Best Young Adult Novels

When Eli is forced to enroll at Blackwood Academy, he thinks it is just another remote boarding school. But on his first night, he realizes the terrifying truth. This school is a prison. Trapped in endless, deadly time loops, students are forced to complete cruel, supernatural trials. Ghosts, cursed hallways, hidden rules, and unspeakable creatures hunt them after dark. The only way to stay alive is to solve mysteries, earn credits, and obey the academy's twisted commands. No one remembers how they arrived. No one has ever graduated. No one leaves alive. Eli must team up with other desperate students to uncover the academy's century-old secret. If they fail, they will be trapped in the nightmare forever. At Blackwood Academy, survival is the only exam.

The ninety-ninth time Jax Little broke my heart was the last time. We were the golden couple of Northgate High, our future perfectly mapped out for UCLA. But in our senior year, he fell for a new girl, Catalina, and our love story became a sick, exhausting dance of his betrayals and my empty threats to leave. At a graduation party, Catalina "accidentally" pulled me into the pool with her. Jax dove in without a second's hesitation. He swam right past me as I struggled, wrapped his arms around Catalina, and pulled her to safety. As he helped her out to the cheers of his friends, he glanced back at me, my body shivering and my mascara running in black rivers. "Your life isn't my problem anymore," he said, his voice as cold as the water I was drowning in. That night, something inside me finally shattered. I went home, opened my laptop, and clicked the button that confirmed my admission. Not to UCLA with him, but to NYU, an entire country away.

A suggestive iMessage on the family iPad was the first crack in my perfect life. I thought my teenage son was in trouble, but anonymous Reddit users pointed out the chilling truth. The message wasn't for him. It was for my husband of twenty years, Anthony. The betrayal became a conspiracy when I overheard them talking. They were laughing about his affair with my son's "cool" school counselor. "She's just so... boring, Dad," my son said. "Why don't you just leave Mom and be with her?" My son didn't just know; he was rooting for my replacement. My perfect family was a lie, and I was the punchline. Then, a message from a lawyer on Reddit lit a fire in the wreckage of my heart. "Gather proof. Then burn his entire world to the ground." My fingers were steady as I typed back. "Tell me how."

Yorick Hill is the second son of retired Alpha Warren and Luna Yara. His brother took over the pack two years ago and Yorick finds himself without a place in the pack or world. In an effort to find his way, he applies to the elite Warrior Academy, a highly sought after school that trains warriors into elite fighting machines. Cyra Teymoori is an Alpha female caught in an arranged mate bond. Her father arranged the bond to solidify the alliance between her pack and the pack of her betrothed. She is unhappy about the arranged mate bond and in an effort to delay the inevitable, she applied to the Warrior Academy and was admitted. Neither her father nor her betrothed are happy about her choice, but neither is willing to look away from the prestige that comes from her acceptance. When Yorick enters the Academy, he expects the year to be difficult. What he doesn't expect is to find his mate. At first, he's thrilled, until he finds out that she's expected to accept a chosen mate bond with a neighboring pack. Furious that his mate is being pressured to ignore their fated bond, Yorick tries to convince her that she should accept him. They can leave after they finish the Academy and find jobs together. He will look after her, even if it means accepting a handout from his brother to give her stability. But Cyra is hiding a secret, one that she's unwilling to share with Yorick. What will happen when the secret comes out and the real reason for the alliance bond comes to light? Can Yorick prove to Cyra that he wants her because she was meant to be his?

After her twin brother's unexplained death at Alpha Academy, Alexandria Hyde takes his place and his name to uncover the truth. Now living as "Alex," she's thrown into a world of hot, testosterone-fueled Alphas who fight to the brink of death... and she has to survive it while hiding who she really is. But staying hidden isn't easy– Not when the Alphas start noticing her. Not when the truth she's chasing might destroy her first. And definitely not when they start fighting for her instead.

We have been neighbors our whole lives and were best friends when we were kids. Now he is my bully who claims that I am his to torment. There is only one little problem, I have been in love with him since I was sixteen. For two years, Jace Palmer has tortured me with his cruelty in the halls of our high school, but how do I make him stop when it's those same actions that excite me more than they should. Especially when he slams me against a locker and whispers, "You've been a bad girl, Ella." Now that he's claimed me as his own, he opens my eyes to the darkness within me, turning everything that I have ever known into a thing of the past while helping me to embrace my new role in his life. Only by doing so, it unlocks a piece of me that will change everything. Once my true self comes forward, will he be able to handle the aftermath of his choices?