YA Fiction
BURDEN FALLS by Kat Ellis
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As if surviving the car crash that claimed her parents’ lives wasn’t devastating enough, now Ava has to say goodbye to her family’s ancestral, and see it sold to the man responsible for her parents’ deaths. There has been bad blood between the Thorn and Miller families since a centuries-old feud, but now there is literal Thorn blood on Miller hands and Ava can’t bear to think of either one of the Miller kids sleeping in her old bedroom–especially not Freya, her artistic rival.
But death hasn’t abandoned Burden Falls. Not long after Ava and her aunt and uncle move to a cottage near the old mill, the body of a girl is found at the bottom of the waterfall. Most sinister of all, her eyes have been gouged out, like the legend of Sadie, the ghost of an accused witch who supposedly still haunts Thorn Manor. The same ghost Ava’s father claimed to see moments before his death. Ava begins to catch glimpses of Sadie everywhere. At first she thinks it’s just her imagination, but when Freya Miller turns up dead, mutilated in the same way, she has to admit that the danger is very real. With the police suspecting her, her aunt and uncle pressuring her to get her head checked, and her best friend keeping secrets, Ava doesn’t know who to trust–except Dominic Miller, the only person who seems to agree that she is both sane and innocent. But as they launch their own investigation into Freya’s death, Ava can’t help but wonder: how can she prove her innocence when the most likely alternative suspect is a vengeful spirit?
From an eerie start to a dramatic, pulse-pounding conclusion, this thriller does not disappoint. There are great twists, an emotional hook, and even a touch of forbidden romance. Fans of YA thrillers and psychological horror will not want to miss this one!
DARLING by K. Ancrum
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Wendy’s parents may as well have her under house arrest. It was their idea to move to Chicago so that she could go to a prestigious prep school (and so they could adopt more kids to keep under house arrest). But now they won’t let her hang out with her friends–all because when her mom was younger she saw some kid get murdered at a party in a graveyard.
Of course, Wendy’s parents aren’t home when a charismatic guy named Peter breaks into her house, and when he invites her to join him and his friend Tinkerbelle at a party, she can’t bring herself to say no. But instead of a party, Peter brings her home to meet the boys he’s taken under his wing–boys who give Wendy cryptic warnings that lead her to believe that Peter isn’t what he seems. With the police on their trail and something dramatic slated to happen later that night, Wendy will need to figure out who to trust if she’s going to make it home alive.
This dark Peter Pan twist is impossible to put down! I loved how Ancrum turned it into a thriller instead of a fantasy, drawing out the darkness that already exists in the original Peter Pan and infusing it with a new take on the concept of “eternal youth.” I was riveted. Highly recommend to fans of YA thrillers and dark contemporary.
Featured Book List: YA Chills and Thrills for 2021
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It’s October–time for ghosts, zombies, and serial killers (in our books, of course)! This month’s featured book list includes this year’s most heart-pounding releases for teen readers.
I will continue to curate this list throughout the month, but titles include:
WHITE SMOKE by Tiffany D. Jackson, a chilling horror about a house full of ghosts and the even scarier reality of racial injustice.
HOUSE OF HOLLOW by Krystal Sutherland, a dark fantasy that sends three sisters back into the land of the dead, searching for the truth about their past and an escape from the man who is hunting them.
EAT YOUR HEART OUT by Kelly Devos, an action-packed zombie satire set at a sinister fat camp.
BAD WITCH BURNING by Jessica Lewis, the story of a teen witch who discovers her ability to raise the restless dead while searching for an escape from abuse.
Check out the full list on Bookshop.org. (Don’t worry if you’re not looking to buy; just see what titles look good to you, then find them at your local or school library!)
THE VIOLENT SEASON by Sara Walters
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I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book from the publisher in order to write this review.
Every November in Wyatt’s hometown, someone becomes a murderer. One year it was a teacher who drowned her two children in a bathtub. One year, it was a classmate who drove her own car off a cliff. No one knows who last year’s murderer was. But the victim was Wyatt’s mother.
This November, Wyatt is noticing bloodlust around her, especially in Cash (the boy she’s been hooking up with) and herself. Maybe it’s not so much a desire for blood as a memory of her mother’s blood pooling on the stairs when Wyatt returned home and found her. The police claim they have another suspect–an out-of-towner–but Wyatt knows they have the wrong man. After all, the November curse only affects the people of her town, and her mother’s murder must be part of the curse. When a class project pairs Wyatt up with the object of Cash’s hatred, Porter Dawes, Wyatt finally finds a willing ally in her own investigation into the November curse and her mother’s death. As Wyatt’s association with Porter sparks Cash’s anger and her investigations uncover secrets she wishes had stayed buried, Wyatt begins to realize that whether or not the November curse is real, the violence in her life is far from over.
