14 YA Horror and Thrillers To Read This Summer (And Beyond)

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There’s a vast number of good YA thrillers and horror novels out this year, most using genre tropes as wider metaphors for the human experience, fierce fights against injustice, or lush groundings for romance. There’s also a whole lot of campy slashers and dead influencers….and there can never really be enough of those, can there?

Courtney Gould, Where Echoes Die
(Wednesday, June 20)

Two sisters head to the desert to find the truth behind their mother’s death in this moody, atmospheric detective story. Their journalist mother had been obsessed with a small town with a reputation for miracles—and lost memories. People return over and over again to the unremarkable desert town, and the sisters may never be able to escape.

Kalynn Bayron, You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight
(Bloomsbury YA, June 20)

Charity is the manager of a full-contact haunted horror experience at Camp Mirror Lake, the setting for a classic summer camp slasher now reenacted each summer for paying customers. It’s near the end of the season, and Charity’s staff keeps disappearing. Then things start to get…unpredictable. Charity’s been playing a Final Girl for so long, she’s certain that if anyone has the skills to survive the night, it’s her. But can she also save her friends?

Amy Goldsmith, Those We Drown
(Delacorte, June 27)

Another Sea-mester book! But quite complementary to the other book set at sea, as this one is horror. Those We Drown features a group of wealthy kids and one scholarship student on a weeks-long cruise where they must mingle with influencers, the elderly, and soon enough, sea monsters. Those We Drown gets bonus points for cheekiness—some of the villains are literally named the Sirens, and one of those keeps singing sea chanties. Delightfully campy and creepy!

Kim Johnson, Invisible Son
(Random House, June 27)

In this powerful sophomore effort from Kim Johnson, set during the early days of the pandemic, Andre Johnson has just been released from juvie for a crime he didn’t commit. He wants to know who framed him, but he’s got to stay out of trouble under the terms of his probation, making it complicated for him to find answers, but the questions keep piling up, including the biggest one of all: where has his neighbor’s adopted son vanished to, and what did it have to do with Andre’s incarceration? The pain and loss of the early pandemic and the soaring fight for justice during the summer of 2020 are viscerally brought to life in Kim Johnson’s deftly crafted sentences, and Invisible Son grounds itself well in the particularisms of its Portland scenery. I can’t recommend this book enough, for readers of all ages.

Joelle Wellington, Their Vicious Games
(Simon & Schuster, July 25)

A high school senior has her college acceptance rescinded after she claps back at a racist classmate. She has one chance to get back into the Ivy Leagues: win a prestigious, but secretive, scholarship contest held by the most powerful local family. She soon finds out the young women who’ve entered the contest aren’t trying for a scholarship: they’re there to become the next bride to the family’s louche heir. And they’re willing to do whatever it takes to get out ahead…

Jennifer Dugan, The Last Girls Standing
(Putnam, August 15)

Sloan and Cherry are the only two counselors to make it out alive from a brutal massacre at a summer camp, bonding in their fight for survival and embarking on a romance for the ages. But now Sloan is starting to wonder about if her girlfriend did more at that sleepaway camp than just survive. Campy, queer, and perfect for the doldrums of summer!

Dashka Slater, Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers, Whose Lives It Changed
(FSG, August 22)

The only nonfiction title on this list, Accountable seeks to answer uncomfortable questions about a disturbing incident in the Bay Area town of Albany, desperate to protect its reputation of tolerance without doing the work to create a genuine culture of restorative justice. When a racist instagram account run by several students becomes public knowledge, students targeted by the account are furious—and they become ever more so, as their demands for consequences are redirected into limited measures aimed at optics. Slater is deeply empathetic in her approach, but still maintains a strong moral thread of condemnation and commitment toward a clear path of advocacy.

Kit Frick, The Reunion
(Margaret K. McElderry Books, August 29)

In this delightful family mystery with echoes of Knives Out, Kit Frick takes 11 members of the fractious Mayweather clan to an exclusive Cancun resort. They’re supposed to be there for a wedding—but soon, one member of the family is dead, and the rest must figure which highly suspicious/self-consciously eccentric relative is at fault. Perfect for fans of Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone.

Jamison Shea, I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me 
(Henry Holt, August 29)

In this ballet horror novel, a young ballerina is given a chance at power after a star of the company takes her under her wing. But all power comes at a cost, and this power derives from an ancient source with its own agenda. I’m not sure what it is about dance that lends itself so well to horror—think Black Swan or Suspiria—but add this one to the list of stories that take the bloody feet and brutal precision of the dance world and turn them into visceral horror.

Lisa Springer, There’s No Way I’d Die First
(Delacorte Press, September 5)

Influencers! Halloween games! And a KILLER CLOWN!!!! There’s no way the narrator won’t make it to the end of this book, with all her Final Girl brilliance, which means there’s no way that you, the reader, will not also make it to the end of the very fun, very campy slasher novel. Springer’s heroine is trying to get attention for her horror film club and invites her prep school’s most influential students to an exclusive Halloween party at her parent’s mansion. Unfortunately, the party entertainment she’s hired has their own agenda, and it’ll take all her knowledge of horror tropes and household chemistry to outwit the clown’s righteous fury and grotesque gags.

Adam Sass, Your Lonely Nights Are Over
(Viking Young Readers, September 5)

In this delightful YA homage to the slasher, a serial killer is a targeting a school’s queer club, and two besties find themselves ostracized from the club after suspicion falls on them for the murders. They must clear their names, in between going to drive-in movies, settling scores, and occasionally hooking up. Will they solve the murders? Will they end up together? Do I even care who the murderer is when I’m desperate for these two to smash? Anyway, file this one under, Very Fun and Not at All Scary (at least, compared to other slashers).

Anise Vance, Hush Harbor
(Hanover Square, September 5)

Hush Harbor is an epic novel of utopian hope in a dystopian world. When another Black teenager dies at the hands of the police, an armed self-defense movement establishes an intentional community in an abandoned housing project in New Jersey. How far will the revolution be able to go, before the unjust status quo is imposed on them? I loved this book’s pragmatic take on revolution and occupation, and kind approach to collective movements. Anise Vance demonstrates the thin line between utopian, dystopian, and thriller, in this genre-bending novel of ideas and action.

Olivia Worley, People to Follow
(Wednesday Books, October 31)

10 influencers head to a remote location for three weeks turned off from their phones, convinced they’re the stars of a new reality show—but not long after they arrive, influencers start dropping like follower counts, as their darkest secrets are revealed to their legions of fans. I’m really enjoying this trend of “books where annoying people who are internet famous kill each other.”

Linda Cheng, Gorgeous Gruesome Faces
(Roaring Brook Press, November 7)

In this high-concept horror, Cheng’s narrator Sunny is a disgraced former member of a manufactured girl group that was meant for K-pop stardom—at least, until one of the members killed herself, and the other cuts off all contact with Sunny. When Sunny finds a chance to reconnect with her bandmate, and finally understand what went wrong, she leaps in without hesitation: there’s a new contest to become to the next big pop idol, and she’ll stay in the program until she discovers the truth, no matter how dangerous.

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