This year brought an especially great crop of young adult horror, as well as several impeccably plotted mysteries. Some of the works below are clever, others are kind, and all are concerned with the uncertainties of the future and the evolving tropes of the present.
Stephen Graham Jones, I Was a Teenage Slasher
(S&S/Saga Press)
With breakneck pacing and down-to-earth narration, I Was a Teenage Slasher is a tongue-in-cheek ode to the slasher’s heyday. Stephen Graham Jones’ shaggy dog of a story is set in the Texas panhandle circa 1989, where those few residents who haven’t left for the oilfields or the city are now at risk of becoming quickly deceased at the hands of Jones’ befuddled narrator, and his chainsaw wielding compatriots. If Tobe Hooper made a Denis Hopper film and Arlo Guthrie did the soundtrack, it might look something like this.
Logan-Ashley Kisner, Old Wounds
(Delacorte Press)
With Old Wounds, Logan-Ashley Kisner has crafted a hilarious send-off of gender essentialism through subverting classic horror tropes: two trans teens get lost in the forest, where the locals plan to feed them to a monster with very specific gendered requirements. What could go wrong? (Thankfully, everything).
Tyffany Neuhauser, Not Dead Enough
(Viking)
This novel uses the undead as a perfect metaphor for PTSD—the main character is literally haunted by her abusive ex-boyfriend, a duplicitous soul whose harmful ways were invisible to all other observers, and a brutal confrontation with this zombified incarnation of trauma is necessitated in order to move on.
Marisha Pessl, Darkly
(Delacorte)
In this board game-themed-puzzler, seven teens gather on a remote island to play a long-dead game designer’s final project. They soon discover the game isn’t just difficult: it’s also dangerous, and potentially deadly. In order to survive, it’s not enough to play the game: Pessl’s clever characters must also investigate their beloved designer’s sudden demise.
Olivia Worley, The Debutantes
(Wednesday)
The glittering debutantes of the New Orleans aristocracy find their celebration marred by bad memories and worse behavior, even before the queen of the ball turns up missing. Three of her fellow debs team up to solve the puzzle of her whereabouts, and what connection her disappearance could have to another deb’s sudden demise after the previous year’s festivities.
Joelle Wellington, The Blonde Dies First
(Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
I loved Joelle Wellington’s debut thriller with its epic party gone terribly wrong, and she continues to wreak gleeful havoc with traditional tropes in her new thriller. This one features an epic summer bash interrupted by a demon hell-bent on picking off guests.
Gigi Griffis, We Are the Beasts
(Delacorte)
Gigi Griffis breathes new life and intrigue into the historical tale of the Beast of Gévaudan, the mythical monster blamed for a rural murder spree in Ancien Regime France, as two teen girls take advantage of the chaos to fake the deaths of their nearest and dearest and thus save them from more human terrors. Griffis has an eye for historical detail and a deft hand when it comes to plotting.
Ream Shukairy, Six Truths and a Lie
(Little Brown)
Shukairy’s haunting noir of justice delayed and denied is an essential read for our times. Six Muslim teenagers are targeted by police after a Muslim student gathering on a beach is interrupted by mysterious explosions. Shukairy divides the narrative between these disparate narrators, with slow reveals leading to maximum emotional impact.
Freddie Kölsch, Now, Conjurers
(Union Square)
New voice Freddie Kolsch has written a queer horror novel for the ages, in which a charismatic quarterback’s failed quest for absolution is the catalyst for an epic confrontation between his coven and his killer.
Sami Ellis, Dead Girls Walking
(Amulet Books)
Sapphic romance and serial killers at summer camp! Sami Ellis seems to have included every trope I have on my checklist, and they all work together seamlessly for an irrepressibly entertaining horror experience.
