Spooky Middle Grade and Young Adult Reads Perfect for Halloween
I love a good spooky read this time of year, and Halloween is the perfect excuse to add a few to your TBR. From ghosts and witches to monsters, creepy mysteries, and everything in between, there are plenty of great middle grade and YA books that bring just the right amount of spooky fun. Here are some spooky MG and YA reads that are perfect for getting into the Halloween spirit! Let’s check them out.
Beth is Dead by Katie Bernet
Beth March’s sisters will stop at nothing to track down her killer—until they begin to suspect each other—in this debut thriller that’s also a bold, contemporary reimagining of the beloved classic Little Women.
When Beth March is found dead in the woods on New Year’s Day, her sisters vow to uncover her murderer.
Suspects abound. There’s the neighbor who has feelings for not one but two of the girls. Meg’s manipulative best friend. Amy’s flirtatious mentor. And Beth’s lionhearted first love. But it doesn’t take the surviving sisters much digging to uncover motives each one of the March girls had for doing the unthinkable.
Jo, an aspiring author with a huge following on social media, would do anything to hook readers. Would she kill her sister for the story? Amy dreams of studying art in Europe, but she’ll need money from her aunt—money that’s always been earmarked for Beth. And Meg wouldn’t dream of hurting her sister…but her boyfriend might have, and she’ll protect him at all costs.
Despite the growing suspicion within the family, it’s hard to know for sure if the crime was committed by someone close to home. After all, the March sisters were dragged into the spotlight months ago when their father published a controversial bestseller about his own daughters. Beth could have been killed by anyone.
Beth’s perspective told in flashback unfolds next to Meg, Jo, and Amy’s increasingly fraught investigation as the tragedy threatens to rip the Marches apart.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
A trans boy determined to prove his gender to his traditional Latinx family summons a ghost who refuses to leave in Aiden Thomas’s paranormal YA debut Cemetery Boys, described by Entertainment Weekly as “groundbreaking.”
Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him.
When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.
However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
A Dangerous Bargain by Erin Cotter
A young artist who has bargained away most of his life for divine inspiration pairs up with fellow apprentice Leonardo da Vinci to infiltrate the Medici family and find out the truth about his missing brother in this Renaissance-set young adult mystery perfect for fans of F.T. Lukens.
It’s the height of the Italian Renaissance. In the golden city of Florence, art is equal to holiness—and angels walk among us, bestowing their talents…for a price.
Seventeen-year-old artist Virgil is in trouble. To support his family, he’s bargained most of his life away to an angel—only to discover that his missing brother is in danger, and nothing but magic can rescue him. Now, with just a few months left to live, Virgil is desperate enough to try the one thing he swore he would never, ever do—team up with the infuriating, annoyingly talented, and most notorious playboy in all of Florence, the charming Leonardo da Vinci.
As the two journey through Florence’s gilded streets, luxurious cathedrals, and glorious Medici palaces, they unearth dark truths beneath the city’s facade.
Those in power will do anything to keep their deadly secrets safe, but with his feelings for Leonardo giving him new life, Virgil is determined to expose their lies before he runs out of time.
Even if it might cost him his soul.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
Dead Girls by Beth Kubrick
A love letter to slasher films and angsty teenage friendship, Dead Girls is a graphic novel perfect for fans of Holly Jackson, Emily Carroll and Yellowjackets .
Clossdale has a history of dead girls. When a fifth missing teenager turns up dead, all eyes on are one suspect – 17-year-old Ash, the orphaned daughter of serial killer ‘Evil Evelyn’.
Ash is sick of her peers being murdered, and she’s sick of the police not taking the investigations seriously. After finding a note telling her she’s next, Ash, along with her foster sister Cassie and best friend Jamie, decides to take matters into their own hands.
But when their plan goes awry, the girls find themselves at the centre of a deeper and darker web than they could ever have imagined. Can they put a stop to the murders, or will they each become just another of Clossdale’s dead girls?
