The Best YA Thrillers To Get Your Heart Racing

In Ravena Guron’s latest YA thriller, budding journalist Myra finds herself on the scene of a crime when popular girl Scarlett dies in the walk-in freezer at Myra’s family’s restaurant. While Scarlett’s death is dismissed as an accident, Myra soon begins to suspect it was murder — and that Scarlett’s friends, whom Myra has gone away with for the weekend, may know more than they’re telling.

This summery sequel sees best friends Georgia, Wren, and Billy away at camp, where they’re hoping to have some fun to distract themselves from the murderous events of their last term at school. Unfortunately, crime soon catches up with them when one of the camp counsellors dies in a tragic fall, and Georgia realises that she was deliberately killed. This most recent murder isn’t the only one to happen at the camp — instead, the friends discover that it may have something to do with another death, many years before.

Tiffany D. Jackson is the queen of the twisty thriller, and The Scammer has all the high-stakes tension that we’ve come to expect from her novels. Prelaw student Jordyn is enjoying college, when suddenly, her roommate’s formerly incarcerated brother comes to crash in their dorm. Devonte is charming, and soon builds a network of friends — or acolytes — at the school, but Jordyn doesn’t trust him, and when a student goes missing, Jordyn is determined to find out what Devonte’s game really is.

Helen Price’s debut is a chilling murder mystery, following Reaper, an outsider at his school, who is accused of killing the school’s golden boy, Riley North. Joining up with new girl Samira, Reaper works to clear his name, but soon finds that Riley might not have been as good as everyone believed — and that the killer is far from finished.

Octavius, Fola, Bilal, Perdita, and Romeo are siblings, adopted by eccentric billionaire Leontes Button, who brought them up to be prodigies — with no failure accepted. When Leontes is murdered at his annual ball, the siblings must work together to find out who killed him, knowing that everyone present had a motive, including all of them.

Fans of Scream will love this knowing slasher story, following CJ, a teen whose father was killed by a masked murderer many years before. CJ and their siblings have been brought up to defend themselves against any future attacks, but when the killings begin again, and the designated Final Girl is the first victim, CJ has to team up with new friends to defend everything they hold dear.

The Skulduggery Pleasant series has been many things — epic fantasy, gumshoe noir, apocalyptic horror — but in this beginning to a new trilogy within the ongoing series, magical detectives Valkyrie Cain and Skulduggery Pleasant find themselves taking on a slasher. A sorcerer is killing non-magical people, and as they investigate the cases, Valkyrie and Skulduggery find that old sins cast long shadows.

When Devon attends an exclusive party at a private school, she thinks that the only things she’ll have to worry about are clueless white kids. Instead, after an ill-advised session with a Ouija board, a sinister force begins picking off everyone at the party, in a pattern reminiscent of a horror film. Devon must use all her horror movie knowledge, otherwise she’ll be next.

The Getaway is a chilling read not only because of the tense plot, but because of how easily it could happen in reality. Jay lives at a famous holiday resort, where his parents work, and spends his free time hanging out with the kids of the other worker families — but when climate change hits, and the outside world plunges into turmoil, rich people start to arrive to take their places in the sanctuary that they have bought and paid for. Jay, his friends, and their families soon find that they are expected to serve the new residents — whatever they ask for.