Young Adult Fiction, or YA Fiction, is often misunderstood. The uninitiated might think it’s only for teenagers, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Some of the biggest and most beloved series of recent times are YA; take, for example, The Hunger Games, Twilight, and Heartstopper.
For Jenny Ireland, who is based in Belfast and was on a very different career path before finding writing 13 years ago, the genre is full of potential.
Author Jenny Ireland. Pic: Supplied
Chatting with EVOKE as her fourth book, French Kisses, was released, Jenny said: ‘People assume YA is one thing, and I think Colleen Hoover and Harry Potter get lumped into YA, but there are so many different genres within it.’
One thing that Jenny thinks makes YA so appealing to readers, of all ages, is that the teenage years are often jam-packed with emotions and full of intensity – two great traits for a book.
She said: ‘I think when you’re a teenager, everything is happening to you, all these experiences, that are so concentrated in like five years and everything is so intense…
Author Jenny Ireland. Pic: Supplied
‘In general, YA speaks to the questions that are still relevant, like “who do I want to be?” and “who am I?” and on a more simple level, YA readers or teenagers get bored very quickly, so the story usually starts with a bang and tries not to let you go… You don’t really have time to get bored.’
Jenny’s own love of reading isn’t something she’s always had. She explains: ‘I wasn’t the biggest reader as a kid, so I feel like a hypocrite when I’m going on with my kids to read more books.
‘It wasn’t until I read Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild that I saw a character, Petrova, that looked a bit like me. That was the first time I saw myself in a book and realised how powerful it could be.’
Her own writing career came even later, with Jenny first embarking down the legal route and going to university to train as a solicitor.
Laughing, she said: ‘Now it just seems ridiculous because I spend most of my time in a darkened room with the dog for company, so it was never going to be the career for me.
‘It wasn’t until I had my first child 13 years ago, when I had absolutely no sleep and was dying for some headspace of my own, that I started writing.
Author Jenny Ireland. Pic: Supplied
‘I started writing children’s stories, and I got absolutely hooked. I can thank my kids for the torture that drove me to that, I suppose!’
Deciding to make writing a career felt ‘bonkers’ to Jenny for a long time, but her family got behind her, with her mum and dad even paying for a writing course.
During the course, Jenny had a moment that will stay with her forever.
She said: ‘I had no idea if what I was just writing was absolute drivel, but in one of the one-to-ones, I was told “I think you’re going to be published one day,” and that just stayed with me.’
Jenny’s latest book, French Kisses, follows swimmer Margot, whose life is thrown upside down when she freezes on the block at the biggest championship of the year.
‘Her parents do the worst thing you can do to an 18-year-old with a social life: They take her on holiday for four weeks to Eurocamp in France,’ Jenny explains with a laugh. ‘There she meets two boys, Félix, who is maybe the nicest boy in France, and Antoine, who is an insufferable surf instructor who calls her princess.’
Author Jenny Ireland’s book French Kisses. Pic: Supplied
It’s not just a love story, though. Jenny explains: ‘It’s really about who you are when the thing that you built yourself on has disappeared. Whether she ends up with a boy isn’t really the biggest question by the end.’
Jenny has plenty of experience of spending her own summers in France, which alongside her own teen obsession with the Kate Bosworth film Blue Crush, helped her tell the story of French Kisses.
‘I love France and the language, so I just wanted to see how a girl from Belfast would get on over there,’ she said. ‘It was so much fun to write, and I find that with most of the YA books I write, they all sort of end with hope and there’s a lot of fun in there as well as the deeper stuff.
‘I think falling in love and being in love is one of the nicest parts of being human and it’s so easy to forget with all the awful stuff going on in the world… and teenagers need that.’