The Best New YA Thrillers To End Summer With

Sometimes I go on a mood reading spree when I haven’t read a category or a genre in a bit. Recently, I went looking for some thrills in the YA genre and I thought I’d share my favorites. I was specifically looking for thrillers, so I soft DNF’d anything that didn’t have the pacing, action, and intensity of thrills I was looking for. What I ultimately ended up with is a great mix of YA thrillers. There’s a YA horror thriller with a racist cult, a “dead” hacker in a secret organization, and a chilling revenge plot that may or may not include a bear. Rawr!

Since format can affect pacing and tone sometimes, I’ll note that I listened to the audiobooks for the first two selections. Both had really good productions and narrators. Additionally, my final pick is the very rare book that I was able to read with my eyeballs right now because it grabbed my attention from the opening and never let go!

Unintentional bonus: the covers look very nice together.

Funerals are For the Living by Sami Ellis For fans of YA horror thrillers, cults, and funny dialogue! A month after Junie Daniels was in a car accident that killed her sister, she’s still unable to fully remember the incident, but is doing her best to keep her life together. Her mom is struggling, drinking, and not going to work, so Junie takes care of the burial arrangements, which end up being based on a flyer with a sale because she does not have money. Problem? There’s a whole racist history of enslavement in that part of town that her mom has always warned her to stay away from, and now Junie and her best friend Omari are going to have to fight for their lives because of a cult… Maybe Junie being on her school’s MMA team can help? This has some seriously funny lines— starting with a “Temu grave” comment in the opening—that are paired with gross, off-the-wall, action and horror scenes to make this an ultimately fun and thrilling read.

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