One of my absolute favourite times of the year to read is Halloween. There’s just something so much fun about reading spooky books as the days get shorter and the weather gets cooler. Here are 10 young adult books that are fairly spooky that you should read this Halloween! 

Where He Can’t Find You – Darcy Coates

Abby has grown up in a town haunted by disappearances for decades. People have been going missing and when their bodies are found they’ve been dismembered and sewn back together in unnatural ways by the mysterious ‘Stitcher.’

Abby and her younger sister, Hope, live by a strict set of rules designed to keep them safe – which is why it is such a shock when Abby is taken by the Stitcher. Abby tells the police of her disappearance but they’ve always claimed there’s nothing they can do about the Stitcher.

So, determined to find Hope herself, Abby teams up with her friends and a new girl in town to try to find Hope. And they know exactly where to look first.

The Revelry – Katherine Webber

In the woods outside Ember Grove, the Revelry happens once a year. It’s an exclusive and mysterious party that happens at the end of the school year and no one really knows what happens until you get invited because once you attend, you are sworn to secrecy.

Bitsy Clark knows better than to break the rules around the Revelry, but her best friend, Amy, hasn’t lived in Ember Grove as long as she has, so Bitsy is convinced to sneak into the Revelry without an invitation.

But the day after they sneak in Bitsy feels odd. She remembers going into the woods… and nothing after. And she soon begins to notice that everything in her life starts to go downhill. Has she been cursed?

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me – Jamison Shea

Laure Mesney is a black ballerina who constantly finds herself overlooked for her white counterparts in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet. She is willing to do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage and be just as good as anyone else.

So, to level the playing field, Laure travels deep into the depths of the Paris catacombs where she strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood that promises her influence, adoration, and everything she has ever dreamed of. But as Laure surpasses her peers and begins to descend into madness she realises that she might not actually be the only monster around.

Mina and the Undead – Amy McCaw

Mina has just arrived in New Orleans from England to visit her sister, Libby, for the summer. She loves nothing more than a creepy horror movie so she can’t wait to explore the city’s darkest secrets and local myths. And she’s even lucky enough to get a really cool summer job at a horror movie mansion. 

But the perfect summer is ruined when Mina stumbles across the body of a girl with puncture marks in her neck who is holding a lock of hair that looks just like Libby’s. Someone is recreating New Orleans’ most brutal supernatural killings and Libby is the main suspect.

Say Her Name – Juno Dawson

Bobbie isn’t the type of person to believe in ghosts so when her friends all agree to try to summon Bloody Mary on Halloween at their creepy boarding school she decides to go along with it. So they say ‘Bloody Mary’ 5 times in front of the mirror… and nothing happens. They all laugh it off and forget about it.

Until the next morning, Bobbie finds a message saying ‘5 days’ on her bathroom mirror. It soon becomes clear that they actually did summon Bloody Mary and she won’t stop until they’re all dead. Now Bobbie and her friends must figure out how to stop her before it’s too late.

Five Survive – Holly Jackson

Red and her friends are on a road trip in an RV to Spring Break at the beach. It’s a long journey and the last thing they need is for the RV to break down in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere with no phone signal. When they get out to investigate they realise that this is no accident – all of the tires have been shot out.

There’s a sniper out there watching them in the dark and they know exactly who is in the RV. One of them has a secret that the sniper is willing to kill for. Over 8 hours the group are forced to confess their deepest darkest secrets or be killed for them.

Welcome to Camp Killer – Cynthia Murphy

An American-style residential summer camp is set up in the grounds of an English stately home, and the teenage camp counsellors can’t wait for a summer full of fun activities.

But as soon as the kids arrive, rumours begin to circulate of a tragedy that happened on the grounds and there are sightings of a ghostly presence.

And then the incidents begin. Someone almost drowns in the lake… and someone falls from a cliff and dies…

My Best Friend’s Exorcism – Grady Hendrix

Abby and Gretchen met in fifth grade and have been best friends and completely inseparable ever since. But one day when they’re in high school Gretchen gets lost in the woods and comes out acting differently. She becomes moody and irritable. Strange things begin happening whenever she’s nearby. And as the odd behaviours begin to pile up Abby comes to one conclusion – Gretchen must be possessed by a demon.

Willing to do anything to save her best friend in the world, Abby embarks on a quest to save Gretchen’s life.

And Don’t Look Back – Rebecca Barrow

Harlow has spent her entire life on the run with her mother but she’s never known why and she’s not really been allowed to ask. She just knows that sometimes her mother rushes home, they flee in the middle of the night and move to a distant town where they get new identities.

But one day when they’re fleeing in the middle of the night they get into an accident and Harlow’s mother ends up dying. Her final words tell Harlow of a safety deposit box she didn’t know about and warn her to never stop running. In the safety deposit box Harlow finds the deed to a house in a small town and must decide whether to keep running or try to figure out what her mother was running from.

Dark and Shallow Lies – Ginny Myers Sain

Grey spends every summer in a small town deep in the bayou, the self-proclaimed Psychic Capital of the World. Six months ago, Grey’s best friend, Elora, disappeared there.

No one has any information about what happened to her, but in a town full of psychics Grey finds it difficult to imagine that no one knows anything about what happened. And she soon begins to suspect that everybody is hiding something.

But then a mysterious stranger emerges from the bayou claiming to have links to Elora. Grey begins to suspect that the town has far more secrets than she could ever imagine.