I’ll tell you a secret. I love reading young adult novels. Maybe because I have such fond memories of reading a great book under the blanket all night and being really tired at school the next day – and not regretting a thing because the book was worth it. So here are some of my favorite ya books that I still like as an adult.

I read ‘The Giver’ when I was nine and it’s one of the books I reread frequently. I just recently discovered that, in fact, the author, Lois Lowry, has written more books which are set in the same dystopian world: The Giver (1993), Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004),Son (2012). These novels are now called ‘The Giver Quartet’.

‘The Giver’ is minimalistic yet compelling. I won’t tell you much about the world because part of the fun is figuring out how it works, but let’s just say it’s not that far away from ‘Brave New World’. I imagine you would read it differently as an adult, but to me it was one of the first novels that took me to a place where something was not quite right.

Jumping on the ‘Hunger Games’ train, it has now been adapted as a movie. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but quite a tearjerker. While the novel is so elegantly understated at times, the movie kind of throws it all in you face (oh, and Taylor Swift is in it). So if you are going to watch it, read the book first.