Books like Courtney Summers

Claudia returns from summer away to discover that her best friend, Monday, has vanished—and that almost no one seems interested in asking why. Jackson fractures the timeline, turning Claudia’s memories into both clues and painful evidence of how thoroughly a missing Black girl can be overlooked.

Like Sadie, this is a mystery whose deepest horror lies beyond the question of what happened. It captures the loneliness of being the one person who refuses to stop searching, and its disorientation serves character rather than gimmick: Claudia’s confusion becomes the reader’s. Winner of the Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe New Talent Author Award, Monday’s Not Coming is gripping, socially furious, and emotionally ruinous—the rare thriller whose revelations alter everything you thought you understood.

Alex Craft knows violence intimately. After her sister’s murder, she has little faith in justice and even less patience for people who prey on girls. Told through three sharply distinct voices, McGinnis’s Edgar Award–nominated novel places Alex’s cold, vigilant anger beside the ordinary compromises and cruelties of high-school life.

Readers drawn to Sadie’s ferocious love, moral ambiguity, and refusal to make female rage palatable will find Alex unforgettable. Yet this is not a simple revenge fantasy: McGinnis keeps asking what violence can accomplish, what it destroys, and why communities so often scrutinize angry girls more closely than the people who harmed them. It is blunt, combustible, and difficult to shake.

Daunis Fontaine has always lived between worlds: between her white and Ojibwe families, between belonging and exclusion, and between her own ambitions and her responsibilities to the people she loves. When violence pulls her into an investigation involving her community, every choice demands a cost.

What connects Boulley’s novel to Sadie is not merely its crime plot but its emotional intelligence about survival. Daunis is observant, stubborn, and allowed to be complicated; the book understands that protecting vulnerable girls requires confronting institutions, loyalties, and silences—not just identifying one villain. A Printz Honor book and Edgar winner, Firekeeper’s Daughter earns its acclaim through immersive storytelling, mounting tension, and a heroine whose courage never feels effortless.