Dark and Beautiful: Young Adult Gothic Fiction

If you've enjoyed our previous posts on gothic horror and gothic romance, you already know gothic fiction began with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto in 1764. In the centuries since that dark, atmospheric novel, gothic fiction has flourished and expanded into different subgenres. The overarching genre is generaly defined by a focus on bleak, creepy, and unsettling settings and characters. 

Rooted in the traditions set forth by Edgar Allan Poe, Ann Radcliffe, and Bram Stoker, young adult gothic fiction features tales of terror and romance aimed at a teen audience. Novels such as Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Bram Stoker’s Dracula have always had their fair share of young fans; however, young adult gothic fiction often features more contemporary dialogue, characters, and settings meant to specifically appeal to modern teens. After all, adolescence is a terrifying time with many teens witnessing a sort of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde transformation within themselves or their friends.

Here, we’ve gathered 15 young adult gothic fiction novels featuring tales of terror and romance! (Summaries adapted from the publishers.)

Young Adult Gothic Fiction Novels

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Between #1) by April Genevieve Tucholke

You stop fearing the devil when you’re holding his hand… Nothing much exciting rolls through Violet White’s sleepy, seaside town… until River West comes along. River rents the guest house behind Violet’s crumbling estate and as eerie, grim things start to happen, Violet begins to wonder about the boy living in her backyard. Is River just a crooked-smiling liar with pretty eyes and a mysterious past? Or could he be something more?

Violet’s grandmother always warned her about the Devil, but she never said he could be a dark-haired boy who takes naps in the sun, likes coffee, kisses you in a cemetery, and makes you want to kiss back. Violet’s already so knee-deep in love, she can’t see straight. And that’s just how River likes it…

Forbidden by Eve Bunting

Recommended by Anne Rouyer

Newly-orphaned 16-year-old Josie is sent to live with her aunt and uncle in a small town located on the isolated, stormy coast of northwest Scotland. With the locals and her relatives as cold and hostile as the sea, Josie is all alone until she meets Eli.
The mysterious, kind, handsome stranger brings love and desire into Josie’s life; even after she’s told Eli is forbidden, she can’t stop thinking about him. Between her relatives, the town and Eli, everyone in Josie's life is harboring secrets and she is determined to ferret them out!
 

Beware the Wild (Beware the Wild #1) by Natalie C. Parker

It’s an oppressively hot and sticky morning in June when Sterling and her brother, Phin, have an argument that compels him to run into the town swamp—the one that strikes fear in all the residents of Sticks, Louisiana. Phin doesn't return. Instead, a girl named Lenora May climbs out, and Sterling is the only person in Sticks who remembers her brother ever existed.

Sterling needs to figure out what the swamp has done with her beloved brother and how Lenora May is connected to his disappearance. Loner boy Heath Durham might be the only one who can help her.
 

White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick

Sixteen-year-old Rebecca moves with her father from London to a small, seaside village, where she befriends another motherless girl. Together, they spend the summer exploring the village's sinister history.

Masque of the Red Death (Masque of the Red Death #1) by Bethany Griffin

In this twist on Edgar Allen Poe's gothic short story, a wealthy teenage girl—who can afford a special mask to protect her from the plague that decimated humanity in the mid-1800s—falls in love, becomes caught up in a conspiracy to overthrow an oppressive government, and faces the threat of a new plague.

The Dead of Winter by Chris Priestly

Michael's parents are dead and he imagines that he will stay with the kindly lawyer, the executor of his parents' will… until Michael is invited to spend Christmas with his guardian in a large and desolate country house. His arrival on the first night suggests something is not quite right—he sees a woman out in the frozen mists, standing alone in the marshes.
But little can prepare Michael for the solitude of the house, as he is kept from his guardian and finds himself spending the Christmas holiday wandering the silent corridors of the house, seeking distraction.

But lonely doesn't mean alone, as Michael soon realizes the house and its grounds harbor many secrets, dead and alive, and Michael is set to the task of unraveling some of the darkest secrets of all.

Toward a Secret Sky by Heather Maclean

Recommended by Anne Rouyer

Maren has always been good at cracking codes and solving riddles, but when she’s sent to Scotland to live with relatives following her mother’s death, she inherits a mysterious journal full of codes she’s not sure she can unravel.
The more Maren reads the journal, the more vivid her nightmares become and the more she is drawn to the mysterious and gorgeous Gavin—who just might be the key to everything, including what happened to her mother.
 

