Welcome to Contemporary YA Month

Firstly, Happy New Year! I hope you all had a good night last night and are ready for an awesome year of books.

As a few of you may know, this themed month didn’t come into being in a very normal way. I was assigned to write a blog post for my creative writing class and I chose a topic that I’d been thinking about recently: how paranormal YA is pushing contemporaries out of the forefront (which my tutor didn’t like, incidentally). Then I put it up on the blog and I had a brilliant, and much unexpected, response. It turns out that lots of you agreed with me and so I decided to dedicate So Many Books, So Little Time to some amazing contemporary novels for the month of January.

I’ve dug out some of those contemporary novels that have been pushed aside by the hugely popular paranormals that have come through my letterbox and stolen my attention and give them the notice they deserve along with some fabulous novels that will be released early this year. You can look forward to reviews of:

Torn by Cat Clarke

Kill All Enemies by Kevin Brooks

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han

Rockaholic by CJ Skuse

Someone Else’s Life by Katie Dale

And more.

I also have some really fantastic guest posts from authors and bloggers lined up about just how awesome contemporary YA is! I have the likes of Luisa Plaja, Catherine Bruton and Emma Pass on the authorial side and the fabulous Hannah, Sammee, Viv and Michelle representing us bloggers. I will also be spotlighting/fangirling about a few of my very favourite authors of contemporary YA.

I hope that you’ll enjoy embracing contemporary YA and if you want to join in by posting your own discussions or reviews then that’d be brilliant. Steal the button and send me the links so I can let everyone know.

Enjoy!

Sophie