Death Is Not the End: 5 YA Novels About the Afterlife

The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall, by Katie Alender
When Delia inherits a house from her aunt, she doesn’t know the house used to be an insane asylum…or that it’s haunted. But something darker lurks in Hysteria Hall than just the ghosts of troubled girls, and when Delia gets unexpectedly trapped in the house, she’s forced to figure out what it is and how to stop it, or her family’s lives might be at stake. As if that wasn’t hard enough, all she has got to help her are some crazy, strong-willed ghosts and guarded warnings from the creeped-out locals. Will that be enough?

Elsewhere, by Gabrielle Zevin
Elsewhere is nice, peaceful, and so, so close to feeling like Earth…except that everyone there is dead. And getting younger. When 15-year-old Liz is killed in a hit and run accident, she winds up in Elsewhere, where she learns she’ll age backwards until she turns into a baby again and gets sent back to Earth to another life. But that’s not really satisfying for Liz, who’s not ready to be done with her old life. How is she supposed to adjust to her new life in Elsewhere when she’s worried about her family and friends back on Earth? When she’s stuck with a grandmother she’s only just met for the first time? Heartbreaking and funny, Elsewhere is an interesting, moving take on what happens after.

It’s a Wonderful Death, by Sarah J. Schmitt
RJ is used to the privileges that come with being on top of the social ladder, but it turns out the afterlife might not be quite as accommodating as she’s used to. After getting accidentally collected by a Grim Reaper, RJ is given a choice: wait in limbo until her originally intended death date, or try to fix her life and earn her way back to the land of the living. But when changing her life choices turns RJ from a princess to a pariah, she starts to think that maybe life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Full of snark and a feisty main character, this is a funny-dark read you shouldn’t miss.

Anna Dressed in Blood, by Kendare Blake
Like his father before him, Cas kills ghosts. And now he’s on a mission to kill a particularly nasty ghost named Anna, who murders anyone who sets foot in the house she has haunted for the past 60 years. Except she doesn’t kill Cas, even though she could have. Thus begins Cas’s quest to figure out how to free Anna from her curse without destroying her forever. With the help of his witchy mother, their spirit-sensing cat, and the most popular girl in town, Cas might figure it out…or die trying.

The Catastrophic History of You and Me, by Jess Rothenberg
Brie thinks Jacob is the love of her life, so when he breaks up with her, it literally kills her. But before Brie can get to the afterlife proper, she has to move through the five stages of grief—something that’s proving a little difficult while she’s revisiting her old friends and family and watching them fall apart around her. Luckily, she has Patrick, her handy, bomber-jacket-wearing guide to the afterlife, to help her through. But if there’s one thing being dead is teaching Brie, it’s that things are usually more complicated than they seem—even heartbreak.