The most recommended young adult mystery books

I’m a sucker for a vigilante story. I’ve watched just about all of the Batman and Robin Hood adaptations.

Add superpowers and a war between angels and demons beyond the veil of mortal sight, and I’m hooked. That’s exactly what I was with Cloak of the Light.

I devoured this book and immediately ordered and finished the rest of the series. Chuck Black knows how to weave a good story, and this one does a fantastic job of intersecting two stories from vastly different points of view. This book came to me at a time when I needed encouragement, and it gave me just that. I can’t remember reading a series so quickly, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This book will have you rooting for the main character and thinking about how easily we can fall prey to the influence of evil in our world.  

Over the Moon is a book that is lush with description and fantastical ideas. While reading, I could see, smell, taste, and hear every tiny detail of Lloyd’s beautifully drawn world through her poetic language as if I were standing right inside it. What is even more impressive is that through all her worldbuilding, at no point does Lloyd’s character or thematic development become lost. This book is a story of hope and of bravery with a character whose resilience and determination shine like the moon.

A lot of people know George Pelecanos from his work as a TV writer, but long before he contributed to The Wire and The Deuce, he was turning out great mysteries, most of them set in his hometown of Washington, D.C. These are smart, sociological thrillers that teach you a lot about life on the city's mean streets. What sets books like King Suckerman apart for me is how much they teach you about the way popular music—heard from car radios, boom boxes, and record store systems—defines people's lives. For me, one of the book's many highlights is a fierce exchange between a guy who, based on Jimi Hendrix's funky playing in Band of Gypsys thinks the guitarist should be filed under soul rather than rock because that was the direction he was going and a friend who responds, "What you think you are, man, the Amazing Kreskin... gonna… show more.

I love mysteries with a sensitive protagonist who sees what no one else sees and cares enough to get at the truth when everyone else has dismissed it. Penelope Marin is dealing with grief by collecting trinkets. When she recognizes a trinket in a market stall that had belonged to a murdered young woman, she becomes obsessed with finding out the truth of what happened to her, even though it means putting herself into dangerous situations. Penelope (“Lo”) is brave and determined and doesn’t let anyone else’s disbelief stop her from caring about a murdered woman whom no one else cares about and has written off as unsolved. This is the kind of story that always has me riveted.

I’m going even further back with this one. Unusual pick certainly, a YA novel from 1989 that I stole off my sister’s shelf circa 1994.

I was ten and ready for something darker than The Baby-Sitters Club. This was one of those early reads that made me want to write in the first place. The first real suspense book that had me staying up late, wondering how does one create a story like this? I still have that book, tattered and sitting on my shelf as a reminder of that first spark.

Christopher Pike is able to write stories to young readers in a timeless way. The nostalgia and sheer thrill from this story about a young woman who finds herself dead after falling four stories will bring you back to nights with covers over your head. Did she jump or was something more sinister behind her death? Only her… show more.

This book is a complex mystery revolving around a boy accused of a terrible crime, a boy who is currently unable to speak. It is solvable, as the protagonist is the detective character, though not every detail may be known until the explanation. What I love about this book are the difficult issues handled well for young readers, the excellent friendship between the protagonist and his sister, and the wisdom about interpersonal relationships and emotions that carries this novel into depths not usually seen in a young reader’s mystery. One observation about shame and anger continues to ring in my mind, reminding me that emotions seen on the surface often have deeper roots.

This book again gives us an outsider’s perspective on the great detective, this time from the perspective of his underestimated younger sister.

Adrift in a detailed, exciting, and often horrifying Victorian London, Enola must not only search for her missing mother - and the titular missing marques - but also avoid the constraining, dangerous “help” offered by her well-meaning but obliviously sexist older brothers.

To do so, she learns how to turn seeming weaknesses into strengths, in entertaining and often very relatable ways. And I feel compelled to say that while the movie is fine, the book is much better.

My daughter loves the Scarlet and Ivy books and has been reading her way through them all year. They are mysteries set in a sinister boarding school. She says she likes them because the story is exciting, and it makes you want to keep reading it.

She even dressed up as Ivy for World Book Day this year!

I’m amazed that more people aren’t talking about this book. It falls in line with the vampire romance genre so effortlessly, and yet it is egregiously overlooked. I remember reading it years ago when I was a teenager and being totally entranced. There’s this beautiful lilt to the writing, and the plot is so richly complex. It deals with the subject of immortality in such an interesting way, comparing the endless life of this vampire to the swiftly expiring life of this girl’s mother. The romance itself is actually refreshing as well. There’s this soft, sweet gallantry that you don’t see a lot in modern work, in my opinion.

From the get-go the reader is introduced to Lauren Fielding, a teenager living with a condition that makes her believe everything she is told. When the opportunity for her to surgically correct this comes up, she takes it and sets much of the plot in motion. What I love is the narrative style; a set of journal entries, scenes, and supporting materials which serve to present the events as Lauren and the people around her see it. This is a classic coming-of-age speculative fiction story with sprinkles of a possibly unreliable narrator, leaving the reader to follow along with the events and create their own conclusions about what is happening. Laura and the pacing her story provides are both memorable and noteworthy.