Over the River and Through the Woods, to These Foresty YA Fantasies We Go

A lush forest full of deadly supernatural monsters serves as the backdrop for The Luminaries, the first book in a new contemporary fantasy series from the author of the Witchlands series. This thrilling read rife with paranormal elements will keep readers captivated through the very last page. Our November YA Book Club pick, The Luminaries is an enthralling story that you should devour before watching our TikTok Live event with Susan Dennard in conversation with Alexandra Bracken, author of Lore on 12/6/22 at 4:30pm eastern!

Adventure into the Greater Jungle with Koffi and Ekon in their unlikely alliance to hunt down the vicious monster that evokes so much fear in their city. Beasts of Prey was one of our former YA Book Club picks and is full of magic, vivid world building, and a shocking betrayal that will leave you gasping. This book will captivate you from the very beginning, and you won’t be able to stop until you’ve finished the whole book! 

This enchanting story of a girl rumored to be a witch and the boy she finds within the magical and haunted woods, Winterwood will put readers in a trance as the story unfolds. Nora has a special connection to the woods, and it’s this connection that leads her to Oliver, a boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago during the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but he’s not, and his presence has Nora feeling a shift in the woods. Full of secrets, Oliver longs to keep them buried while Nora is desperate to find out answers.  

Prepare yourself for a journey through bloodthirsty forest in this story of star-crossed lovers, a traitorous decision, and a rescue that betrays her family. Leelo has spent her entire life living on Endla, but there are parts of life she struggles to come to terms with. With the potential of exile for her brother and the condemnation to a poisonous lake or a bloodthirsty forest for outsiders, Leelo knows the order of life, but when she sees an outsider on the verge of drowning, she makes a decision that changes everything.  

Creepy woods are often the stuff of fairytales, and Albert’s forthcoming debut gives us a doozy: the titular Hazel Wood surrounds the estate of reclusive author Althea Prosperpine, who retreated behind its sheltering boughs after the publication of a book of fairytales that became a cult sensation — but may also have opened a door into another, more dangerous world. The novel follows the story of Althea’s granddaughter Alice, who has been obsessed with reading her grandmother’s stories (impossibly difficult to obtain despite their infamy) for as long as her mother has forbidden her from reading them. When Alice’s mother goes missing, the only clue to her fate a scrawled note telling her to stay away from the Hazel Wood, the girl finally has a chance to explore her family history. What she finds there, deep in the woods, is far more fantastical and deadly than she ever imagined. 

Laced with magical realism, House of Hollow is the dark, haunting tale of three sisters shrouded in more mystery than they can even imagine. Since their strange, unsolved disappearance as children a decade before, the Hollow sisters have been plagued by the unexplainable. Lyrical prose and atmospheric world-building complete this eerie novel that will leave readers unsettled in the best way possible. 

Power’s debut is a dark, razor-sharp thriller set in an island boarding school beset by a gruesome plague. With elements of body horror, slow-burn love story, and dystopian, a previous B&N YA Book Club pick, Wilder Girls will keep readers from putting down the book as the girls try to survive a deadly plague. A wild and dangerous forest resides outside the fence, and the girls don’t dare adventure out, but when one girl goes missing, there’s no adventure too dangerous to try to find her.  

Everyone knows Holly Black writes unputdownable books, and The Darkest Part of the Forest is one we simply had to include on this list. When a girl, Hazel, makes a sacrifice to a faerie king, it changes her world forever. Growing up telling stories about the boy in the glass coffin with her brother, Hazel puts aside those stories knowing the boy will never wake. Except, he does, and Hazel must become the knight she used to pretend to be with her brother.  

Set in the same world as Emily Lloyd-Jones’ The Bone Houses, The Drowned Woods is an evocative dark fairy tale-like fantasy with roots in Welsh mythology that readers won’t want to miss. Oh, and did we mention that one of the best characters is a corgi? 

Horror-fantasy at its finest, Small Favors is a haunting small-town monster mystery complete with a heart-pounding forbidden romance. Atmospheric, unsettling and completely engrossing, this fresh spin on the tale of Rumpelstiltskin uncovers the evil that can sometimes lurk within the people we trust the most. We obviously have a thing for forest-y books because this was another one of our previous YA Book Club picks, and we can’t rave about it enough!

Hollow’s End has long been a place of magic and mystery, drawing visitors from all over with its miracle crops and livestock. However, when a deadly blight poisons the crops and eventually the people of Hollow’s End, it’s up to Wren and her ex-boyfriend to uncover what is causing the deadly infection and how to stop it before it claims them, too. This spine-tingling debut was one of our 2022 Children’s and YA Book Award Finalists and is perfect for fans of genre-bending thrillers like The Grace Year.