Among top results for the term, Infobloom describes it as an alternate term for horror, but this ignores a widely and commonly agreed upon use for the term that is much broader. Crime Reads argues that the core trait of a dark fiction story is a sense of dread. In a Book Riot post about dark romance, Jessica Avery describes the genre as “a catalog of our deepest fears.” This gets even murkier when you start exploring titles marked as “dark young adult fiction.” Much of YA dark fiction is recently in the fantasy genre, and while the motifs are perhaps edging into dark motifs, I’d hardly call them scary. Personally I’d take the latter part of Infobloom’s description on its own: dark fiction is a label for books “concerned with fear, death, and the sinister side of human nature.”
Dark Themes for Young Adults
There is often great debate about what is appropriate for teen readers to consume. Do dark themes belong in young adult fiction? Some worry about the potential negative effects. And yet. The teen years are a time for reckoning with the darkness within society, others, and even ourselves — it’s part of growing up, and dark YA books that address these themes can help teens navigate through them. Facing this darkness within books help teens to navigate life’s complexities, learn how to empathize with those different from themselves, and face life’s more frightening aspects without any real danger. “If subjects like these are in YA books, it’s to show that they are real, they have happened to others, and they can be survived. For teenagers, there is sometimes no message more critical than: you are not alone. This has happened before. The feeling that you are feeling, the thing you are going through – it is a known thing,” wrote young adult author Maureen Johnson for The Guardian. But regardless of whether adults see value in teens reading dark YA books or not, teens themselves certainly seem to. Dark fiction (especially, recently, dark fantasy) has continued to trend and sell well within young adult fiction. Perhaps there is even something uniquely suited to this phase of growing up, when a person is discovering the horrors of humanity and the things we take of taboo, within a coming-of-age story. What does dark fiction look like in young adult literature? Let’s explore some dark angsty teen fiction.
Dark Literary YA Classics
The concept of “young adult” as a separate audience for literature might be relatively new (emerging with the release of S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders in 1967), but great literature has been written within this genre for much longer.
Modern Dark YA Books
In the decades since young adult fiction as become more widely recognized and boomed, dark themes have pervaded into every genre. Cynicism? Check. Underage drinking and smoking? Check. Mental health issues? Check. Yep, this is one of the early dark YA books. After a set of adolescent boys are the only survivors of a plane crash and lost on an abandoned island, the mood turns quickly from celebration of their newfound freedom, to establishing an order, then descends into chaos and violence. Trinity High School is unofficially run by the Vigils, a group of students who bully the others with “tasks” they demand students complete, each intended to create great psychological harm. As the school’s annual chocolate bar fundraiser begins, the Vigils set their sights on Jerry, the new kid. With the years since revealing more shooters and not much in the way of scapegoats, it’s lost some poignance with age, but the satirical edge of the story is sharp, and it’s certainly dark. This story turns the tropes of “sick lit” on its head when Alice executes her entire f-it list only to survive her leukemia and have to face the consequences of her extensive revenges. And then there’s Harvey, her partner-in-crime who doesn’t seem like such a soulmate anymore now that she isn’t dying. Ten years ago, Lake was responsible for getting her childhood tormentor put away in juvi. Now, as she starts her senior year, Kieran is finally getting released. And she’s sure he’ll be out for revenge. But due to struggles with her manic depression, Hanna’s never figured out how to fit in anywhere. While Hanna struggles with hallucinations and violent urges, Wyatt observes something else entirely — a perfect new member for his demon-hunting organization. Every day, Adam comes back to life again, and tries to end his life in a different way. He’s not even depressed, he’s just bored. But, as he’s brought back again and again, he’s finally forced to face the reality of the ways he is intertwined with the other people around him, and the ripple of consequences he would cause in response to the impact. The Goblin King steals Leisl’s sister in his hunt for a bride, Leisl chases them back to the goblin kingdom and negotiates a deal…but the path to freeing her sister is full of deception and trickery. Think Whiplash meets 50 Shades. As she uncovers dark secrets and is forced to face a few of her own, this dark noir story draws everything out into the bright Pasadena sunlight. Through haunting quirks left behind by organs’ previous owners, and one horrific look behind the curtain of an unwind on progress, this novel takes a dark, cringe-inducing exploration of what it means to be alive, and where it starts and ends.
