Bad Creek

“June's debut is atmospheric and haunting, capturing the heart-pounding exhilaration of exchanging ghost stories around a campfire. The perfect spine-tingling read for summer!”—Tori Bovalino, author of My Throat an Open Grave

Three lifelong friends confront restless ghosts and malevolent family secrets in this fierce, propulsive debut young adult horror novel.

Iris, Gum, and Aidan are vacationing in Bad Creek, just like every summer. Except Iris’s older sister, Glory, drowned in the lake last year, and Iris can’t seem to move on; Gum is hiding his sexuality from his family while being viciously haunted by Glory’s rotting ghost; and Aidan is distraught over a drunken argument with Glory that he fears may have led to her death. When Iris sleepwalks to the dilapidated house that Glory obsessively sketched in her final days, she and the boys begin to uncover a sinister history in the very bones of the town. The trio must reckon with the events of last summer and uncover what lurks within Bad Creek before it takes Iris’s life next.

Gripping and vengeful, Bad Creek confronts the intersection of religion, sexuality, and feminism, and forces readers to reckon with monsters in all their forms—human included.