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
Drop Dead Famous by Jennifer Pearson
When global singing sensation Blair Baker rises on a platform high above the stage for the opening number of her triumphant hometown concert, the crowd erupts in applause. But their joy quickly turns to horror when they realize Blair is dead. The shocking revelation that music’s brightest star has been murdered rocks the world. But for her younger sister, Stevie, the tragedy is more than a headline – it’s personal.
Determined to uncover the truth, Stevie dives headfirst into the shadows of her sister’s glittering life.
What begins as a search for answers turns into a dangerous journey through the toxic underbelly of fame, where betrayal, manipulation, and obsession thrive. Yet, as Stevie peels back the layers of who her sister really was, she begins to uncover dark secrets closer to home – secrets that someone is desperate to keep buried…
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
Eat Your Heart Out by Kelly deVos
Shaun of the Dead meets Dumplin’ in this bitingly funny YA thriller about a kickass group of teens battling a ravenous group of zombies.
In the next few hours, one of three things will happen.
1–We’ll be rescued (unlikely)
2–We’ll freeze to death (maybe)
3–We’ll be eaten by thin and athletic zombies (odds: excellent)
Vivian Ellenshaw is fat, but she knows she doesn’t need to lose weight, so she’s none too happy to find herself forced into a weight-loss camp’s van with her ex-best friend, Allie, a meathead jock who can barely drive, and the camp owner’s snobby son. And when they arrive at Camp Featherlite at the start of the worst blizzard in the history of Flagstaff, Arizona, it’s clear that something isn’t right.
Vee barely has a chance to meet the other members of her pod, all who seem as unhappy to be at Featherlite as she does, when a camper goes missing down by the lake. Then she spots something horrifying outside in the snow. Something…that isn’t human. Plus, the camp’s supposed “miracle cure” for obesity just seems fishy, and Vee and her fellow campers know they don’t need to be cured. Of anything.
Even worse, it’s not long before Camp Featherlite’s luxurious bungalows are totally overrun with zombies. What starts out as a mission to unravel the camp’s secrets turns into a desperate fight for survival–and not all of the Featherlite campers will make it out alive.
A satirical blend of horror, body positivity, and humor, Kelly deVos’s witty, biting novel proves that everyone deserves to feel validated, and taking down the evil enterprise determined to dehumanize you is a good place to start.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
Gingerbread Bones by Lindsay Lovise
They’re being hunted…
When sixteen-year-old Georgie and her troublemaking brother are shipped off to the wilderness for their stepmother’s newest reality show, Georgie is convinced it’ll be the worst experience of her life. Two weeks. No phones. Hiking. Camping. Cameras catching every humiliating second.
Then she meets Mack Gray. Tattooed, unreadable, and—among a cast of kids already branded as trouble—he’s the one she’s sure is dangerous.
One night, the counselors are chanting affirmations around the fire. By morning, they’re gone.
But the kids are not alone.
Georgie can feel it, stalking them from the shadows—watching, waiting, picking them off one by one. Whatever it is, it isn’t just hunting.
It’s playing.
And in this game, there seems to be only one ending: no one gets out alive.
Five Survive meets Yellowjackets in this pulse-pounding YA paranormal thriller romance.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
The Hollow and the Haunted by Camilla Raines
Perfect for fans of The Raven Cycle, Cemetery Boys and Sixteen Souls.
Sixteen-year-old Miles Warren hails from a long line of psychics. Resigned to a life in the (not especially profitable) family business, Miles is perfectly happy, thank you very much―except for the part where he’s constantly exhausted from long nights digging up graves, hiding his sexuality from his family, and unable to fulfil his dream of going to art school one day. Perfectly happy.
But Miles’ comfortable routine is interrupted when has a premonition of a violent supernatural murder. He soon discovers that the victim is none other than Gabriel Hawthorne, whose family have a mysterious, decades-long feud with Miles’ own. Gabriel is everything Miles expects from a Hawthorne―rude, snobbish, and irritatingly good-looking―but Miles isn’t just going to stand by and let someone murder him. The two form an uneasy alliance, trying to solve Gabriel’s murder and prevent it from taking place.
The odds are against them; death premonitions are notoriously hard to alter. As they uncover secrets about their families’ feud and dark magic swirls around the pair, Miles is horrified to realize that he doesn’t hate Gabriel as much as he’s supposed to. He might even like him.
