If you've been curious about New Adult books, there are a few by very popular authors on sale – including some authors whose books were so successful they were picked up by NY houses. New Adult is an evolving genre, but for a few dollars you can sample many, many titles, from self published to re-published to brand spanking new as of an hour ago. Here are a few.
The Vincent Brothers is book 2 in Abbi Glines' Vincent series, which starts with The Vincent Boys ( A | BN | K | S | iB ). The Vincent Brothers is 80% off at $1.99, while book one is $7.59. So you could get both, if you're curious, for about $9-10.
Getting a boy to fall head-over-heels in love with you isn’t easy. Especially when he’s been in love with your cousin for as long as you can remember. Lana has lived her life in her cousin’s shadow. Ashton always made perfect grades, had tons of friends, and looks model-perfect. And she’s always had Sawyer Vincent—the only boy Lana’s ever wanted—wrapped around her finger.
But now things are different. Lana has a chance to make Sawyer see her, and she’s taking it. If only he’d get over Ashton—because Lana is sick of second-best. Sawyer’s heart is broken. He’s lost his best girl to his best friend.
And then Lana comes to town. Ashton’s cousin has always been sweet and soft-spoken, but now she’s drop-dead gorgeous as well. Sawyer doesn’t know if Lana can heal his broken heart, but spending time with her might at least make Ashton jealous. What starts as a carefree fling becomes a lusty game of seduction.
Sawyer and Lana may have different motives, but their scintillating hookups are the same kind of steamy. . . .
Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Kobo | iBooks
While it Lasts is book #3 in the Sea Breeze series by Abbi Glines, and is $1.99. Book #4, Just for Now, is also still on sale for $1.99 ( A | BN | K | S).
Maybe driving home after a few (or more) shots of tequila had been a bad idea, but hell, he did it all the time. The cops had to have been freaking bored to have pulled him over. He wasn’t even swerving! That’s Cage York’s story and he’s sticking to it.
Unfortunately, his baseball coach isn’t buying it. Cage has a free ride to the local junior college for baseball — or he did, until he’d gotten a DUI. Now, Cage has to decide: does he drop out and give up his dream of getting noticed by a college in the SEC, and possibly making it into the Major Leagues — or does he give in to his coach’s demands and spend his summer baling hay?
Eva Brooks planned out her life step by step when she was eight years old. Not once over the years had she lost sight of her goals. Josh Beasley, her next door neighbor, had been the center of those goals. He’d been her first boyfriend at seven, her first kiss at ten, her first date at fifteen, and her first tragedy at eighteen. The moment she’d received the phone call from Josh’s mother saying he’d been killed along with four other soldiers just north of Baghdad, Eva’s carefully planned life imploded in the worst way possible.
Cage isn’t real happy with his closet-sized bedroom in the back of a foul smelling barn, or his daily interactions with cows, but he knows that if he doesn’t make his coach happy then he can kiss his scholarship goodbye. Only a sick and twisted man would decide his punishment was to be working on a farm all summer. No hot babes in bikinis waiting to meet a Southern boy to make her vacation complete. Just him and the damned cows.
Oh — and an uptight, snarky brunette with the biggest blue eyes he’s every seen. But she doesn’t count, because as hard as he’s tried to charm her out of her panties – he’s pretty sure she’d rather see him hung from the rafters than let him get a taste of her pretty little lips.
Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Kobo | iBooks
This is a book that splits the readership between OMGWOW and OMGNO. Rush Me is $2.99, and is about an NFL quarterback and a young woman in publishing navigating New York and independence who ends up crashing his party accidentally. My micro-review: I loved so many of the characters, but thought the heroine was a self-important, entitled snobbish asshat and I wanted to have an almighty Come to Jesus with her half-Jewish self. To say I lacked empathy is an understatement. That said, the hero, and especially the other teammates, I liked a great deal. Parr is a very strong writer, and if you're curious about New Adult, this is $3 well spent.
When post-grad Rachael Hamilton accidentally gate-crashes a pro-athlete party, she ends up face-to-face with Ryan Carter, the NFL's most beloved quarterback. While most girls would be thrilled to meet the attractive young millionaire, Rachael would rather spend time with books than at sporting events, and she has more important things to worry about than romance. Like her parents pressuring her to leave her unpaid publishing internship for law school.
But when Ryan's rookie teammate attaches himself to Rachael, she ends up cohosting Friday-night dinners for half a dozen football players. Over pancake brunches, charity galas and Alexander the Great, Rachael realizes all the judgments she'd made about Ryan are wrong. But how can a Midwestern Irish-Catholic jock with commitment problems and an artsy, gun-shy Jewish New Englander ever forge a partnership?
Rachael must let down her barriers if she wants real love–even if that opens her up to pain that could send her back into her emotional shell forever.
Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Kobo | iBooks
24-year old Pax Tate is an asshole. Seriously. He’s a tattooed, rock-hard bad-boy with a bad attitude to match.
But he’s got his reasons. His mother died when Pax was seven, leaving a hole in his heart filled with guilt although he doesn’t understand why. What he does know is that he and his dad are left alone and with more issues than they can count. As Pax grew up, he tried to be the kid his father always wanted; the perfect golden boy, but it didn’t work. His dad couldn’t overcome his grief long enough to notice and Pax couldn’t keep up the impossible perfect façade. So he slipped far, far from it.
