What to Read After You Watch the New Veronica Mars Show

We’re totally binge-watching Veronica Mars on Hulu right now. After you devour the new season, here are some of our favorite young adult thrillers, mysteries, and crime stories to keep you feeling the Veronica Mars vibe…

via GIPHY

Riley Sager, bestselling author Final Girls, literally called this  book “a little bit Riverdale and a little bit Veronica Mars,” so obviously it makes the list.

The Cheerleaders

The Cheerleaders

By Kara Thomas

Coming 04.02.24

There are no more cheerleaders in the town of Sunnybrook.

First there was the car accident—two girls dead after hitting a tree on a rainy night. Not long after, the murders happened. Monica’s sister was the last cheerleader to die. After her suicide, Sunnybrook High disbanded the cheer squad. No one wanted to be reminded of the girls they’d lost.

That was five years ago. Now the faculty and students at Sunnybrook High want to remember the lost cheerleaders. But for Monica, it’s not that easy. She just wants to forget. Only, Monica’s world is starting to unravel. There are the letters in her stepdad’s desk, an unearthed, years-old cell phone, a strange new friend at school. Whatever happened five years ago isn’t over. Some people in town know more than they’re saying. And somehow, Monica is at the center of it all.

Part thriller, part horror, part survival story, this debut novel is about three best friends living in quarantine at their island boarding school, and the lengths they go to uncover the truth of their confinement when one disappears.

Wilder Girls

Wilder Girls

It’s been eighteen months since the Tox hit, and Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine.

It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don’t dare wander outside the school’s fence. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there’s more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.

In this captivating thriller, a strange signal connects two teens who are determined to figure out how their family tragedies are linked. Is it supernatural? A weird coincidence? Or something else?

Come Find Me

Come Find Me

After surviving an infamous family tragedy, Kennedy Jones has made it her mission to keep her brother’s search through the cosmos alive. But then something disturbs the frequency on his radio telescope—a pattern registering where no signal should transmit.

In a neighboring county, Nolan Chandler is determined to find out what really happened to his brother, who disappeared the day after Nolan had an eerie premonition. There hasn’t been a single lead for two years, until Nolan picks up an odd signal—a pattern coming from his brother’s bedroom.

Drawn together by these strange signals—and their family tragedies—Kennedy and Nolan search for the origin of the mysterious frequency. But the more they uncover, the more they believe that everything’s connected. Is something coming for them? Or is the frequency warning them about something that’s already here?

A small town with big secrets and a history of missing homecoming queens make this New York Times bestseller super fun for mystery-solving fans.

Two Can Keep a Secret

Two Can Keep a Secret

Echo Ridge is small-town America. Ellery’s never been there, but she’s heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen. And only five years ago, a homecoming queen put the town on the map when she was killed. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother she barely knows.

The town is picture-perfect, but it’s hiding secrets. And before school even begins for Ellery, someone has declared open season on homecoming, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. Then, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing.

The longer Ellery’s in Echo Ridge, the clearer it becomes that everyone there is hiding something. The thing is, secrets are dangerous—and most people aren’t good at keeping them. Which is why in Echo Ridge, it’s safest to keep your secrets to yourself.

The father-daughter duo in this heart-wrenching debut novel will give you serious Veronica Mars vibes, with a touch of The Lovely Bones.

The Things She's Seen

The Things She's Seen

Nothing’s been the same for Beth Teller since the day she died.

Her dad is drowning in grief. He’s also the only one who has been able to see and hear her since the accident. But now she’s got a mystery to solve, a mystery that will hopefully remind her detective father that he needs to reconnect with the living.

The case takes them to a remote Australian town, where there’s been a suspicious fire. All that remains are an unidentifiable body and an unreliable witness found wandering nearby. This witness speaks in riddles. Isobel Catching has a story to tell, and it’s a tale to haunt your dreams—but does it even connect to the case at hand?

As Beth and her father unravel the mystery, they find a shocking and heartbreaking story lurking beneath the surface of a small town.

This thriller is set at a secretive boarding school where students are trained as teenage assassins, and a girl who finds herself at the center of it all when a student gets murdered.

Killing November

Killing November

At the international Academy Absconditi, there’s no electricity, no internet, and classes range from knife throwing and poisons to the art of deception. And the students?

All silver-spoon descendants of the world’s most elite strategists—training to become assassins, spies, and master impersonators.

November doesn’t know how an ordinary girl like her fits into the school’s complicated legacy. But when a student is murdered, she’ll need to separate her enemies from her allies before the crime gets pinned on her… or she becomes the killer’s next victim.

The California setting in this mystery-thriller will remind readers of Neptune.

All Unquiet Things

All Unquiet Things

Carly: She was sweet. Smart. Self-destructive. She knew the secrets of Brighton Day School’s most privileged students. Secrets that got her killed.

Neily: Dumped by Carly for a notorious bad boy, Neily didn’t answer the phone call she made before she died. If he had, maybe he could have helped her. Now he can’t get the image of her lifeless body out of his mind.

Audrey: She’s the reason Carly got tangled up with Brighton’s fast crowd in the first place, and now she regrets it—especially since she’s convinced the police have put the wrong person in jail. Audrey thinks the murderer is someone at Brighton, and she wants Neily to help her find out who it is.

As reluctant allies Neily and Audrey dig into their shared past with Carly, her involvement with Brighton’s dark goings-on comes to light. But figuring out how Carly and her killer fit into the twisted drama will force Audrey and Neily to face hard truths about themselves and the girl they couldn’t save.

This dark and romantic tale has a little bit of everything—mystery, magic, and horror— and follows a girl who needs to unravel the curse haunting her family before it takes all of her sisters one by one.

House of Salt and Sorrows

House of Salt and Sorrows

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Once there were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls’ lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last—the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge—and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.

Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that her sister’s deaths were no accidents. The girls have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn’t sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who—or what—are they really dancing with?

When Annaleigh’s involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it’s a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family—before it claims her next. House of Salt and Sorrows is a spellbinding novel filled with magic and the rustle of gossamer skirts down long, dark hallways. Get ready to be swept away

Which one will you read first? Tell us in the comments below!

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