YA readers who like horrifying thrillers (or thrilling horror?) won’t be able to stop turning these pages. Themes of abuse run underneath the suspenseful thriller plot adding depth to this high-concept story. Though the premise might sound like a mystery, it is really more on the thriller/horror border and will most satisfy readers of those genres.
JUST ASH by Sol Santana
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I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book from the publisher in order to write this review.
Ash is a boy. He has always known he was a boy, and his parents have always agreed. It even says “male” on his birth certificate. But his parents have always insisted that he never tell anyone that he is also intersex. It’s so rare and confusing, they taught him, that it’s better if it stays a secret.
Unfortunately, when Ash unexpectedly starts menstruating for the first time during soccer practice, his intersex identity suddenly becomes very public. He gets kicked off the team, his friends abandon him, and his parents insist that he is now a girl, enrolling him him in a new school where he is forced to wear a dress and use the girl’s bathroom. Ash struggles to please his parents, giving “being a girl” a try, but when they announce that they want to have his male genitalia surgically removed, he realizes that home is no longer safe. On the run, Ash soon learns that being intersex isn’t nearly as rare his parents led him to believe and that the fight to live as his true identity must begin with accepting and loving his own body.
JUST ASH is a message to intersex teens: you are not “wrong,” and you are not alone. The heartbreaking abuse Ash endures from his parents is balanced by the love and unmitigated acceptance from his older sister, his girlfriend, his intersex support group, and a supportive teacher. But the most heart-wrenching part of the book is how much a reality experiences like these are for many LGBTQIA+ teens. In addition to the positive (and grossly underrepresented) intersex perspective, the story and characters are compelling. I would recommend this novel to fans of YA contemporary fiction, to intersex readers who want to see their experiences represented, and to any teen reader who does not know what it means to be intersex.
VIOLET GHOSTS by Leah Thomas
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The house where Dani lives is just one in a long line of crappy living spaces. That’s what happens when you and your mom have to flee an abusive father/husband. You move frequently, stay wherever you can. But the houses don’t usually come with a ghost. Dani immediately connects with Sarah, the adolescent ghost, in part because they both know what it’s like to be hurt by a man. But Dani can’t tell Sarah that despite the name “Daniela,” Dani feels like a boy. He’s sure that if Sarah knew the truth about his identity, she’d never speak to him again.
When Dani and Sarah stumble on another ghost in the woods, Dani learns that abuse isn’t unique to the world of the living. When abusers die, they go right on abusing–sometimes the same people they abused in life. Dani is determined to find a way to protect the ghosts who are quickly becoming his closest friends. But will finding peace for others stop him from finding peace for himself?
Although there is a thrilling dose of speculative fiction in this ghost story, at its core, VIOLET GHOSTS is a story of surviving and healing after abuse and fighting to be true to one’s identity. It is set in the recent past, and until late in the book, Dani doesn’t know that there are other transgender people in the world (or even the term “transgender”). His struggle to figure out how to identify and even describe himself parallels the struggle of the ghosts to find a new way to fit into the world where they’ve existed merely as invisible victims, lying in the places where they died for years or even decades. The story is beautifully, emotionally told (I keep wanting to use the word haunting, but it will sound like a bad pun … but it is haunting…), and ultimately full of hope. I highly recommend it to fans of YA speculative fiction AND fans of YA contemporary.
YOU’D BE HOME NOW by Kathleen Glasgow
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I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book from the publisher in order to write this review.
When Emory’s brother comes home from rehab, she hopes life will change for the better. Or as good as it can get after Joey nearly dying from a heroin overdose and Emmy nearly dying in the car accident that killed a classmate. At the very least, Emmy hopes to become less invisible. Maybe her parents will finally start paying some attention to her, instead of just to Joey and all his problems. And maybe the boy next door that she’s been hooking up with for ages will finally acknowledge her in public.
But even though neither of them was driving, the school community blames Emmy and Joey for their classmate’s death. And it turns out that Joey’s return from rehab is just the beginning of a long, arduous journey in his recovery from addiction. As Joey’s life crumbles again–and Emmy’s sex life becomes public in the worst possible way–a new community begins to form, and the hope Emmy had abandoned gradually flickers back to life.
Gorgeous prose and an infusion of classic literature elevate this story of a community’s coming-of-age into something truly exquisite. The suspenseful plot pushes readers along while authentic and complex emotions pull us deeper into the characters’ world. Though the novel takes on two mammoth social problems (the opioid crisis crisis and slut-shaming culture), Glasgow anchors them both in her protagonist’s struggle to be both noticed and respected by her family and community and also in the subplots of the parents and school community struggling to see outcasts as human beings. This novel is a must-read for any fan of YA contemporary fiction!
