Ten top Southern-set YA novels

Jeff Zentner lives in Nashville, Tennessee. He came to writing through music, starting his creative life as a guitarist and eventually becoming a songwriter. He’s released five albums and appeared on recordings with Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Thurston Moore, Debbie Harry, Mark Lanegan, and Lydia Lunch, among others.

Now he writes novels for young adults.

Zentner's new novel is The Serpent King.

One of the author's top ten Southern-set YA novels, as shared at the BN Teen blog:

Suffer Love, by Ashley Herring Blake

This book has a special place in my heart because it’s set just outside of Nashville, my beloved hometown. It’s told from the point of view of Hadley and Sam, who learn during the course of their burgeoning friendship that they have something in common: their parents’ infidelities. This book explores relationships and love in all of their complexities and does so with honesty, never looking away from the messiness of growing up. What I love about this book is that it could have been set somewhere more glamorous and sexy than a suburb of Nashville. But many, many teens in America grow up in unglamorous places, and they deserve to see their stories told with this caliber of writing, in a setting that conveys the universality of the struggles of coming of age.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Book, The Movie: The Serpent King.

The Page 69 Test: The Serpent King.

--Marshal Zeringue