Some more tempting reading lists of YA fiction for you.
First, from Penguin Teen, ‘10 YA Characters Who Will Mess with Your Mind‘: a list of novels with unreliable narrators or narrators who unsettle.
I would add to this the brilliantly disturbing The Graces by Laure Eve–one of the best YA fantastic novels I have read for a while.
Secondly, ‘15 YA Books That Live Up to the Hype‘, a mix of SF and dystopia, high fantasy, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance, and some non-fantastic novels. I don’t know whether they do live up to the hype, but the three I’ve read are excellent: Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor; Three Dark Crowns, by Kendare Blake; and
The Darkest Minds, by Alexandra Bracken.
Finally, featuring one of the dominant motifs of YA paranormal romance (the genre’s very form facilitates writing about Otherness), Eric Smith on ‘10 of the Best Young Adult Novels About Outcasts‘. These all look very engaging, though are apparently mostly realist, with a couple of SF/dystopian novels. The themes of ethnic otherness, intersexuality, rejection, delinquency, and mutation interact with many YA fictions of the fantastic.