Too bad Gabriel is almost certainly going to die.
LINKS: Goodreads | BookBub | Amazon | Bookshop.org
The Killing Rules by Bree Despain
Seventeen-year-old Harper Westbrook isn’t afraid of monsters…she is one.
For the past three years, she’s been one of the Blood Bound—girls and women cursed with a bloodlust only satisfied by killing terrible men. Once every three months, she trades in her pom-poms for a lethal throwing axe. Her life is led by a strict set of rules to keep her dark secret as hidden as the bodies she buries.
And her number one rule? Stay away from Grayson Jones.
The boy she was totally falling for until the night her curse manifested, everything went horribly wrong, and she killed his father. It was self-defense. Or at least that’s what she keeps telling herself.
Grayson is an investigative reporter for their school paper, and he’ll stop at nothing to find the truth behind his father’s gruesome death.
As he follows new clues down darker and darker paths—to an unbelievable world of mythical beasts and the men who hunt them—Grayson doesn’t realize he’s on a collision course with Harper’s biggest secrets. Now, she must stop him before he exposes her family to the Hunters, even if it means risking her life and heart.
Because who could ever love a monster like her?
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
Killing Sadie by Rachel Peterson
Here’s what we do know: there was another infamous barn party at the McClain family farm last night, and things went horribly wrong. By the end of the night, there were two dead bodies in the old barn: seventeen-year-old Sadie Cooper and her killer, Mason Vreeland. The murder was heartbreakingly witnessed by Sadie’s twin sister, Jayne, and Sadie died in her arms. Mason was killed by Sadie’s boyfriend, Ben, in an attempt to save Sadie.
Aside from figuring out Mason’s motive, it should be an open and shut case.
But it’s not.
The story unfolds just after the murders, and Jayne, Ben, and Sadie’s best friend, Liz, are telling the cops what transpired at the party and the events leading up to it. But little details don’t match. And those little details start to add up to big discrepancies. But who’s lying, and why?
The shocking truth is revealed in the third act, when the POV shifts to victim Sadie herself, in the days leading up to the party. Witness exactly what happened—and see if you can piece it all together. Because poor Sadie totally missed what was right in front of her.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
Lakesedge by Lyndall Clipstone
A lush gothic fantasy about monsters and magic, set on the banks of a cursed lake. Perfect for fans of Naomi Novik and Brigid Kemmerer.
There are monsters in the world.
When Violeta Graceling arrives at haunted Lakesedge estate, she expects to find a monster. She knows the terrifying rumors about Rowan Sylvanan, who drowned his entire family when he was a boy. But neither the estate nor the monster are what they seem.
There are monsters in the woods.
As Leta falls for Rowan, she discovers he is bound to the Lord Under, the sinister death god lurking in the black waters of the lake. A creature to whom Leta is inexplicably drawn…
There’s a monster in the shadows, and now it knows my name.
Now, to save Rowan—and herself—Leta must confront the darkness in her past, including unraveling the mystery of her connection to the Lord Under.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee
For fans of Wilder Girls and Ninth House comes a dark, twisty, atmospheric thriller about a boarding school haunted by its history of witchcraft and two girls dangerously close to digging up the past.
Felicity Morrow is back at Dalloway School.
Perched in the Catskill mountains, the centuries-old, ivy-covered campus was home until the tragic death of her girlfriend. Now, after a year away, she’s returned to graduate. She even has her old room in Godwin House, the exclusive dormitory rumored to be haunted by the spirits of five Dalloway students—girls some say were witches. The Dalloway Five all died mysteriously, one after another, right on Godwin grounds.
Witchcraft is woven into Dalloway’s history. The school doesn’t talk about it, but the students do. In secret rooms and shadowy corners, girls convene. And before her girlfriend died, Felicity was drawn to the dark. She’s determined to leave that behind her now; all Felicity wants is to focus on her senior thesis and graduate. But it’s hard when Dalloway’s occult history is everywhere. And when the new girl won’t let her forget.
