome, buying-a-house and things-not-working-out-the-way-you-thought-they-would-ness of being in your twenties.
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Sally Rooney’s unbeatable love story was adapted into a TV show last year. Starting just at the end of secondary school, and finishing after university, this book tackles everything from relationships, mental health, BDSM, abuse, and figuring out how to be yourself.
Remember Us by Lindsay Blake and Layne James
Nothing makes you realise you’re really a grown-up like a parent getting sick. When 25-year-old twins Reese and Ben start caring for their father only for their estranged mother to show up, they have to navigate their complex family dynamic, and decide what it means to be an adult.