Contest of Epic: Grand Prize Winner Revealed

And finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for … the grand prize winner of our Contest of Epic. Without further ado, the winner is Lindsey C. And here’s her winning entry:

Novel Novice has re-connected me with YA; something I never expected would happen when I first stumbled across the website. I have always loved reading ever since I was little. In elementary school I would spend hours devouring books like the Inkheart Trilogy and the Harry Potter series.

Around 6th grade, I decided I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. Around the time I started high school, I began reading lots of YA books. But I was faced with a dilemma when I heard other students discussing classics that they had read when they were younger, many of which I had passed up in exchange for more recent books. Eager to fit in at a new school, I was under the impression that it was time for me to grow up and leave Young Adult books behind me. I thought that if I wanted to be taken seriously as a student and a writer I needed to read “more mature” books. I stocked up on classics and for a long time read little else. I fell in love with books like Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre, but felt like something was missing. When I went to the bookstore I would stick to the classic sections, but my eyes always wandered over to the YA aisles. I saw the enticing covers and realized how much I missed those books, but continued to push away from young adult literature because I thought I was too “grown-up” for it.

During the summer before my junior year of high school, I came across the Novel Novice website. It was love at first sight. Here were people who loved books as much as I did and were unashamed to read YA. They had book reviews, author interviews, and even sometimes tied in classics. Here, the two worlds of literature that I had thought were so separate were melded together beautifully. As I read the posts on this site I began to question my decisions. Most of my all-time favorite books had been young adult; why had I turned my back on an entire genre of great literature so quickly?

This website reminded me why I loved YA so much. Novel Novice has introduced me to dozens of fantastic books that have made me laugh, cry, and left me completely speechless. They highlight the best books in the YA world and present literature in exciting and interesting ways. Novel Novice is a wonderful website that has made me a better, more well-rounded reader and has permanently changed the way I look at books.