Teens on vacation with their big, messy families. Teens on vacation without their families. What could go wrong?
In two words, a lot. “An idyllic vacation takes a dark and deadly turn” is one of my favorite thriller sub-genres, and this longstanding literary tradition has made its mark in YA over the past few years. The genre is all about escape: the vacation itself, and the thrilling story that unfolds from a picture-perfect beginning.
The vast majority of teens never take the kind of luxe or parent-free vacation imagined in these thrillers. I was lucky to take several memorable family trips as a teen, but we were not a posh resort or private island family, and I was definitely never allowed to go it alone with friends, perhaps with good reason judging by the fates of these characters! But I fantasized about lavish escapes, and about the adult luxury of traveling with friends, and these thrillers deliver on those promises. They also deliver the thrills, perhaps making us grateful for our boring family car trips and endless afternoons by the pool with screaming cousins and spotty Wi-Fi.
My fifth YA thriller, The Reunion, follows four teens during a weeklong family reunion at a fancy resort in Cancún, Mexico. The cabanas are luxurious, the ocean views are sparkling, the food and (non-alcoholic) drinks are limitless. But when dark family secrets bubble to the surface, tensions flare, and someone isn’t going to make it home from this vacation alive.
If you’re longing to escape into a book where an initially alluring getaway veers drastically sideways, here are five more YA thrillers to keep you company by the pool (or to enjoy on the safety of your staycation):
Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas
This was my first foray into the deadly vacation sub-genre, and it remains one of my favorite YA thrillers of all time. With shades of the Natalee Holloway disappearance and Meredith Kercher murder, this ripped-from-the-headlines thriller takes place on a very boozy spring break trip to sunny Aruba. Vacation vibes are cut short for Anna and her friends when a member of their group is found brutally murdered—and all eyes are on Anna.
With Malice by Eileen Cook
Another true-crime-inspired thriller sparked by the Meredith Kercher case, With Malice opens with the abrupt conclusion to Jill’s senior trip to Italy—a fatal accident that left a close friend dead and Jill seriously injured. Battling amnesia and trying to regain her thin grip on reality, Jill finds herself in the hands of a lawyer and a PR team, far from the once-in-a-lifetime Italian adventure she began six weeks ago, and smack in the center of a murder investigation.
Family of Liars by e. lockhart
This prequel to modern classic We Were Liars goes back in time to the Beechwood Island of 1987—another summer, another deadly mystery. This time, we follow Carrie Lennox Taft Sinclair through her seventeenth summer vacationing with her large, wealthy, and broken family on their private island off Martha’s Vineyard. As the summer unfolds, confidences are betrayed, mistakes are made, and the truth about the very dark past kept tightly under lock and key by this earlier generation of Sinclairs comes to light.
Summer’s Edge by Dana Mele
A summer at the lake house isn’t the same without Emily, who died there one year ago. Now the house has been rebuilt—to a T—and Emily’s friends have returned to honor her memory. But the house—a mansion, really, on the Adirondack’s Lake George—is haunted by Emily’s memory, or perhaps simply haunted. And as the reunion plays out, it becomes clear that the house is unsettled, and someone wants revenge.
That Weekend by Kara Thomas
A prom weekend getaway with her best friends goes horribly wrong for Claire, who wakes up covered in blood and stranded on a hiking trail on Bobcat Mountain in New York’s Catskills. She began the trip on Friday with her two best friends—ditching prom, and the cover trip to Fire Island, to go on a secret adventure—but now they’re gone, and Claire is alone and very confused. Claire’s memory slowly returns, and with it, the dark truth.
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