Is my book YA or adult fiction?

I'm wonder which category my book would fit into, seeing as I want to market it to the right crowd. The characters are mostly teenagers (the main character is fourteen, while her friend is sixteen), but there's also a lot of violence and sex in parts of the book. Can you write a book for aimed for adults, even if the protagonists are young?

Edit: Sorry, I hit the wrong key, and posted too early. I misspelled adult as dult, due to my finger slipping on the key.

 

What if my protagonist is a 13-year-old girl, but she has the mind of a 943-year-old demon Hamster?

 

Yes, of course. Who is your target audience? There's your answer.

 

You can write a book for adults with teen characters, but you can also write a book for teens with violence and sex. Probably not full-on erotica, but certainly some fairly explicit stuff.

As @Steerpike says - it depends who you're writing for. What's the style of your writing? Who do you think would enjoy the story you're telling?

 

Yes. YA/Teen books can and do include sex, drugs, murder, assault, and any other subject matter you might explore in a novel.

 

Rose is only 17! Yet there is murder, hunting, intense first aid, big battles, scary monsters, malevolent spirits, and attempted rape. Also there is some amount of deep romance that includes sex.

Having a target audience is key so your on the right track.

I think my novel is for YA (kidding though )

 

As to me i don't recommend movies containing high violence and even sex to teenagers.
Psychologists around the world warn people, through all types of media, against the serious consequences that such movies bring to even old children.
As for your book ITBA01, and although i didn't read it yet, I prefer that it would be classified for adults.
But as our friends mentioned above, having a target audience is the key.
Thanks.

 

Everyone has made good suggestions. I never thought much about a target audience, as I just figured whoever was interested would read it. But as I get further into writing, more and more adult themes start coming up in my writing (one of the main characters is a prostitute, for one). I just feel that writing for adults gives you more freedom to actually explore complex themes, like the ones people have listed above.

 

There are YA novels about teen prostitution, drug addiction, the combination of the two, and so on. I don't know that an adult novel gives you more freedom to explore these issues than a YA novel does--the YA works are very stark and honest (the audience knows when they aren't and tend to reject the ones that fall short).