What is it with teen paranormal romance, anyway?

I just don't understand it. Young adult literature entered the first decade of the 21st Century on a big Harry Potter kick. By the end of it, teen paranormal romance was all the rage, so much so bookstores are devoting entire sections just to them.  

Why is this genre suddenly the flavor of the month? This blog post by writer Kiersten White speculates that the genre plays to teen emotions like idolizing crushes on people far different from them is the reason. This doubtless is one of the reasons, but not the one and only.   It does not do to peg a phenomenon on just one thing, because the origins of fads are complex.  

Is the reason it became so popular because J.K. Rowling's Potter characters aged and found true love? And most Potter readers had grown old with them and discovered the world of crushes, dates and romance by the time the last Potter adventure was published? This too might be a reason. If a young adult reader craved more romance set in a fantasy world, paranormal romance was the next logical place to go.

One more reason might be because romance set in the real world is admittedly bound to reality, which might make it seem bland, compared to the exotic of the paranormal.   A story about a girl falling for a guy in high school might be too conventional compared to a girl falling for a hunky vampire in the same setting.

Whatever the reason, the question must be asked: Will this fad still be popular at the end of the second decade of the new century? Or will a new genre arrive that is so hot that bookstores eventually will need to devote an entire section to them? What do you think will be the outcome, folks? 

Article image courtesy The Paradigm.