When is Enough Enough?

Hello Writerly Friends!

I was reading a book recently, a book that I'm very excited about reading, no less, and here's what I found for the very first sentence.

The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit

Yup, that was the first sentence. I know it's not the worst thing in the world and it certainly catches your attention, but that's not the image I really wanted to think of.

My point is, teen books nowadays seem to be getting more mature and they have more language and violence and things like that. Cat vomit doesn't really have anything to do with those things, but I was just thinking how teen books are so different from kids books.

I was looking for books to add to my reading list, and all that's on it are teen/adult books because I think I'm a little old for the kids stuff. But it was hard to rack up all of them, even so they still have some innuendo and or language. Most of the books I found were about one or more of the following: Murder, rape, teen pregnancies, suicide and haunted spirits. Not what I would really call light reading.

Now I'm not saying that as a Christian we're forbidden to write about things that really do happen, but I feel like a lot of the teen books now don't shed light on wrong things, they just write about it because it's interesting. Like a murder for instance I heard of one book about a boy who murders a classmate. Fair enough, that could make for an interesting plot, but instead it's about how he deals with his other classmate's reactions. Um, okay.

So I'm here to ponder the question, when is enough enough? Do we want so much detail about all the things listed above, what about all the language added in. I know that sometimes those things can be very pivotal to your book, and it can cause a big turning point, but if we seriously want to sell as teen fiction authors, how far are we willing to go?

I'm not going to put a book down just because some people kiss in it, or there's a little language. But when it's the entire substance of the book and that's what's selling, how can we expect to succeed in the teen-fic market?

So I ask you, how far are you willing to go?