There’s something intoxicating about stories where the line between reality and something more slips just enough to make you question everything. Books where the dead whisper, the air hums with unsaid things and the uncanny becomes ordinary.
Whether you’re drawn to girls with dangerous gifts or towns steeped in secrets, these seven novels all carve their own path through the weird, the wonderful and the wild unknown. One thing’s certain, though, once you start reading, there’s no going back.
The Archived by Victoria Schwab
Imagine a library where the dead are shelved like books. Where the past isn’t gone, but catalogued, guarded and sometimes … it gets loose. Mackenzie Bishop has just taken her grandfather’s place as a Keeper, responsible for stopping Histories from waking and wandering. But the Archives are crumbling. Someone is altering the records. And the boundaries between the world of the living and the dead are starting to fray.
Schwab’s writing is sharp and strange in the best way and Mackenzie’s grief hangs on every page, giving this eerie premise real emotional weight.
The Archived is a quiet storm of a book, beautiful and dangerous and whisper-close to breaking.
The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman
Four families run the town of Four Paths. They’ve always protected it, though no one speaks openly about what exactly they’re protecting it from. When Violet Saunders moves in, reeling from grief and thrown into a place where secrets are currency, she learns the truth: the woods are alive. The Gray is waiting. And everyone in town seems to have something to hide.
With shifting alliances, old powers and a monster that isn’t just metaphorical, The Devouring Gray is rich with legacy, rot and the kind of claustrophobic small-town dread that clings to your skin.
The Secret Girl by Erika Fair
Fallon was never meant to live an ordinary life. Premonitions have followed her for as long as she can remember — fractured glimpses of strangers in danger, moments that demand her interference. She warns them, helps them and watches them walk away, never truly understanding why the visions come or what they want from her. After staggering personal loss, Fallon retreats, clinging to the one friend who’s never left her. But when new visions push their way in, Fallon’s pulled into something she can’t ignore. The raven tattoo on her wrist flares to life. A literal raven starts appearing. And in the background, always watching, is the hint of someone from her past. Someone she may not be ready to face.
Atmospheric and intimate, The Secret Girl digs into the haunting pull of destiny, the price of being “gifted,” and what happens when you stop running.
Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan
A girl who hears the gods. A prince caught between loyalty and blood. A boy raised in the shadows. Wicked Saints throws you into the heart of a holy war where magic is divine. Nadya’s power comes from the gods, but faith gets murkier the deeper she falls into enemy territory. Blood magic stains everything and alliances form not out of trust but necessity. The lines between sinner and saint blur fast in this one and nobody escapes untouched.
This is a brutal, unflinching fantasy that digs deep into belief, identity and how much of yourself you’re willing to sacrifice for a cause.
The Hollow by Jessica Verday
Abbey’s best friend went missing. Now she’s gone for good and nothing makes sense. Not the way everyone wants to move on, not the way her friend’s secrets keep turning up like breadcrumbs and definitely not the strange boy who only appears when Abbey’s alone. Sleepy Hollow is a character, heavy with legend and silence. Grief looms large, but so does obsession. As Abbey falls deeper into unraveling the truth, her world shifts into something darker, sadder and less tethered to reality.
The Hollow is about messy, painful love that lingers.
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
In Scion London, dreamwalkers like Paige Mahoney are hunted. She hides what she is, until she’s caught. But instead of execution, she’s shipped to a hidden city, controlled by an alien race that uses clairvoyants like her as slaves. This novel starts in the fire and pushes deeper! Paige doesn’t trust easily and for good reason. But survival means learning how to navigate a brutal system without losing herself.
The Bone Season blends dystopia, fantasy and the supernatural into something sprawling and entirely its own. It’s a slow-burn rebellion, laced with psychic warfare and stolen futures.
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Blue Sargent has spent her life being told that her kiss will kill her true love, but the Raven Boys — private schoolboys obsessed with finding a long-dead Welsh king — have other things on their mind. Ancient ley lines hum beneath the sleepy town of Henrietta, drawing the boys closer to power and to each other. Blue never planned to get tangled up with them, but once she does, the connection is immediate and irreversible. Stiefvater conjures up characters that are etched with quiet longings, contradictions and haunted ambition.
The Raven Boys wraps magic, friendship, obsession and fate into a story that never stays where you think it will.
