When it comes to horror novels, the difference between adult fiction and YA is often just a matter of the age of the protagonist. Contemporary young adult horror doesn’t seem to feel a need to pull punches — -with regard to the gore or the scares or even the grisly resolution.
I think that explains the appeal of not just young adult horror but YA genre fiction in general to those of us well outside the confines of its intended age group. Good horror is good horror, good fantasy is good fantasy, and good sci-fi is good sci-fi, no matter what shelf it happens to land on in your local library or community bookseller.
The following two novels managed to stay with me long after I closed their covers, and not just because they offered the requisite thrills and chills I look for in spooky seasonal reading. Each transported me to their respective world of intrigue, mystery, and danger by making their heroes relatable… even to a middle-aged reader like myself.
Are We More Than Our Scars?
The Last Girls Standing | Jennifer Dugan | G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers | August 15, 2023
Though I recognized the titles of some of her previous works — -Hot Dog Girl and Some Girls Do, as well as her graphic novel Coven — -this was the first book I’ve actually read by author Jennifer Dugan, and I was instantly surprised by how real, how genuine her young protagonists felt. I also admired how she weaved a taut narrative throughout the book’s 300ish pages that kept me guessing until the very end.
Described as a “queer YA psychological thriller,” The Last Girls Standing takes elements from the slasher film genre — -both the final girl and the masked killer — -and mixes in a heaping helping of conspiracy horror for a fresh new take.
It tells the story of Sloan and Cherry, two survivors of a summer camp massacre that left all their fellow counselors dead. Picking up well after the chilling event itself, the girls are now bonded in love and trauma, even as they try to sort out their complicated, conflicting feelings of survivor’s guilt.
As our heroines comb news sites and Reddit communities trying and make sense of the slaughter, a solitary revelation threatens to tear them apart. At its heart is a sinister eco-cult with an apocalyptic vision, and the further Sloan digs, the more it begins to seem like Cherry and her mother (and perhaps even Sloan’s own birth parents) may be involved.
Dugan ably walks a narrative tightrope between supernatural prophecy and simple self-delusion, between banal coincidence and malicious gaslighting, right up to the book’s abrupt and startling conclusion, but along the way, she also paints a picture of a hungry, tragic young love and of two very different families dealing with the same great tragedy.
Does Cherry’s free-spirited, bohemian mom understand more than she lets own? Does Sloan’s comparatively milquetoast adoptive family object to her shared obsession with a cadre of animal-masked, machete-wielding killers, or is it Sloan’s queer identity that truly makes them so uncomfortable?
These questions and more bubble over in the third act and, to her credit, the author leaves the bulk of their answers up to the reader to decide. This makes for a brutal, ambivalent ending that certainly won’t please everyone, but I found it to be a satisfying big swing — -especially in a literary landscape where publishers seem to want either A) a tidy resolution or B) an obvious setup for a sequel.
The Last Girls Standing offers neither, and I feel the book is all the better for it.
All Hail the King of the Freaks
Stranger Things: Flight of Icarus | Caitlin Schneiderhan | Random House Worlds | October 31, 2023
While Last Girls Standing introduces us to a world where preternatural horrors may or may not truly exist, Flight of Icarus, the upcoming novel from Stranger Things scribe Caitlin Schneiderhan, takes us back to the familiar climes of Hawkins, Indiana — -a land obviously rife with other-dimensional evil. Interestingly enough, though, none of the series’ supernatural forces make themselves felt in this tale.
Sure, there are passing references to the missing Barbara Holland and that seemingly-returned-from-the-dead “Byers kid” (who does actually pop up alongside his older brother in the book’s waning moments), but don’t expect to encounter any roving Demogorgons or other denizens of the Upside Down in the pages of Stranger Things: Flight of Icarus.
In fact, aside from a handful of schoolyard encounters, you won’t see much of the big-name families of Stranger Things lore either. This tale, instead, focuses on the everyday horrors of fan-favorite Eddie Munson, providing us with his tragic backstory and priming the proverbial pump for him to become the hero we all know him to be by the close of Stranger Things’ electrifying fourth season.
With all his time spent shepherding the Hellfire Club, gigging with his band Corroded Coffin, and serving as barback at Hawkins’ seediest dive, the young Munson doesn’t have a lot of time for much else. Like being a star pupil of 1984, for example.
Instead, he spends his downtime between D&D adventures and guitar-slinging in the orbit of only a handful of allies, specifically his bandmates and his stoic uncle Wayne Munson, while routinely taking it on the chin from a town that has already written him off as a lost cause.
All this changes with the introduction of Paige, a small-town Hawkins girl with a fortuitous connection to an LA record exec. She thinks a Corroded Coffin demo tape could kickstart Eddie’s ascension to rock god status, but that costs money the gang doesn’t have.
This sets the stage for the return of Al Munson, Eddie’s absentee father, a career criminal whose unfortunate legacy has already doomed Eddie in the eyes of Hawkins’ residents. Al has a line on a new get-rich-quick scheme, but he needs his son’s help.
Tempted by the promise of fast cash, Eddie agrees to help his father steal product from a big-time drug kingpin’s marijuana caravan as it passes through the Midwest. And everything goes according to plan… until it doesn’t.
The strength of Flight of Icarus is twofold. First, everybody loves Eddie Munson. We’ve already seen the very height of his narrative trajectory as well as its heartbreaking resolution. Second, it deals with the sort of mundane evil that we sometimes tend to gloss over in a universe where otherworldly existential threats lurk around every corner.
Eddie Munson is hamstrung by poverty, by abandonment, by a town and school system that has already written him off for the literal sins of his father. Further, he is bullied, vilified by the growing satanic panic, and belittled at every opportunity by a community that feels certain it would be better off without him. (If they only knew!)
Licensed books sometimes get a bad rap and prequels are, in this modern era, a dime a dozen, but Stranger Things: Flight of Icarus manages to buck all that and tell a story that fans will actually want to read about one of Hawkins’ most misunderstood sons.
Review copies of The Last Girls Standing and Stranger Things: Flight of Icarus were provided by their publishers for the purpose of this review but all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links. Have you hugged your local DM today?