Now, he uses drugs and women to cope with the ugliness, the black void that he doesn’t want to deal with. If he pretends that the emptiness isn’t there, then it isn’t, right? Wrong.
And it’s never more apparent than when he meets Mila. Sweet, beautiful Mila Hill is the fresh air to his hardened frown, the beauty to his ugly heart. He doesn’t know how to not hurt her, but he quickly realizes that he’s got to figure it out because he needs her to breathe. When memories of his mother’s death resurface from where he’s repressed them for so long, Mila is there to catch him when the guilt starts making sense.
Mila is the one…the one who can save him from his broken troubled heart; from his issues, from the emptiness. But only if he can stop being an asshole long enough to allow it. He knows that. And he’s working on it. But is that enough to make her stay?
Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Kobo | iBooks
True by Erin McCarthy is brand new, and is not technically on sale – but the list price of $3.99 is pretty spiffy. McCarthy is a tremendous writer, and has a gift with humor. This is a mix, according to the reviews, of humor and angst — I think a repeated theme of many New Adult novels is No one makes it out of adolescence alive! and this book has a bit of that.
When Rory Macintosh’s roommates find out that their studious and shy friend has never been with a guy, they decide that, as an act of kindness they’ll help her lose her virginity by hiring confident, tattooed bad boy Tyler Mann to do the job…unbeknownst to Rory.
Tyler knows he’s not good enough for Rory. She’s smart, doctor smart, while he’s barely scraping by at his EMT program, hoping to pull his younger brothers out of the hell their druggy mother has left them in. But he can’t resist taking up her roommates on an opportunity to get to know her better. There’s something about her honesty that keeps him coming back when he knows he shouldn’t…
Torn between common sense and desire, the two find themselves caught up in a passionate relationship. But when Tyler’s broken family threatens to destroy his future, and hers, Rory will need to decide whether to cut her ties to his risky world or follow her heart, no matter what the cost…
Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Kobo | iBooks
Do you like New Adult? Do you have titles to recommend? Share share!
I haven’t read that many New Adult books, but I thought ‘Hopeless’ by Colleen Hoover was excellent. Would definitely recommend it.
I’m not a big reader of what gets called New Adult, maybe because I’m not old or young enough for it to resonate, but I downloaded “True” when the author was giving it away and loved it. I loved it so much I read it as a pdf on my iPhone! I would say 95% of free books are deleted without reading more then a few chapters. I loved that the smart girl didn’t turn out to be stupid (hate that), I loved that the girls getting laid weren’t “sluts”, I loved that there were actual consequences for bad things happening that didn’t get magic wanded away, and I loved that the couple actually communicated. What I didn’t love was some immature behavior that I felt like was too immature for their age/life experience, the plot device mother and some of the “I know best because I’m the boy” stuff. I would totally read the next book in this series. I spent a few days afterwards thinking about the people that populated the book.
I’m so out of the loop. What is the difference (if there is any) between New Adult and Young Adult?
In my opinion, “Young Adult” has been creeping younger since I was a teen. It now includes books readable at 13, 12, even 10, and books I remember filed in the children’s section have been re-sold as YA. So there needs to be a new category for older teens, and that’s “New Adult”. Plus marketers love to divide up their target audiences; if they think they can sell certain books by creating a style of campaign aimed at college-age and college-bound folks, so it’ll be!
I still think of New Adult as “YA for the older end of the YA audience range.” I’m curious to see how publishers will make use of the New Adult category, since I have yet to hear of anything that isn’t a contemporary marketed as New Adult.
I think I’ve asked this before, but does anybody know of any books being marketed as New Adult that aren’t contemporaries? Like fantasy, mystery, paranormal, etc.? I’ve seen comments on at least one other blog indicating that they exist, but I’ve never seen any examples listed.
Thank you for the “new adult” definition. I was waaaaay off base on that one.
Also, anyone else bothered by the cover of “If You Stay” since the dude is supposed to be all tatted up but doesn’t show one drop of ink on his pretty, hairless chest?
I read Rush Me and it was good….I liked it! Of course, with a main character named Rachel – how could I not?
I am among those who HATES Rush Me. I don’t like the narrator’s voice at all and have barely made it past the first chapter or two. I think it will be a rare DNF for me. I recognize that others have had different reactions, though.
That said, I have liked some NA (Hopeless, Easy are two that come to mind) and I downloaded “True” yesterday…
For what it’s worth, I read a ton of New Adult books and I read TRUE and HATED everything about it. It was even worse than BEAUTIFUL DISASTER (which was a complete disaster in my opinion) which is saying something. I wouldn’t waste my money. Go try FLAT OUT LOVE or SOMETHING LIKE NORMAL if you’re looking to dip your toes into the New Adult genre.
I read True and really enjoyed it. The book, based on goodreads reviews, seems to be polarizing. I very much think it’s about how much the voice and the main character connect to the reader. I’d suggest trying a sample first.
I like the concept of New Adult but every book I’ve read has so much angst; the hero and heroine have always had super traumatic pasts and are incredibly damaged; usually the hero is so hurt he keeps acting like a jerk and pushing the heroine away. Having written damaged characters myself, this probably shouldn’t bother me but the books do feel a bit samey to me. Maybe I need to try a few more.