How do you know someone just finished binging both seasons of Yellowjackets? A. They roam around in a daze grabbing random people and asking, “Who is pit girl? Who is pit girl?”
I know I’m not the only one obsessed with the Showtime series about a New Jersey high school soccer team, the unspeakable things they did to survive after their plane crashed in the Canadian wilderness, and the repercussions of those events in their adult lives, decades after their rescue.
Yellowjackets especially appeals to me because I’m fascinated by stories of outdoor survival and people going missing in wild places. My thriller Only She Came Back, (releasing on November 14 from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) opens with the suspicious disappearance of an arrogant survival influencer in a national park. Like Coach Ben, he’s a big, strong man. But that doesn’t mean he’ll make it out alive.
Right or wrong, I’m a Misty Quigley stan—she’s just so adorably sociopathic. Everyone’s favorite citizen detective might be able to relate to the narrator of my book, Sam, a true crime fan who knew the influencer’s girlfriend in high school and is riveted by the case. Sam does just what I suspect Misty would do: She worms her way into her sort-of-friend’s life in the hopes of learning all the darkest secrets.
With its elements of mystery, horror, wilderness survival, cults, and coming-of-age fiction, Yellowjackets has so many tantalizing threads that it’s easy to recommend books to fans of the show. Here are my picks to tide you over until season 3.
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read
One obvious inspiration for Yellowjackets is the true story of a Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972. Many Americans learned the harrowing details of that story from Read’s popular 1974 account. When I was growing up, kids dared each other to read the book because it described how the team members were forced to resort to cannibalism. Nowadays, it’s the courage and persistence of the survivors that stick with me.
Wilder Girls by Rory Power
A group of high school girls stranded in a desolate area. Adult authority figures who are dead or ineffectual. Weird, bad, possibly supernatural phenomena. Lord of the Flies-style social dynamics. Yellowjackets shares all those volatile elements with this YA best seller about an island boarding school quarantined during a mysterious pandemic.
Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman
If you want all the ’90s nostalgia of Yellowjackets in book form, tied up in the story of a dangerously dysfunctional friendship reminiscent of Jackie and Shauna, look no further than this dark coming-of-age novel set against the background of the satanic panic. It’s the perfect pairing for a playlist of the grunge hits heard on the show.
History of Wolves by Emily Fridman
The present-day parts of Yellowjackets explore the ripple effects of teen trauma and cult dynamics on adults’ lives. Similar themes animate this beautifully atmospheric literary novel, in which a woman remembers the terrible mistake she made as a lonely teenager living with neglectful parents in the remains of a woodland commune. The wolves here may be entirely metaphorical, but that doesn’t make them any less deadly than the ones that mauled poor Van.
A Room Away From the Wolves by Nova Ren Suma
More wolves! Nova Ren Suma is my go-to writer when I want a story that is creepy and dreamy in equal measures and makes me ask, “Is this really happening?” In this YA novel, a teen flees from her unhappy home to a mysterious residence in the heart of Manhattan that welcomes young women in trouble. She finds friendship in its emotionally fraught atmosphere, but ominous questions linger. If you can’t stop speculating about adult Natalie’s weird visions of the plane crash in season 2, this book is for you.
Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
I’m an absolute sucker for place-based supernatural horror—stories in which the setting itself is the antagonist. If that setting is snowy, desolate, and mountainous, all the better. We don’t know yet whether the team’s refuge in Yellowjackets is a malevolent entity or just a creepy cabin in the woods. But if you’re hoping for the former, you might love this story of a young climber who summits an evil mountain and ends up cursed in a way that makes Taissa’s issues look almost manageable by comparison.
This Darkness Mine by Mindy McGinnis
Speaking of Taissa’s issues, this teen thriller puts a deliciously wicked spin on the age-old doppelgänger trope. A straight-A student starts acting out of character, experiencing “missing time,” and indulging her darkest, most antisocial impulses—but are they hers at all? Or has she been possessed by the evil twin she absorbed in the womb? McGinnis could teach a master class in unreliable narration.
Cherish Farrah by Bethany C. Morrow
I can’t get enough of the weird frenemy dynamic between Jackie and Shauna, a pairing that even death can’t break. Add astute observations about race and social class to the equation, and you get this slow-burn psychological thriller about a teen fiercely determined to become an indispensable part of her best friend’s wealthy family. The obsessive, controlling narrator has some Misty Quigley in her, too.
In the Woods by Tana French
You may think of Tana French as a world-class police procedural writer, but folk horror elements tease around the edges of her gritty mysteries set in Ireland. In her debut, a detective is eager to investigate a murder that occurred on the very site where his best friends vanished when he was a child. Like Yellowjackets, this is a story of trauma’s aftermath with an unreliable and sometimes downright unlikable protagonist, yet its twists will entrance you to the end. Or try French’s The Secret Place for a mystery about the dynamics of teen girl friendship that flirts with the supernatural.
The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes
If you want all the stories about creepy cults in the woods (thanks, Lottie!), don’t miss this exquisitely weird YA novel that has a dual-timeline structure like Yellowjackets. It all starts when a girl with no hands commits an assault that lands her in juvenile detention. As she painstakingly builds the foundation of a post-incarceration life, we flash back to her life in the cult that molded and maimed her.
The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America’s Wildlands by Jon Billman
I haven’t yet had a chance to read this book about people who disappear in remote areas, a finalist for the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award. But I can already tell it’s going to scratch my “wilderness true crime” itch. (See also Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, my all-time favorite in this genre.) Whether it’s a plane crash, mental illness, or a spiritual quest that lands you in the middle of nowhere, being there can change you in unpredictable ways, just as we see on the show.
***
