Teens, I’m curious. What are your thoughts on yelling at books? Maybe I need to provide more context. Lately, I’ve gotten back into reading Young Adult (YA) thrillers, a genre that never fails to lure me in and rile me up. I don’t know if I love to hate them, or hate to love them, or just simply love them, but what can I say? I periodically pick one off the shelf and next thing you know, my booklight battery is drained and my voice is hoarse.
I started yelling at Jessica Goodman’s “The Meadowbrook Murders” on page 29. I yelled again on page 60…and 61…and then I lost count. Okay, so I’m actually yelling at the characters in the book, but still, an outsider would only observe a lady screaming at a book. The outsider would be too polite to say anything, but of course, they would be unnerved.
Meadowbrook is a private boarding high school for the kids of the ultra-rich. Roommates and best friends Amy and Sarah arrive to their Senior year elated to decorate their dorm room and have the whole campus to themselves for Senior week…and the partying that comes along with it. Things turn dark when Amy wakes up to a grisly scene…Sarah and her boyfriend slain in their shared suite.
What follows is a twisty, turn-y ride filled with alternating narrators and false leads and secrets and unexpected alliances and all the things that make a person want to yell at a book (like characters who do things anyone in their right mind who has an omniscient perspective would never do). If you need to scream, consider checking it out.
I offer “Six Truths and a Lie” by Ream Shukairy—voted one of the 2025 Young Adult Library Services Association’s “Teens’ Top Ten” by real-live teen readers—as another YA thriller against which you may wish to rail. It’s Fourth of July and the Muslim Students’ Association is hosting an Inter-school Independence Day Beach Bonfire Spectacular. When an oil rig explodes off the adjacent Los Angeles Coast, six Muslim teenagers are taken into custody as suspected terrorists. Each is keeping a personal secret, but did any of them play a role in the fatal blast? And will they turn on each other to protect themselves? This book may have you considering if the United States’ promise of “…and justice for all” applies as emphatically to all of her citizens.
Finally, a book that’s on my to-be-read list… “Unhallowed Halls” by Lili Wilkinson. Since I haven’t read it yet, I am unable to issue my “yell” guarantee, but we’re dealing with another boarding school with dangerous secrets here. Elements of magic, dark academia, secret societies and more come together in an alchemy that promises to keep us turning pages way past our bedtimes. If you read it, come let me know if I should yell at it.
All of these titles (and more!) can be found in the “New Book” area of the Teen Underground at A.K. Smiley Public Library…they’re waiting for you! I promise I won’t even look twice if I see you berating one.
Kristina Naftzger is a Youth Services Librarian at A.K. Smiley Public Library, where she sometimes mysteriously loses her voice.