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Bring some spooks and spine-chilling to your spring! WonderCon@Home presented the “Fierce Reads Thrills and Chills in YA” panel on March 27th and gave us a peek into upcoming YA thriller and horror A titles. The panel of authors also shared their writing experiences and relationship to the genre.
Meet The YA Thriller And Horror Authors
Angeline Boulley is an Ojibwe author who debuted this year with Firekeeper’s Daughter. The YA thriller tells the story of an indigenous teen named Daunis Fontaine, who s thrust into a murder investigation after witnessing a shocking murder. While working for law officials, she begins her own investigation to root out the corruption in her community—Daunis chances down criminals with her knowledge of chemistry and traditional medicine.
Goldy Moldavsky is a Jewish Latina horror author born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She debuted with her dark comedy Kill the Boy Band in 2017 and quickly followed with the psychological thriller No Good Deed that same year. In Kill the Boy Band, four superfan friends have the opportunity to meet their beloved boy band, but things don’t quite as planned. Similarly, No Good Deed follows Gregor Maravilla, whose good intentions lead to horrible events. Her newest novel, The Mary Shelley Club, will be released April 13, 2021, and tells the story of a mysterious society of students who are obsessed with horror. The group organizes Fear Tests, elaborate pranks inspired by urban legends and movie tropes, to test each other. Things get out of hand as the Fear Tests escalate.
Rose Szabo is a queer writer who has written numerous short stories about monsters and essays on the intersection of gender, sexuality, and clothes before releasing their debut novel, What Big Teeth, What Big Teeth is a story of Eleanor Zarrin, a teen who has been estranged from her family ever since they sent her to boarding school. After a horrifying incident at school, she runs away, seeking safety at home. She quickly discovers why her family insisted on her staying away. It’s a story of growing pains, self-discovery, family secrets, and werewolves.
Laurie Devore is the author of “angry girl fic.” She debuted in 2017 with the novel How to Break a Boy, the story of Olivia Clayton, who has mastered the art of tearing others down to stay on top. In 2018 she was back with Winner Take All, which explores the themes of obsessive love, toxic competition, and the destructive drive for perfection. Earlier this month, her novel A Better Bad Idea was released. This novel tells the story of Evelyn Peters and her desperation to escape her dying southern town, to protect her younger sister from her mother’s abusive boyfriend, and to connect with someone. She is a girl who must pick between bad choices decides to take a chance with the better bad idea.
The panel was arranged by Fierce Reads and moderated by June Hur, a Korean author who is well-versed in thrills and chills. Her debut novel The Silence of Bones follows the struggles of 16-year-old Seol after she has been tasked with assisting a younger inspector with the investigation of a politically charged murder of a noblewoman. Her next novel, The Forest of Stolen Girls, is scheduled to release April 20th, 2021. In this historical mystery, a teen searches for her father after he vanishes while investigating the disappearance of 13 young women. Her third novel Red Palace is scheduled for next year in January, a historical mystery following 18-year-old Hyeon, who is working as a palace nurse when someone murders four women in a single night.
Walking On The Dark Side
In this panel, the authors shared their experiences with writing and their relationship to the YA thriller and horror. While the writers are all categorized into either horror, thriller, or both, their relationship to the genres and to the monsters, violence, suspense, and fear of each genre varied. For Laurie Devore, her books allow her to explore the darker side of being a teenage girl and the difficult situations they create or that they are thrown into. She feels the heightened sense of reality of her books allow her to explore the difficult situations for women in general; horror and thrillers as a genre have a long, messy relationship with its female characters, so it’s compelling to see women take over and use it to explore trauma, power dynamics, and the experiences faced by women.
For other authors, their childhood relationship with horror and thrillers is what brought them to the genre. For Angeline Boulley, she couldn’t forget the way reading horrors and thrillers left her shaken. She was captivated by stories that could have that effect on you; she loved things not being quite what they seemed. Similarly, Gold Moldavsky loved watching horror movies and expressed that making it through all the tense and frightening moments brought her a sense of relief when it was over; at the end of a scary moment, she knew that she was capable of facing that fear. In the other cases, Rose Szabo grew up scared of everything. Szabo’s fears made their test themself, pushing them to face things they feared until they developed an interest in the genre. They fell in love with monsters, but less as creatures to be feared but as creatures who didn’t belong anywhere in particular.
Regardless of what brought them to the genre, all the authors shared this desire to explore the dark sides of life. But this darkness isn’t meant to leave the reader downcast; on the contrary, it’s meant to refresh the reader. After a heart-pounding YA thriller or horror, the reader should feel refreshed. Or sometimes, after watching a personal struggle and fight to make it to the other side, they are revealed. Or sometimes they meet monsters that capture the feelings they’ve felt but struggled to explain.
Adding Thrills And Chills To Your Bookshelf
You feel your spring and summer need some more danger and fear, check out these authors and their various books! If you’re new to the genre, this panel provides a wide selection of YA thriller and horror novels to pick from. After reading a few, see if you can guess which books were inspired by an empty photo frame, an educational video at the library, a mysterious new student, and a documentary on poverty.