Compulsion (Heirs of Watson Island #1) by Martina Boone

All her life, Barrie Watson has been a virtual prisoner in the house where she lives with her shut-in mother. When her mother dies, Barrie promises to put some mileage on her stiletto heels. But she finds a new kind of prison at her aunt’s South Carolina plantation instead—a prison guarded by an ancient spirit who long ago cursed one of the three founding families of Watson Island and gave others magical gifts that became compulsions.

Stuck with the ghosts of a generations-old feud and hunted by forces she cannot see, Barrie must find a way to break free of the family legacy. With the help of sun-kissed Eight Beaufort, who knows what Barrie wants before she knows herself, the last Watson heir starts to unravel her family's twisted secrets. What she finds is dangerous: a love she never expected, a river that turns to fire at midnight, a gorgeous cousin who isn't what she seems, and very real enemies who want both Eight and Barrie dead.
 

Anna Dressed in Blood (Anna #1) by Kendare Blake

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead. So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. Anna's ghost still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958, once white, and now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home. Yet she spares Cas's life.
 

Mistwalker by Saundra Mitchell

When Willa Dixon’s brother dies on the family lobster boat, her father forbids Willa from stepping foot on the deck again. With her family suffering, she’ll do anything to help out—even visiting the Grey Man.

Everyone in Willa's small Maine town knows of this legendary spirit who haunts the lighthouse, controlling the fog and the fate of any vessel within his reach. But what Willa finds in the lighthouse isn’t a spirit at all, but a young man trapped inside until he collects 1,000 souls. Desperate to escape his cursed existence, Grey tries to seduce Willa to take his place. With her life on land in shambles, will she sacrifice herself?
 

The Dark Between by Sonia Gensler

At the turn of the twentieth century, Spiritualism and séances are all the rage—even in the scholarly town of Cambridge, England. While mediums dupe the grief-stricken, a group of local fringe scientists seeks to bridge the gap to the spirit world by investigating the dark corners of the human mind.

Each running from a shadowed past, Kate, Asher, and Elsie take refuge within the walls of Summerfield College. But their peace is soon shattered by the discovery of a dead body nearby. Is this the work of a flesh-and-blood villain or is something otherworldly at play? This unlikely trio must illuminate what the scientists have not, and open a window to secrets taken to the grave—or risk joining the spirit world themselves.
 

The Hallowed Ones (The Hallowed Ones #1) by Laura Bickle

Katie is on the verge of her rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers can get a taste of the real world. But the real world comes to her in this dystopian tale with a philosophical bent.
Rumors of massive unrest on the “Outside” abound. Something murderous is out there. Amish elders make a rule: No one goes outside, and no outsiders come in. But when Katie finds a gravely injured young man, she can’t leave him to die. She smuggles him into her family’s barn—at what cost to her community?
 

House of Furies (House of Furies #1) by Madeleine Roux

After escaping a harsh school where punishment was the lesson of the day, 17-year-old Louisa Ditton is thrilled to find employment as a maid at a boarding house. But soon after her arrival at Coldthistle House, Louisa begins to realize the house's mysterious owner, Mr. Morningside, is providing much more than lodging for his guests.

Far from a place of rest, the house is a place of judgment, and Mr. Morningside and his unusual staff are meant to execute their own justice on those who are past being saved. Louisa begins to fear for a young man named Lee who is not like the other guests; he is charismatic and kind, and Louisa knows it may be up to her to save him from an untimely judgment. But in this house of distortions and lies, how can Louisa be sure whom to trust?
 

The King of Bones and Ashes (Witches of New Orleans #1) by J.D. Horn

Magic is seeping out of the world, leaving the witches who've relied on it for countless centuries increasingly hopeless. While some see an inevitable end of their era, others are courting madness, willing to sacrifice former allies, friends, and family to retain the power they covet.
While other witches watch their reality unravel, young Alice Marin is using magic's waning days to delve into the mystery of numerous disappearances in the occult circles of New Orleans. Alice disappeared once, too, caged in an asylum by blood relatives.

Recently freed, she fears her family may be more involved with the growing crisis than she ever dared imagine. Yet, the more she seeks the truth about her family's troubled history, the more she realizes her already-fragile psyche may be at risk. Discovering the cause of the vanishings could be the only way to escape her mother's reach while determining the future of all witches.
 

Through the Woods: Stories by Emily Carroll

Five mysterious, spine-tingling stories follow journeys into (and out of?) the eerie abyss. These chilling tales spring from the macabre imagination of acclaimed and award-winning comic creator, Emily Carroll.

Come take a walk in the woods and see what awaits you there…