Digital content coordinator Bronte Coates reflects on why sex in YA books matters, and shares some recommendations for books that handle the topic thoughtfully and honestly.

The first time I came across a sex scene in a book was in the second book of John Marsden’s Tomorrow series when Ellie decides to ‘go all the way’ with her boyfriend Lee. Both of them have complicated feelings about this decision. They also have multiple conversations about these complicated feelings (in book one Ellie wants to wait but is curious; Lee is frustrated but ultimately respects her choice). It’s a big decision, though not overblown, and when they are ready to try sex out, they make sure they use contraception. Most importantly, their first time is not a perfect moment. Rather, it’s intimate, tender, awkward. It felt believable to me at the time, and still does looking back in it now.

When I read these series, I was at a point in my life where I was trying to understand what sex might mean for me. The sexual desires of all the characters in this series and those in other YA books I was reading demonstrated that first, it’s okay to have sexual desires, and secondly, sex is weird for everyone (as a side note, Melbourne-based Archer magazine have created an excellent t-shirt proclaiming this message). These books normalised my own feelings and those of my friends, and they did so without talking down to us. They also helped me to understand some basic but absolutely essential things about sex, such as the importance of contraception and open communication.

Some of the books did feature negative and troubling incidents of violence. Later in the same series Ellie is raped by a young man at a party. She struggles to describe it as such because she is not physically or verbally threatened by the young man. However, it is very clear to the reader that she is not a willing participant; ‘I felt too sick and drunk to stop him, to even try to stop him.’ After, she takes a long time to recover from the trauma of what happened to her – again, a believable scenario. These kind of stories mattered to me as a teenager because they made me think about consent in more sophisticated terms than simply ‘they didn’t say no’. They mattered because they were stories that echoed real life around me.

In many ways, books became my preferred way to explore ideas and questions of sexuality. The written word felt less confronting than on-screen portrayals of similar encounters, more fluid somehow. It was easier to relate to the character’s thoughts about and descriptions of incidents than to visual representation of similar ones. I suspect that today, even with the far-flung reach of the internet, there are lots of teenagers in need of books just like these.

Working as a bookseller, I know a lot of parents do worry about some of the more sexually explicit content in the books their teen-aged children are reading. However, it’s almost impossible to prevent them from coming across exactly this kind of content in life, let alone in books. The reality is that visual depictions of sex (some very explicit) are readily accessible for the majority of teenagers in Australia. With this in mind, the best reassurance I can offer worried parents is this: your teenagers are in safe hands with YA authors! I’d even argue that the kind of scenes they are writing help provide a necessary and nuanced perspective for their readers.

YA authors are writing about sex for teenagers, not adults. This means that a sex scene in a John Green novel is just not the same as a sex scene in a Lisa Kleypas novel. Teenagers have less experience and so their encounters in books are often more hesitant, and fraught with the fear that they might mess up. While adults have (hopefully…) moved beyond thinking of sex in terms of ‘bases’, this is still an enduring idea for a lot of teenagers and the writers creating stories for them know this. There’s also the fact that teenagers don’t necessarily have spaces where they can casually spend hours together in bed. These small differences may sound like nitpicking, but these details are what can make a sex scene matter to how a teen reader views this aspect of their life. And the best YA authors are across all of these tiny details. Not only that, but it’s likely they care about what your children are reading as much as you, and have put a lot of thought into their works.

(For more investigation into the differences between sex in YA books and sex in romance novels, you can listen to this terrific episode from the Oral History Podcast that is both considered and insightful. As part of their discussion, YA authors Christa Desir and Carrie Mesrobian also come up with a list of helpful questions for authors to consider when penning such scenes themselves, making this quite an interesting resource for writers too.)

Below is a list of some recommendations for books that share relatable depictions of sexual feelings and events for teen readers. Sometimes, like Ellie, the characters decide to go ‘all the way’ and sometimes they go some of the way. Sometimes their experiences are joyous and sometimes they’re uncomfortable. Sometimes their decisions have negative consequences, and sometimes they hold unexpected delight. But always they’re presented in ways that are accessible for teenagers, and unpack important information about communication, safety and consent.

Sex matters to teenagers and for this reason, it matters in the books they’re reading too.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

• The Boy’s Own Manual To Be Being A Proper Jew by Eli Glasman
• Wildlife by Fiona Wood
• Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta
• Summer Skin by Kirsty Eager
• Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy
• Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
• Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher
• Trouble by Non Pratt
• My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier
• Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley
• Looking for Alaska by John Green
• Forever by Judy Blume
• Everything Beautiful by Simmone Howell
• I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
• Fans of the Impossible Life by Kate Skelsa
• Pink by Lili Wilkinson
• The Every series by Ellie Marney
• Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
• Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
• Honor Girl by Maggie Thrash
• The Flywheel by Erin Gough
• One Would Think the Deep by Claire Zorn
• Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven

For further recommendations, or if you’re looking for something specific, you can always visit our shops to chat with one of our childrens’ and YA specialists in person.

Bronte Coates