It’s Ellis Haley’s first year at Dalloway, and she’s already amassed a loyal following. A prodigy novelist at seventeen, Ellis is a so-called “method writer.” She’s eccentric and brilliant, and Felicity can’t shake the pull she feels to her. So when Ellis asks Felicity for help researching the Dalloway Five for her second book, Felicity can’t say no. Given her history with the arcane, Felicity is the perfect resource.
And when history begins to repeat itself, Felicity will have to face the darkness in Dalloway–and in herself.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
Little Monsters by Maire Roche
In this modern supernatural middle grade retelling of the beloved classic Little Women, the March sisters have a monstrous secret Meg will do anything to protect—especially with another beast lurking in the woods threatening to expose them.
Meg March and her three sisters are monsters. No, really. Meg has teeth that are a little too sharp. Jo gets furry under the full moon. Beth goes night flying on wings that are impossible to hide under her sweaters. And Amy? Well, don’t let her near a body of water or she’ll start sprouting her mermaid’s tail.Meg is sure their foster mom, Marmee, wouldn’t like any of this if she knew. And Jo’s best friend Laurie, the nice boy next door, would run screaming. To make matters worse, Meg’s small town outside of Salem is on edge. A vicious beast has been spotted in the forest, and Farmer Bhaer believes it’s responsible for his missing chickens. Meg is sure to be blamed if anyone realizes she’s a monster in disguise. And the closer it gets to Halloween, the surer the town is that something evil is hiding in the forest.Meg doesn’t always remember what she gets up to at night, and sometimes, she wakes alone in a mossy part of the forest and has to find her way back. With John Brooke determined to find out just what Meg is hiding and locals working to uncover the monsters in their midst, Meg must find the culprit herself—or risk losing the little home she’s found with her sisters.
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | Bookshop.org
My Killer Family Reunion by Dinesh Thiru
Nothings brings family together like attempted murder.
There are three things Jayshree Devi can count on happening at her annual family 1) her cousins will forget she exists, 2) her aunts will try to set her up, and 3) her uncles will get into a fight. What she doesn’t expect? An accident that lands her grandmother in a coma, throwing the family—and their matriarch’s sizeable fortune—into chaos.
When Jay discovers Grand Mom’s “accident” might not have been so accidental after all, she’ll have to dig through decades of secrets to find the truth. With the help of her (annoyingly perky) cousins and one of their (annoyingly hot) friends, Jay finds herself knee-deep in a mystery that’s even more tangled than her family tree.
But the closer Jay gets to answers, the closer she gets to finding her place amongst the relatives who once felt so distant. With Grand Mom’s life and fortune hanging in the balance, can Jay save her family and maybe hook up with a hottie while she’s at it?
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
Night of Madness by Ryan Douglass
Teen influencers compete in a horror movie–themed overnight competition, only to realize the real test is staying alive in this chilling, blood-soaked horror novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Taking of Jake Livingston and the production company behind Clown in a Cornfield.
Mara is a horror buff whose only fond memories of her dad are bonding over movies by Jack Stanley—the producer of the eighties. Stanley’s campy slasher movies may have kept Mara’s fraught parental relationship on life support and gained a cult following, but the man himself has faded from the public eye…until he announces a contest centered around Asylum, his most terrifying film. Five teen influencers will be invited to spend the night on the fully constructed set; whoever sticks it out until morning wins a hundred thousand dollars.
Stuck in a dead-end job, Mara seriously needs that cash. She may not be a famous influencer, but there has to be a way to manufacture an online presence that will capture Stanley’s attention. With the help of her brother and best friend, Mara finds some creative solutions to her dilemma and lands herself onto the roster of the lucky chosen few by way of her engaging authenticity.
When Mara and the other contestants arrive on set, it’s a horror fan’s dream being immersed in the asylum setting, but as the night wears on, they realize the danger is more than movie magic… They’re not there to win or lose but to live or die. As Mara fights to survive, she discovers an inner ruthlessness she didn’t know she had. Just how far will she go to see the sunrise—and will she still recognize herself by the end?
LINKS: Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub | Bookshop.org
