As society continues to litigate the ways young people are (and, perhaps more often, are not) allowed to be in control of their own bodies, young adult literature is experiencing a renaissance of deeply gruesome stories full of bloody body horror that gives teen readers an opportunity for full expression of their darkest, angriest feelings.
The following 13 titles showcase a variety of very scary things, both in terms of fictional horror situations (demons, televised murder for entertainment, literal nightmares come to life, people who have come to life) and in terms of the all-too-real horrors teens must face (conversion therapy, social media’s violent competitiveness, racism, sexual assault, the complexity of grief). These stories then ask us to sit with our