So, I Think it's Time to Re-Think YA

I've always been pretty sure what I thought was YA, but now I'm starting to think my novel is not that. The more I read about what teenagers expect from a book (as I always just read them and had my own expectations), the more I see that my book won't fill that need. I feel that there's plenty of kids that will like it, but it has a dark plot and doesn't end all puppies and rainbows. As much as I don't want to, I think I'm going to have to bump it up to just Fantasy instead of YA Fantasy, especially since (if the series gets to continue) my main character ages twenty years by the end of the story. My thinking at the time (which now is so amateur and idiotic) was that, as a teenager, I greatly enjoyed books like Dune and Mists of Avalon which were about young kids who eventually became adults and had children, so why wouldn't kids enjoy my book that will do the same? Geez, Christi, maybe because those books weren't YA. *slaps self on forehead*