YA Realism isn’t always “real.” Nor does it need to be “real” because “real” is one of those words that means very little and what little it means is highly subjective. This is bringing back unpleasant memories of cryptic philosophical reading assignments past, but what I’m trying to say is I get that YA books might not seem realistic to me and real-ness is not a particularly unbiased way to judge a piece of literature.

However.

I have observed some trends in contemporary YA realism that seem… um… unlikely. And then when seven other books feature the same unlikely feature, it seems that statistically speaking, the world of YA realism is a world much stranger than ours.

Exhibit A:

There Are Dead Bodies Everywhere, And At Any Time You Or Someone You Love May Chance Upon One

I’m sure there are more examples that I’m not thinking of, and this isn’t even including the numerous other books in which characters discover the dead bodies of their family members after some sort of trauma… which is slightly more likely than chancing upon a strange corpse in a public place, but just as traumatic. Actually more traumatic. I need to stop talking about this right now, and please don’t ask me about the time I chanced upon a dead cat on my way to the train because I might still be recovering.

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Sum

Paper Towns by John Green

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfeld