I’d intended to do a giant roundup of this year’s YA horror books earlier. But one of the perks of waiting to highlight the incredible wealth of horror titles is being able to preview some of what’s to come next year. Horror isn’t a genre, but a mood, which means it applies across genre. Many paranormal romances could easily be seen as horror — you’ll see some below — while wholly realistic tales of darkness can fall right in line with what many consider more traditional horror topes, including ghosts, haunted houses, serial killers, and more. Among the new YA horror books here, there’s a little bit of everything, allowing for readers to choose what’s calling out to them genre-wise and understand the appeal of horror, too. Note that this is a big list, and it’s certainly not as representative of the diversity of voices and stories YA has been growing and showcasing. There certainly are inclusive YA horror books here, but horror remains an area that deserves more of these stories. You can, however, sink your teeth into this array of diverse YA horror books to help supplement the lack in new titles and more, I suspect we’ll be seeing more emerge as the stories that we do have continue to sell well and appeal to readers.
New and Forthcoming YA Horror for Fans of All Things Creepy, Scary, and Fun
Forthcoming 2022 YA Horror Books
Given what we’ve seen with release dates shifting around, thanks to printer consolidation, a slowdown in cargo shipments, and the pandemic, these books are tentative as of the writing of this post. Many do not yet have covers and information about these titles may be extremely limited.
Now, Katrel has an even more lucrative business, raising bodies from the dead, but at what cost?
This sounds like a disaster novel wrapped in a cult novel, a la the fabulous Agnes at the End of the World.
But then, Molly discovers there may be far more to this trade — far more to her family legacy — than she could ever imagine and more, she may learn who it was that killed her best friend.
Grey, who spends her summers in La Cachette, has a hard time believing no one knows what happened to her bestie Elora. Everyone seems to be hiding something from her and from each other. So when a stranger emerges from the bayou, Grey and the rest of the folks in town realize this is a far more dangerous place than they’d already presumed.
(The little alligator eye in the top right corner of the book cover is killing me in the best way).
Bram’s itching to disappear from her life, and to get away from her past and the secrets which haunt it, she travels to the small town of Louth, where her uncle is rehabbing an old mansion. But her uncle’s heavy with secrets and sadness, too, after losing his wife in a fire that locals think his daughter set.
The manor her uncle is working on is capital-C creepy, and so are the townspeople of Louth, who are convincing Bram that the house where she’s living is haunted by the spirits of girls who died within it. Much as she wants to ignore those rumors, though, the more time she spends in the house, the more and more real they seem.
Dare might be here for the strange circumstances of the girl’s death and her conviction that there’s a living suspect responsible…but the estate, as well as the cute girl living there, might prove otherwise and cause Dare to rethink her stance on ghosts.
Felicity, on the other hand, is at the top of the social ladder and has buried the truth of what happened the night Tress’s parents died. She was the other person in the car with them.
Tress wants the truth, though, and she has a plan: A Halloween party, where she can invite Felicity, prying the truth from her as she slowly encloses her in a coal chute.
…And there is a panther on the loose.
Felicity’s returning to finish high school at the ivy-covered campus where her girlfriend died last year. She’s been away from school for a year, but she’ll be back in the same dorm where she’d lived before: the Goodwin House, rumored to be the former home of the Dalloway five, girls many believed to be witches who all died one after another on the Goodwin grounds.
Ellis is a first year student, and though she’s amassed a loyal following — she’s a prodigy and has already written a novel — she seeks out Felicity to help her with her second novel. The topic? The Dalloway five.
History may be repeating itself now, especially as Ellis employs her style of “method writing,” to tell the story.
Elton turned Holly into an eternal 16-year-old in 1987. She was promised love, but he left her, and now the only job she can work as a forever-16-year-old is at Taco Bell.
Then Holly meets Rose — turned forever 16 by Elton in 1954 — and Ida — turned forever 16 by Elton, ex-finance, in 1921.
Together, the girls will be ganging up to ensure Elton doesn’t take another victim. They’ll be the ones getting the last eternal laugh.
This one sounds like a fun read-alike to Lily Anderson’s Undead Girl Gang.
But that prank catches the attention of the Mary Shelley Club, a group of students who seek to come up with the best prank to truly scare fellow students. It’s a competition, and the consequences may be deadly, especially as the Club begins to turn on itself.
One by one, women are disappearing from this “hotel,” and Zuretta discovers she herself is now entangled in a serial murder plot. How can she save herself, the other people around her, and get to the bottom of what happened to Ruby?
Creagh’s novel is inspired by, as you might have guessed, the classic Phantom of the Opera.
Turns out, that group is a gang of female werewolves who love to take down slimy boys. It’s fun and necessary but when the cops begin looking for a serial killer after a boy gets killed, suddenly, things aren’t as fun or easy as they may seem.
But the people of New Basin are starting to experience weird things. Clem and Nina, best friends, have brought two new people into their circle and decide they’re going to go into the mine and find out what’s really going on in town.
She’s immediately swept up and taken to Haxahaven Sanitarium, which isn’t what it seems. It’s instead a school for witches, and while she loves the magic she’s learning, she wants to play bigger, beyond the walls of Haxahaven. But now she’s caught the attention of a leader who wants magical control of the city and she must decide whether to use her powers to solve a personal crime, to take on huge power, or to pursue a boy with whom she’s falling in love (and/or some combination of them all).
This brand-new read has an eager, growing fandom already.
I am deeply in love with this cover.
Leigh’s book follows Charlotte, whose mother died six months ago under mysterious circumstances. She’s been told her mother’s heart stopped, but both she and her sister know that can’t be the case. And with their father and their mother’s personal assistant moving on from mother’s death, Charlotte and her sister are determined to know what really happened.
Mario’s been a loner throughout high school and on prom night, he takes a girl with him as a favor to his mom. But the night goes weird, quick: he’s crowned Prom King, despite being unpopular, and then, when driving his date home, he finds the Prom Queen dead in a ditch. He’s being called the murderer, even though this night has been nothing but a wormy nightmare for him.
