**Snatched from Hazzard7 on DeviantArt.com**
Okay, YA lovers. It's been awhile since I've done a Flashback Friday. I'm afraid this one is going to also include some elements of a rant too though, because I'm really *dying* to know why authors are killing off the parents in YA novels left and right.
But let's start with the flashback -- the absolute most terrifying moment of my high school career: my father's heart attack. I was fifteen, on the cusp of a band banquet and my boyfriend's senior prom, when I learned that my father was hooked to machines in a hospital hours away. By all accounts, he was expected to pull through, but incredibly lucky to be alive. Until that moment, the closest I'd come to experiencing death in the family was losing some grandparents and great grandparents. Knowing that my father on the brink of being torn away from this life was one of the most numbing and horrific feelings I've ever known.
But pretty much, I was alone in that feeling. I didn't know a SINGLE person who'd lost a parent when I was in high school. Not one. We lost a high school principal to cancer, and some girls nearly killed themselves in a car accident, but that was pretty much it. At least when I was growing up, the death of a parent was not a typical part of the high school experience.
Which makes me wonder why so many YA books I pick up+ (and excerpts on YALitChat) have a dead parent or parents? Yes, it's horrific and makes the MC's life suck. Yes, it ads instant sympathy. Yes, Disney did it to us in every movie we watched growing up. But seriously... this trend makes me want to scream or pull out my hair or something.
To me, it feels like a crutch. Something a lazy author uses to prop up a forced change in location or feeling of being lost for the MC. It's also lazy because having TWO incompetent parents in the picture is a lot harder than one or none. And, as Kethleen Duey said at an SCBWI conference, if the parents are competent, nothing good can happen. But come on, divorce is all over the place. Just split the two parents up if you must.
Is there more to this trend that I'm missing? Like, did some publishing genie swoop down and declare that dead parents are a prereq to getting a book deal? I don't get it, I don't like it anymore, and I'm sick of it. Rant over.
What's your two cents on the issue?
+ See, for example: Timeless (missing dad, dead mom), Warped (dead mom), Firelight (dead dad), Wicked Lovely series (dead mom, unknown dad), Darkness Becomes Her (dead mom), 13 to Life (dead mom), Paranormalcy (no known parents) -- I'm not saying any of these books are bad by the way. In fact, some have been my absolute favorites. But it's been done already! Let's think of something new.
Three years ago, Sophie Mercer discovered that she was a witch. It's gotten her into a few scrapes. Her non-gifted mother has been as supportive as possible, consulting Sophie's estranged father - an elusive European warlock - only when necessary. But when Sophie attracts too much human attention for a prom-night spell gone horribly wrong, it's her dad who decides her punishment: exile to Hex Hall, an isolated reform school for wayward Prodigium, a.k.a. witches, faeries, and shapeshifters. By the end of her first day among fellow freak-teens, Sophie has quite a scorecard: three powerful enemies who look like supermodels, a futile crush on a gorgeous warlock, a creepy tagalong ghost, and a new roommate who happens to be the most hated person and only vampire on campus. Worse, Sophie soon learns that a mysterious predator has been attacking students, and her only friend is the number-one suspect. As a series of blood-curdling mysteries starts to converge, Sophie prepares for the biggest threat of all: an ancient secret society determined to destroy all Prodigium, especially her. 
Entwined by Heather Dixon
Born at Midnight by C.C. Hunter (Shadow Falls #1)
Tessa doesn't believe in magic. Or Fate. But there's something weird about the dusty unicorn tapestry she discovers in a box of old books. She finds the creature woven within it compelling and frightening. After the tapestry comes into her possession, Tessa experiences dreams of the past and scenes from a brutal hunt that she herself participated in. When she accidentally pulls a thread from the tapestry, Tessa releases a terrible centuries old secret. She also meets William de Chaucy, an irresistible 16th-century nobleman. His fate is as inextricably tied to the tapestry as Tessa's own. Together, they must correct the wrongs of the past. But then the Fates step in, making a tangled mess of Tessa's life. Now everyone she loves will be destroyed unless Tessa does their bidding and defeats a cruel and crafty ancient enemy.
His is shy. Unassuming. Inexperienced.
I want to be beautiful like you, I thought, as if Mandarin were listening. 
