All misunderstood, beautifully-rendered characters with complex experiences from which readers can learn.īullies are similarly misunderstood in YA. In John Green’s Looking for Alaska, Alaska’s grief for her mother is pushing her closer to the self-destruct button. Indeed self-harm is just anger forced upon oneself and has been depicted in many YA novels, namely with Grace in Cat Clarke’s Entangled and Bree in Holly Bourne’s The Manifesto on How to be Interesting. Forced to suppress her sadness, she finds comfort in self-harm and revenge. Suzume in Zoe Marriott’s Cinderella retelling Shadows on the Moon, suffers awfully when her family are murdered. When I strip away all those frivolous reasons for writing books – reviews, fame, dosh - that’s the reason I write. We need to send out the Dahlian message to our angry girl readers: you are not alone. That’s why we need stressed-out, angry teenage girls in YA fiction to mirror real life. Interestingly, it’s nearly always social media, rather than family or friends, playing therapist. Ninety percent of the 12-18 year-old-girls analysed had experienced stress in the past year, with seven in 10 cases leading to illness over exams and peer pressure. Last year, the National Citizen’s Service’s stress study found that teen girls are more susceptible to stress than boys. I’m in my 30s now and though my capacity to handle anger is the best it’s ever been, in my teens it almost drowned me. I guess I write to understand why that is. From driving to shopping to grammatical mistakes, the world is constantly out to get me.

Monster by C.J. Skuse