I Am Her Revenge Author Meredith Moore Shares 5 Favorite YA Thrillers

There’s nothing quite like the pulse-pounding caused by a truly great high-stakes, high-tension thriller. Whether it’s messing with your mind, messing with your heart, or messing with your insides, there’s no ignoring that sometimes, it’s just fun to be turned upside-down, confused to death, and just a little bit scared to turn off the lights that night. Meredith Moore knows this well; after all, she’s the author of the new YA thriller I Am Her Revenge, which brings cold, calculating Vivian to a dark, creepy, atmospheric boarding school in order to exact revenge on her mother’s behalf. But there’s so much Vivian doesn’t know about what lies ahead, what she’s doing, and why, or, perhaps most important of all, who she truly is out of her mother’s terrifying shadow. With nonstop twists under creepy cover of darkness, enigmatic Vivian and the mysteries of her journey are definitely not for the faint of heart. To bolster your thriller to-read list along with Moore’s debut, here’s the author to share five of her personal YA thriller favorites.
I’ve always been drawn to thrillers, to plots of mystery and suspense that keep a reader on the edge of her seat. So when I wrote I Am Her Revenge, I had plenty of wonderful YA examples. Here are a few of my favorites:

The Sally Lockhart series, by Phillip Pullman
Starting with The Ruby in the Smoke, these three books (and a fourth companion novel) follow Sally Lockhart as she navigates Victorian London. She’s orphaned at sixteen when her father dies, and once she receives a note warning her to “beware the seven blessings,” she embarks on an adventure to solve his murder and figure out what the seven blessings are. I devoured these books when I was about twelve, falling in love with the Dickensian cast of characters and the female accountant heroine who takes on the world.

We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart
Lockhart creates a tightly woven narrative about a girl, her family’s island, and a troupe of lying cousins. This is one of those books you shouldn’t know anything about before you start reading, so I won’t summarize it here, except to say the threat is mainly psychological, and Lockhart does a fabulous job of building tension in each scene. That tension leads to a twist ending that will blow you away.

Far From You, by Tess Sharpe
Sophie is a recovering prescription pill addict who witnesses the murder of her best friend/crush Mina. No one but her bounty-hunting aunt believes that Sophie hasn’t fallen off the wagon, and so she has to try to find Mina’s killer on her own. The story is told in a nonlinear fashion, which adds even more to the mystery and tension surrounding Mina’s death. This is a book that sticks with you long after you put it down.

Conversion, by Katherine Howe
Colleen is working hard to graduate as valedictorian of her competitive Catholic girls’ school when several of the students begin exhibiting strange symptoms—like seizures and vomiting pins—of a mysterious, seemingly contagious illness. Colleen, working on a project about the witch trials in her hometown in the seventeenth century, thinks there may be a connection between the two. This story is dark and thought-provoking and utterly absorbing.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
I know classifying classic literature as YA often irks people, but Jane deals with the same struggle YA protagonists traditionally struggle with: growing up and finding your place in the world. Jane, an unloved orphan, travels to Thornfield Hall to take care of the illegitimate daughter of Mr. Rochester. When she falls for Rochester, she begins to uncover the secrets and threats that fill her new home. It doesn’t get much more gothic and atmospheric than this. I grew up on Brontë novels, and I couldn’t help but set I Am Her Revenge out on the Yorkshire moors where the sisters lived and wrote.
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