What to Read Next if You Loved We Were Liars

Charm & Strange, by Stephanie Kuehn
Andrew Winston Winters is a tennis star and boarding-school loner, simmering with barely repressed rage and haunting memories. Something murderous is stalking the woods near his school, and over the course of one long night, as kids sneak out despite the danger and a new girl tries to break through his defenses, Andrew recalls a terrible childhood summer in alternating flashback chapters, and attempts to claim a dark supernatural legacy he believes is his due. Kuehn’s writing is bracingly beautiful, lush without an ounce of extra fat, and Andrew’s story unwinds with perfectly paced detonations that will surprise you even if you think you know what’s coming next.

Belzhar, by Meg Wolitzer
A year after the death of her boyfriend, Reeve, Jam Gallahue remains so inconsolable so her parents pack her off to the Wooden Barn, a boarding school for highly sensitive, highly damaged kids. Alongside four other students, she’s selected to attend Special Topics in English, a class run like a club by the resident black-sheep teacher. Each of the kids has a sad story to tell, and each receives a notebook to write it in. But the notebooks hold a strange, unexplained magic, that allows them to relive the happy days, weeks, or hours before the tragedies that changed their lives. As Jam revisits all that she’s lost, the secrets and painful realities behind what really landed her and her new friends at the Wooden Barn are revealed.

There Will Be Lies, by Nick Lake
Shelby lives a small, strange life with her mother in Arizona. Just how small and how strange comes clear in a series of small reveals—but when Shelby’s hit by a truck, that life implodes. While she’s waiting for an ambulance to arrive, a coyote approaches her, and they form a psychic bond. After that point, her life is split in two: there’s her earthly reality, in which she and her mom set off on an abrupt and desperate road trip, and the Dreaming, a surreal place she falls into when she sleeps, where the coyote urges her on a mission of discovery that will dismantle everything she thought was true.

Imaginary Girls, by Nova Ren Suma
When Chloe discovers the dead body of a classmate, London, floating in her small town’s reservoir, she’s so traumatized she flees, leaving the older sister who raised her behind. And when she finally returns, her sister, Ruby, is determined not to lose her again. But the power that beautiful, charismatic Ruby has over the town reveals itself to be something more sinister after Chloe’s spent some time out of her orbit. And when she sees London again, alive and well, she starts to fathom the true nature of her sister’s abilities. This delicately paranormal tale is drenched in eerie atmosphere, and will tick around inside your brain for weeks after reading.

Vanishing Girls, by Lauren Oliver
Would you kill me if I recommended two books that aren’t out yet? I’ll start with the latest YA novel from the indispensable Oliver, out in March. Nick and Dara are sisters who define themselves by their differences: Nick’s the responsible one, whose achievements are taken for granted, and Dara’s the wild pretty one, whose failures are treated as equally unsurprising. Their bone-deep bond is tested by their opposing roles…then broken on the night a car crash leaves Nick shaken and Dara permanently scarred. As the two spend a long, boiling summer alternately chasing and avoiding each other (and the boy they’re both in love with), a young girl’s disappearance rocks their town, and Nick starts to uncover dangerous secrets about her baby sister’s life. It’s all leading to the kind of explosive ending that will have you closing the book and starting right over from page one.

Damage Done, by Amanda Panitch
And here’s a book I haven’t gotten my hands on just yet, despite all my sacrifices to the book gods. In Damage Done, 22 minutes of lost time separate Julia Vann from Lucy Black, the identity Julia is given after she wakes up to find her life transformed. Her twin brother is gone, she’s enrolled at a new school (with a brand-new love interest), and the police seem to believe her when she tells them she can’t remember anything…whether or not it’s actually true. Only 6 more months till it’s finally here! O_O