"Young World," coming May 2026
Popsugar: What do people need to understand about adult YA readers today?
Soman Chainani: People want to feel something — and being a teenager is the period they associate with big and overwhelming emotions. YA brings them back to the most electric time in their lives.
PS: What's one trend in YA fiction right now that gives you hope for the future?
SC: There's a fearlessness to what people are writing now. The rise of book bans made authors more unapologetic about telling stories that teenagers and adults need. I'm thinking of Ngozi Ukazu's graphic novel "Flip," which should be taught in schools.
PS: What scene, arc, or character was most challenging to write, and why?
SC: A teenage president seems farfetched, but I don't think it is. So making it feel real was the biggest challenge: how would a teenager get elected and how would he feel in the White House? I wanted the book to be so immersive and honest that you absolutely believed it.
PS: What's one thing you hope Popsugar readers will take away from reading "Young World"?
SC: That young people are the moral conscience of this world. They have the energy, the optimism, the capability to do impossible things. We need them to stand up and take ownership of the future.
Book blurb: "A geopolitical thriller that follows an average teenager thrust into power in a near-future America where headline anxieties like climate change, gun violence, and institutional failure have reached a breaking point."
