Top 6 YA Thriller Books to Read

Usually I tend to stray away from thriller books because they tend to scare me (LOL) but I found these books to stand out amongst the few thriller books that I have read.

TW: Some of these books include descriptions of death or violent encounters, however no descriptions are are described in the summaries.

The Female of the Species is about Alex Craft, whose sister was murdered in cold-blood. Jack Fisher has with the perfect grades and the desperate need to get out of the small hometown, and can’t seem to get Alex out of his head no matter how hard he tries. But Alex has a secret: she knows how to kill. This is a great contemporary book to read that addresses important topics in today’s world.

Out of all the books on this list this book is probably my favorite. This is a book about an aspiring journalist named Adrienne who goes with her stepfather to Siberia. Not to find the mysterious and elusive Osinov family as her irrational stepfather is, but rather, to debunk his theory and make her late father proud. When the journey takes a sharp turn for the worse, Adrienne must brave the wilderness alone, with or without a mysterious family. There’s a little bit of magical realism in this book but it is written so well that it seems real.

This book is about Vera whose twin sister disappeared when they were only 6. Their family was never able to move on and everyone copes in their own ways. Her brother Elliott lives most of his days high off of drugs, her father now lives in their basement, obsessively searching the internet for leads on Ava’s disappearance, and her mother throws herself into frantically planning charities and philanthropic events. In short, a mess. Vera is the golden child or as golden as you get in her family and she spends her days longing to leave her family behind for college in Oregon. However, college takes a backseat when Ava reappears 12 years later bruised but wanting to go home. This is a story of a family finding their way back to each other even in the worst circumstances. I would consider this more suspense than thriller but I think it still deserves a place on this list.

TW: This book includes mentions of sexual abuse

This is a story told by Allison Smith, a girl from a small town in Wisconsin with her widowed father and a robust social life. It’s senior year and college is on nearly everyone’s mind- and Ally’s is of the top students vying for college scholarships. When colleges begin to send back notices of a problem with her social security number, Ally’s attention is definitely caught- because because she’s not Allison Schmidt, she’s Amanda Lindsay and her mother has been looking for her for a very very long time. This book was also more suspense than thriller but I still enjoyed it.

This is the most thriller-y book on the list, and in my opinion the scariest. Ruthie Hayden is able to find one good thing out of her mother’s death: she can to move back to the one place she truly felt at home- Alaska where her best friend Zarah Gaines lives and where she used to live. What she doesn’t love is having to stay with her divorced father. Ruthie arrives in Alaska to bad news: her best friend is missing. The more and more she investigates Zahra’s disappearance, the less and less things seem to make sense. What’s worse, is that the case seems to look eerily similar to a missing person case in the past which was never resolved. Could the same person be behind both?

We Were Liars is a book about tragedy and how family drama can literally break the family. The liars are what the Sinclair cousins, Cadence, our narrator, Mirren, Johnny and the outsider, Gat Patil call themselves. The Sinclair’s are the picture perfect American families: tall, athletic, and beautiful with only two hair colors: blond and blonder. But they are picture perfect only on the outside. The truth is, the trust fund money is running out and the Sinclair sisters are all failures, much to the distaste of Grandpa, who is as intimidating as he is old, and lords over the family with the remainder of money. Cadence’s grandfather won’t address Gat by name but Cadence friends herself falling in love with him during the summers they spend together in Martha’s Vineyard. During her 15th summer at Martha’s vineyard, Cadence suffers a terrible injury to the head that leaves her with ongoing migraines and amnesia. Two years later, Cadence is finally able to go back to the island, and she uses the summer to piece together everything that went horribly wrong in Summer 15. This is the book that I read most recently and it is one of those books that I didn’t necessarily like, but it really hit me.