While the mere mention of the whole Jacob-Edward-Bella love triangle might test your gag reflex, there is one thing everyone can thank “Twilight” for: It’s one of a few recent best-selling series to lure the over-16 crowd back into the exhilarating and provocative world of young adult literature (see also: “The Hunger Games” franchise).

What makes mature adults duck into the YA shelves at the bookstore or click “Teens” on Amazon? Everybody’s got personal reasons, but here’s one that’s pretty universal: Many YA books are excellent. They might be even more satisfying now that you’ve survived those melodramatic years.

“What I love about reading young adult books is you get to go back to a time of firsts,” said Meghan Miller Brawley, 29, a librarian and YA fan in Georgia who blogs on Foreveryoungadult.com. “Everything, every day was so important. You get to get caught up in that, but a couple of hours later, you finish the book and you look around, and you’re grown up again. It’s really kind of fantastic, to dip into that world, the emotion, the angst, the uncertainty and come back to real life.”

Some say modern-day YA books are more violent, more upfront about sexuality, more heart-breakingly realistic, than their predecessors a few decades ago. Others believe the material is just as PG-13 — and as much of a guilty pleasure — as it’s always been. You be the judge: Pick a genre you devoured as a kid and check out its modern-day corollaries. Happy (book-report-free) summer reading!

Realistic

The halcyon days of youth may seem blissful now, but let’s dwell on adolescent angst for a moment. First kisses! Football practice! Cliques! Prom! Books that depict some of these fraught emotional landscapes (and more serious situations, such as fractured families) are YA staples. In realistic fiction these days, “big issues aren’t treated as big issues, and in that way, they’re able to be addressed,” said Brawley. “Not every book about a gay teen is a book about a Gay Teen, in capital letters.”

If you liked Cynthia Voigt’s “Homecoming” and Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” check out:

• “What Can’t Wait” by Ashley Hope Perez (Carolrhoda Lab): A Mexican-American teen’s parents pressure her to marry after high school.

• “What Happened to Goodbye” by Sarah Dessen (Viking Juvenile): A teen embarks on self-discovery after she moves to a new town with her dad.

• “Hidden” by Tomas Mournian (Kensington): A gay teen shunned by his family struggles for safety and acceptance.

Historical fiction

There’s something about prairie families and 19th-century courtships that brings certain readers to their knees. Lots of historical adolescent fiction could fall under the romance umbrella. An equally large chunk of beloved period fiction was about not-so-lovely times, such as the Civil War and the Holocaust. Why? “I think kids like to read about kids who are going through something that’s harder than what they’re going through,” said Brawley.

If you liked Lucy Maude Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie,” check out:

• “Revolution” by Jennifer Donnelly (Delacorte Books for Young Readers): The lives of a depressed modern-day teen girl and a young woman embroiled in the French Revolution intersect.

• “Falling in Love With English Boys” by Melissa Jensen (Speak): A girl in London reads one woman’s 1815 diary, then meets her good-looking teen male descendent.

If you liked Lois Lowry’s “Number the Stars,” check out:

• “Between Shades of Gray” by Ruta Sepetys (Philomel): A 16-year-old Lithuanian girl is deported to a forced-labor camp in World War II-era Siberia.

Classics

Some teens read classics willingly, not just for English class. Whether or not you enjoyed AP Literature exam-worthy works or even the Brothers Grimm canon back then, the Grown-Up You might find modern adaptations for young adults intriguing.

If you liked fairy tales, mythology and classics, check out:

• “Jane” by April Lindner (Poppy): A contemporary take on “Jane Eyre” recasts the heroine as a nanny who falls for her employer, a bad-boy rock star.

• “Entwined” by Heather Dixon (Greenwillow): A new spin on a Grimm brothers’ fairytale; a princess and her 12 sisters discover an enchanted pavilion beneath their castle.

• “Abandon” by Meg Cabot (Point): A modern-day teen protagonist moves to a new school after a near-death experience, in a twist on the Greek myth of Persephone.

