This week I’m sharing the reasons why I adored #LoveOzYA. Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and Bookish and is hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl. 

This was supposed to be last weeks post, sadly I ended up with a bad migraine and couldn’t get it done. However, I still wanted to share my love and write this post. If you don’t know what #LoveOzYA is – It’s a movement that happened to support and promote Australian Young Adult literature. You can check out more about it in the #LoveOzYA website.

Supporting, promoting and reading #LoveOzYA is something that I have always loved doing. So today I thought I would share some of the reasons by I love reading Aussie YA. Like always these are in no order. 

Feels Like Home: Reading #LoveOzYA feels so natural. Sometimes I find when I’m reading books set in other countries, I still feel a distance and sometimes I don’t understand everything. But when I read Australian YA everything feels natural, I understand everything so much better. I know places, I understand the school system, the government and everything in between. I can naturally just fall into the novel. 

Unique Voices: One thing that I think that #LoveOzYA does so well is having unique voices. No one else in the world sounds like us. We all have different experiences, but there is something unique about not only characters voices but authors as well. Most of the time I can tell if a book is written by an Australian author even before knowing. 

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

The Community: The #LoveOzYA community is fantastic. I love that it’s this big community with so many different types of people. From readers and bloggers to publishers, librarians and booksellers. It’s this amazing community that just wants to support each other and show everyone else in the world how amazing Australian authors are.  

Unique Stories: I know I’ve already spoken about unique voices but there are always unique stories that I don’t think you would find anywhere else. I think unique voices and stories go hand in hand. But I think there are so many stories that Australians can tell that no one else in the world can. And that just makes me so happy. 

Knowing Places: One of the issues that I have with reading books not set in Australia is not knowing where things are. I have the good gist of where countries are in the world, but when it comes to states, towns and things along those lines. I have no idea. But in regards to Australia, especially books set in Victoria. I know where things are. I know the places that they are talking about. I’ve been to a lot of them. It makes it so much easier to visualise. 

Slang: I love hearing Australia slang in books, and not just the typical things that you hear in shows. But just the natural way that we talk. I love seeing words that no one else uses but I know exactly what it means. It just makes for such a fun reading experience. Because it’s so natural when we talk, that it becomes so natural when reading. 

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

Range of genres: This may sound stupid here, but I wanted to talk about it. Sometimes, I feel that people think that #LoveOzYA is just contemporary. And it’s not. And while contemporary Aussie YA is what you do find most of the time. There are so many amazing fantasy and dystopian novels from Aussie authors. And I just love that. 

Amazing Quality: It’s not often that I love up a #LoveOzYA book and not like it. It happens of course. But it’s not often. I just find that I love everything that I read and that just makes me so happy. 

And that is it for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday! Have you read any #LoveOzYA? What has been your favourite? Would you like to see a list of the Aussie YA that I think everyone should read? Let’s Chat!