Queer Witchy YA Stories for the Season

Nell and her friends have rented a vacation house in Florida for spring break to get away from their lives for a bit. But Nell’s secrets didn’t stay at home. They came with, and they’ve decided to team up with the island’s own history of tragedy. Now, the friends are all trapped, with nowhere to go, since the water surrounding their not-so-sweet vacation rental is infested with dangerous beasts and a toxic mist.

It’ll be work to get out. Part of that work—or maybe a whole lot of that work—will involve confronting the secrets and memories that Nell, as well as her friends, wish they didn’t need to. For Nell, it’s reckoning with an assault she experienced a year ago and a shadow that’s followed her throughout her entire life. 

But Nell’s friends all brought their own secrets and together, they’ll need to not only divulge them, they’ll need to use their combined powers to get out of this mess. What results is an angry, powerful, witchy confrontation with monsters, human and otherwise.

Set at Younwity’s Institute of Magic during the days leading up to Samhain, when the veil between the living world and the dead is thinnest, Abby wakes up and discovers her best friend Noreen has disappeared. What’s weirdest is most of Abby’s classmates seem not to care about it. They’re too busy preparing for the festivities and believe that the school’s Coven will find Noreen safe and sound. No one seems concerned about the forbidden woods seeming just a little more foreboding than usual, either.

Abby’s not settling for that and begins to search out answers herself, with the help of a couple of friends. What she unravels is a thread of secrets throughout the institution and a governing Coven who may be anything but the kind of leadership the institution deserves. And Noreen’s disappearance has a lot of similarities to the disappearance of a student years before.

This vibrant, full-colored graphic novel features a wide range of queer witches and witches of color, and it is a visual delight through and through.

Set over Halloween and into Día De Los Muertos, Thomas’s debut novel follows Yadriel, who is determined to prove himself a powerful brujo despite the gendered expectations of his traditional Latine family. He employs the help of two friends to perform a ritual that will help him find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set him free.

This was a lot of fun while also being packed with so much interesting stuff about gender, about Brujería and how gendered it is, about family, and a sweet, humorous romance. 

Badass witches and dark magic set in a witch academy? Yes, please!

Logan is a new witch struggling with her powers and is taken under the tutelage of a death witch, a green witch, and a witch who is thirsty for more power. It won’t be long before Wolves rise up to attack humans and witches alike, but there isn’t a good alliance between humans and witches.

All four of the student witches are going to have to band together to not only secure that alliance but to take down the Wolves who are hungry for blood.

This one is pitched as The Fast and the Furious but with broomsticks, and it follows a group of 6 diverse teens who participate in a forbidden broom race, which allows them to embrace their magic as witches. It’s set in 1930s Mississippi, giving the story of magic and witchcraft a historical spin.

Lou’s disbelief in magic is shattered once she has to journey to the goblin market to rescue her teenage aunt. The market, which Lou had only read about up until now, is full of every kind of sweet, delectable thing that could tempt humans. She has to learn spells and tricks if she’s to save her aunt and make it out alive. She’s only got three days, though, and then the market disappears– and her aunt along with it.