Glancing at the young adult (YA) bookshelves, it’s rare to find a book that has a plot or characters different from the book next to it.

In the past 15 years, YA novels have become more cliché each day. It seems that in every one of those novels, there is a love story, a battle between good and evil and at least one character having emotional issues. Another thing that is becoming popular is having the story told from a strong female character’s point of view.

“All young adult fictions are romantic with the antagonist trying to break the couple apart but they never become successful and it leads to their happy ending,” sophomore Rosemary Vazquez said.

This trend became popular when “Twilight” by Stephenie Meyer  was published in 2005. Three years later, “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, which also has a strong female protagonist, was published. Just like “Twilight,” “The Hunger Games” had a love triangle but with more touches of action. In 2011, “Divergent” by Veronica Roth came out. Similarly, it was from the female point of view with romance and action.

In all these three novels, it was up to these teenage characters to save the world they were living in from the villains.

There are reasons that YA fiction books are written in this formula. Romance was always part of the literature and it always will be, from Shakespeare through now.  Thinking about it, having a character who is dealing with suicidal thoughts or drugs is not such a bad idea. This is something that may go through many teenagers’ minds. Having information about these teenage problems, can actually prevent them from wanting to experience it.

Lots of YA novels have happy endings and nobody denies that. But the reason why there are happy endings is that sometimes readers just want to escape from reality. There is an increase in female authors so it is natural to have books told from the female point of view. Contrary to what many people may think, this has not make male readers lose their interest in reading.

“I look for a good plot. It doesn’t matter whether the protagonist is a hero or a heroine,” junior Christian Marroquin said.

For a book to grab teens’ attention, it needs to be about them, discussing their problems, going through what they are going through and making mistakes.

Although it looks like that this trend will not pass anytime soon, new authors will need something more different and diverse to grab teens’ attention.