ME (MOTH) by Amber McBride
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Since the car accident that took the lives of Moth’s parents and brother, she has been living with her aunt in a Virginia suburb where all the other kids (most of them white) do their best to ignore her. Moth doesn’t mind. She has been doing her best to make herself invisible. If she hadn’t lived so exuberantly before, maybe there would have been enough life available in that hospital for the rest of her family to walk out, too.
When a Navajo teen starts at her school just before summer break, Moth finds herself connecting with another person for the first time since her family’s death. Sani is a musician, always drumming on his desk, reminding Moth of her life before the accident, when she danced as easily as she breathed. And when Sani flees his abusive stepfather at the same time that Moth’s aunt vanishes, it seems like fate that the two should go on an adventure together, in search of healing and their history. On a roadtrip across the South toward Sani’s father in New Mexico, a romance blossoms as they each connect with their ancestors’ experiences and grapple with the magic and miracle of first love and their place in the universe.
This beautiful YA novel-in-verse explores the ways that our ancestral history and romantic love can both root us in the world and set us free. Poignant and surprising, the story brims with complex emotions and exquisite yet authentic poetry. Fans of Elizabeth Acevado and anyone looking for a thought-provoking, immersive literary novel will not want to miss this gorgeous debut!
THE DARKNESS OUTSIDE US by Eliot Schrefer
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Ambrose can’t remember the launch. He knows he’s on a spaceship bound for Saturn’s moon Titan, tasked with rescuing his sister, Titan’s only colonist. But he can’t remember the launch.
And he certainly doesn’t know why he was in a coma.
The ship’s OS assures him that he will recover and have plenty of time to finish all of the necessary maintenance on the ship to prepare for their approach to Titan–especially since the ship has a second spacefarer. Another surprise. When he meets Kodiak, the surly and infuriatingly attractive spacefarer from Dimokratía, Earth’s most backward, sexist, and homophobic country, Ambrose suspects he would be better off alone. But that’s before Ambrose discovers blood smeared on a panel in the engine room, blood that OS claims to know nothing about but which Kodiak is able to date to 5,000 years in the past–a time before the ship could have possibly existed. As they work to unravel the mystery, trying to somehow hide from OS’s constant surveillance, Kodiak and Ambrose quickly realize they will have to put mistrust and national rivalries aside if they want to survive.
THE DARKNESS OUTSIDE US is both 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY-esque sci-fi and YA queer romantic suspense. If you thought you only liked one of these genres, think again. This book will change your mind. It is both true to the classic tropes of each genre and somehow fresh and inventive in their application. It has humor and heart, gnarly moral situations and thrilling action, devastation and hope. This summer has seen a wealth of exceptional YA releases, but this one really stood out to me. It will be tricky to use in book clubs because there is sex, but I will definitely be recommending and displaying it. If you are a fan of either YA sci-fi or romantic suspense, this novel is a must-read!
WHITE SMOKE by Tiffany D. Jackson
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I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book from the publisher in order to write this review.
Mari’s mom insists that the move from California to Cleveland was her choice, an opportunity to enjoy an author’s fellowship, to revitalize a decaying neighborhood, and to bond as a newly-blended family. But Mari knows it’s really all because of her. If it hadn’t been for her drug habit, their old town wouldn’t have shunned them. If they hadn’t needed to pay for rehab, they wouldn’t need a rent-free place to live. And if her stepfather could see her as anything other than an addict, maybe he wouldn’t always take his own daughter’s side instead of hers. Maybe.
It isn’t long after they arrive in their new home that Mari realizes something is off. Their immediate neighborhood is entirely deserted, boarded up except for the house where they’ll be living. And the houses aren’t the only things that are falling apart. The people in the surrounding town seem both hostile and beaten down. Everyone has at least one family member in prison for a marijuana offense, most claiming that their loved ones were set up by the cops. And perhaps even more sinister is the way Mari’s stepsister has been acting, and her claim that she has a friend living in the boarded-up house next door, a friend who hates Mari and is plotting her revenge. The slick white man who set up the author’s fellowship dismisses all of Mari’s concerns as nonsense, and her stepfather clearly agrees with him. Even Mari’s mother thinks she’s lying and picking on her stepsister.
But then the ghosts wake up…
Jackson makes her pivot from psychological thrillers to horror look easy in this ghostly, unputdownable novel about a girl overcoming fears and prejudices to take on both supernatural and human threats to her family and community. As in all of Jackson’s work, the characters are multifaceted, the family and community dynamics complex, and the social justice themes prominent, accessible, and timely. Fans of YA horror and/or psychological thrillers will not want to miss WHITE SMOKE! If depictions of marijuana use won’t turn off your gatekeepers, this title could work well in teen book clubs, too.
Susan the Librarian 