In a typical college romance novel, he’d be a gorgeous but troubled sex god who’d cure all my deep-seated psych issues with a good, hard fuck. I’d smell his misogyny and abusive tendencies from miles off but my brain would turn to hormone soup, because abs. That’s the formula. Broken girl + bad boy = sexual healing.

I wish I could say I wrote the above quote, but alas I did not. It comes from author Leah Raeder, and in just a few sentences she sums up everything that is wrong with New Adult fiction today – and why I was hesitant to label my new novel as such. With certain genres come certain expectations, and today’s expectations for young adult romance are undeniably influenced by Fifty Shades of Grey.

The question is why.