Fantasy

“The line between sci-fi and fantasy aimed at teens and sci-fi and fantasy aimed at adults has always been porous,” said Charlie Jane Anders, an editor at io9.com, a blog that covers science, fantasy and science fiction. Fantasies are often written as series, which is apt; readers can grow up with their fictional counterparts.

If you liked anything from the Robin McKinley or Jane Yolen canons, check out:

• “Fire” by Kristin Cashore (Firebird): A prequel to Cashore’s 2008 “Graceling”; an irresistibly beautiful human monster assists the royal family during a civil war.

• “Incarceron” and “Sapphique” by Catherine Fisher (Firebird): A mix of sci-fi and fantasy, this duo is about a huge sentient prison around which royal politics and intrigue abound.

Sci-fi

When authors write sci-fi for teens, “they’re willing to go further, in terms of exploring the implications of things like a dystopian future,” including oppressive governments (which many adults would rather not ponder), Anders says. As for the popularity of said dystopian futures — highlighted by the intense interest in “The Hunger Games” — “for reasons that might be obvious, teenagers are eager to explore the possibility that adults could pretty much all be evil.”

If you liked Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” and Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers,” check out:

• “I Am Number Four” by Pittacus Lore (Harper Collins): A teen alien hides out from enemies in small-town USA; a sequel, “The Power of Six,” comes out in August.

• “Behemoth” by Scott Westerfeld (Simon Pusle): This is the latest in the Leviathan series depicting an alternative history of World War I, in which mechanical and genetically engineered creatures face off.

• “Delirium” by Lauren Oliver (HarperCollins): In a future where love is a disease and citizens undergo surgery to cure themselves, one teen questions the practice.

Courtesy The Washington Post

Young adult author Lois Lowry, 74, is working on her fourth follow-up to teen staple “The Giver.”

What makes a book ‘young adult’?

“Basic guidelines are if the main character is under the age of 21, and the book has themes or concepts that apply or are interesting to the same age group,” said Erin Curtis, 31, a Foreveryoungadult.com blogger in Texas. But those rules aren’t hard and fast. Take Markus Zusak’s Holocaust-set and widely lauded “The Book Thief.” In Australia, where it was first published in 2005, it was labeled an adult novel. In the United States, it was sold as a young adult book.

A tireless trailblazer

Volumes of praise have been heaped upon the work of prolific young adult author Lois Lowry, and for good reason: Her books appeal to adults and teens alike. The Washington Post recently spoke with Lowry, 74, who is working on her fourth follow-up to teen staple “The Giver.”

Q: Since you began writing in the ’70s, how has young adult fiction changed?

A: There’s been a huge new popularity for young adult fiction, and I don’t know why. What’s currently very popular has been brought about by the “Twilight” series, and now there are all sorts of vampire-related, supernatural-related books for kids. There’s another phenomenon that I think I might have been one of the early ones (to trigger) when I wrote “The Giver” (in 1993). Now, dystopian novels for young adults are probably the most common genre published.

Q: What can authors of young adult books write about now that they couldn’t have depicted in the past?

A: At the time that I began writing, there was no explicit sexual content to young adult books. That gradually has changed, and now many of them are very explicit. Contemporary culture has moved in that direction, as well.

Q: Some of your books, like “The Giver,” feel timeless. Do you think any of your other books are dated?

A: Some probably are. I was very fond of my Anastasia Krupnik series. I wrote nine books and I could have written more, but suddenly the publisher told me no. They were considered dated at that point, partly because, for example, Anastasia’s father, who is a writer, uses a typewriter.

Q: What did you read as a young adult?

A: One book that I read at 11 or 12 was “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” which was published as an adult book. If it were to be written today, it would be published within the young adult genre. “The Catcher in the Rye” was published when I was a teenager. It was published, incidentally, as an adult book, also.

— Katie Aberbach, The Washington Post