Something’s afoot, and I’m not liking it one bit. I’m not speaking as an author, but as a mother of teenage girls. Some years ago, an author friend of mine was invited to speak at a national writers conference. She sat with horror in the audience as writers and editors of YA novels arose and said things like, "I put sex on my first page to draw them in" and "These books are still completely under the parents’ radar. We’re free to do what we want." When it was her turn, my friend stood and said that she liked to write wholesome, funny novels for girls. As you can imagine, that went over well, though one woman did come up and thank her later.
I thought this experience was an exaggeration. And then I picked up Wickedly Lovely by Melissa Marr. This novel came highly recommended by a friend, and I bought it for my sixteen-year-old for Christmas. At the same time, I came up for it on the library waiting list, so I started reading. The book is full of the regular (tedious to me) high school/teenage angst about romance, which I expected, but this seventeen-year-old character also had the physical freedom of a college student. Within the covers of the book, she drinks fairy mead and dances all night and has no memory of what she did. Later, she rejoices when she realizes she’s still a virgin. Good, right? Well, yeah, except that she’s not a virgin—not really. Because she sleeps over at her boyfriend’s, and they basically do everything except The Deed. In my book, sex is sex, regardless of how it occurs. Not, though, according to this character, who feels nothing but joy and excitement at her physical relationship with her boyfriend. There were no negative consequences to her actions, or any worry at all. More...