90s kids: When you look back on your favorite childhood books, you may reminisce about series such as "The Babysitter’s Club," "Sweet Valley High," "Goosebumps," or the blockbuster "Harry Potter" series, or maybe authors such as Garth Nix, L.J. Smith, Lois Duncan, Walter Dean Myers, or Meg Cabot come to mind.

I've been a fervent reader since I was old enough to grasp a book in my tiny hands; however, my reading was erratic and completely unregulated. For example, one of my favorite authors is Roald Dahl, author of such children's classics as "Matilda," "James and the Giant Peach," "The BFG" (soon to be a major motion picture)and my personal favorite, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Another of my favorite writers was J.R.R. Tolkien, author of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit."

While I loved these books with a passion, I also loved reading shampoo bottle ingredients, cereal boxes, old receipts, wads of grocery lists my mother used to shove in the coin holder of our Honda...you get the point. The act of reading was most important to me as a child, so it didn't really matter what it was I read so much as the fact that a string of words formed sentences on the page.

MY POINT: My access to literature was restricted to books I found at garage sales and the meager collection of childhood favorites my parents passed down to me ("The Hobbit," "The Count of Monte Cristo," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"). By a long string of coincidences, I managed to skip over the typical "young adult" genre (aside from Roald Dahl) and leapt headfirst into classics and modern literary fiction. It wasn't until I was a freshman in college that I decided to give a novel called "The Hunger Games" a try.

Suddenly, my world was turned on its head. There was an entire genre of incredibly easy to read emotional rollercoasters that took a fraction of the time to read. I was hooked. I couldn't get enough.

And then everything changed when the Firenation attacked.

Some people argue that the decline of YA started after "Twilight" hit bookstores, and I am willing to agree with that, to an extent; however, the problem wasn't with "Twilight," per say, but rather with the DOZENS of sloppily penned copycats hoping to cash in on the craze.

This has become a massive issue in the YA publishing world. The vast majority of material being shelved in bookstores is a less enjoyable copy of a better executed idea published years before. You may argue that nothing is original and everything is at least somewhat copied from someone else, and you'd be right ("The Hobbit" is essentially a retelling of "Beowulf"), but there's a difference between taking your time infusing an idea with your own unique spin and copying a story plot-point by plot-point while changing only minor details, like the characters names. In cases such as "The Hobbit," Tolkien was passionate about his fictional universe, so he went through great pains to build the world, characters, and conflict up to a point where it felt real.

Lately, I don't feel the passion for the world, characters, or plot of most YA novels published within the last few years. They're sloppy. The diction leaves much to be desired. Sometimes plot holes are so large the novel doesn't make sense. The characters are bland. The characters are really bland.

Long story short, I need a break. After reading nothing but long-winded classics for the majority of my life, YA was a welcome change. Now I crave the same long-winded novels I grew up on. I miss the craftsmanship of each sentence. I miss the care that goes into exploring the human condition that YA novels summarize in one or two super cheesy lines. I'm sick of hearing about edgy teenagers who are broken.

Broken? Give me a break. You're 16. You don't know anything about life yet because you're not old enough to have experienced it. Give me adult characters that have years of life experience. I want to read about those people. I want to hear their stories.

I am not by any means trying to discourage anyone from actively reading/enjoying new YA releases (apparently "Throne of Glass" is the new big thing). Are there amazing YA novels being published this year? Absolutely. To say otherwise would be ignorant.

But I've been burned one too many times, and I need to allow myself to heal.