13 Queer Thrillers and Mystery Novels You Should Be Reading

For fans of middle grade mystery, friendship, and baking competitions!

Laila and Lucy have been best friends since kindergarten so they’re naturally upset to find out that because of their home addresses, they’ll now be going to different schools for eighth grade. Laila thinks the prize of a scholarship to boarding school at a cookie competition will solve their problems, so she enters. Awesome plan! Except, Laila finds herself on a suspect list after a judge gets ill after eating her food, and a storm cuts them off from communication. Now she has to clear her name in order to still have a chance to win!

For fans of sisters, missing person cases, influencer/child social media stars, and family drama!

Hazel Davis was 10 years old when her younger sister, Evie, was born into a family that was blogged about by their mom. When a video of Evie dancing with her dad hours before he died went viral, the family (mostly Evie managed by her mom) became social media famous. That’s how Evie, who is now 18, grew up to use all the followers she had to become an influencer. When one of her social media videos cuts abruptly and she disappears, her sister Hazel is left to wonder what happened to Evie, forcing her to face her fraught relationship with their mom.

Told mostly from Hazel’s perspective with some chapters by Evie, the novel explores what it’s like to be a child whose entire life is documented for strangers online—something I suspect we’re going to see a lot more of now that many of the kids who spent their childhoods this way are becoming adults. My favorite part was the very end, which, unfortunately, I can’t talk about.

I read an egalley because I didn’t have access to the audiobook, but I saw that it has a full cast of narrators if that’s the kind of production you enjoy!

(TW diet culture, mentions eating disorder/ recounts statutory relationship over internet that is never in person)