The Forest Demands Its Due
HarperCollins · Print & ebook · August 19, 2025
A Horror pick for readers exploring The Forest Demands Its Due.
We earn from qualifying purchases.
- Who it’s for
- A dark-academia mystery where a vanished student, buried history, and corrupt power meet.
- Genres
- YA Horror, YA Mysteries, Dark YA Fantasy
- Published
- HarperCollins, August 19, 2025
Nearest books
Matched by what the books are about, then ordered by what their readers also loved. Most of these share its genre: YA Horror.
I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is MeJamison Shea56% matchAlso shares Dark YA Fantasy
Unhallowed HallsLili Wilkinson69% matchAlso shares Dark YA Fantasy
HollowTaylor Grothe56% match
What the Woods TookCourtney Gould58% match
The AfterdarkAmanda Cordner, Emily Nixon69% matchAlso shares Dark YA Fantasy
Seven Deadly ThornsAmber Hamilton61% matchAlso shares Dark YA Fantasy
When We Were MonstersJennifer Niven67% matchAlso shares YA Mysteries
Secrets of the Blue Hand GirlsRowana Miller58% matchAlso shares YA Mysteries
For older readers: The Ghost Women, Wicked Onyx, The Wings That Bind
Start with three books, and this one can be the first.
Members get a new edition every morning: a route out from their books to essays, research and talks, with the reason for each.
Start with this bookAbout this book
A Lesson in Vengeance meets The Taking of Jake Livingston in this page-turning dark academia novel about a queer Black teen who discovers the sinister history of his boarding school and the corrupt powers behind it all. A USA Today bestseller! Regent Academy has a long and storied history in Winslow, Vermont, as does the forest that surrounds it. The school is known for molding teens into leaders, but its history is far more nefarious.
Continue reading
Seventeen-year-old Douglas Jones wants nothing to do with Regent's king-making; he’s just trying to survive. But then a student is murdered and, for some reason, by the next day no one remembers him having ever existed, except for Douglas and the groundskeeper's son, Everett Everley. In his determination to uncover the truth, Douglas awakens a horror hidden within the forest, unearthing secrets that have been buried for centuries. A vengeful creature wants blood as payment for a debt more than three hundred years in the making—or it will swallow all of Winslow in darkness. And for the first time in his life, Douglas might have a chance to grasp the one thing he’s always felt was missing: power. But if he’s not careful, he will find out that power has a tendency to corrupt absolutely everything. A high-octane mystery of murder and magic for fans of Ace of Spades, House of Hollow, and Get Out!
Secrets in the Dark
A dark-academia mystery where a vanished student, buried history, and corrupt power meet.
Come here for
- A queer Black teen caught between school secrets and a forest-borne horror
- Mystery, dark magic, and questions about power
Expect
- A murder mystery threaded with supernatural menace
- An edgy collision of ambition, corruption, and horror
Where it sits
| YA Horror | 81% |
|---|---|
| Dark YA Fantasy | 30% |
| YA Mysteries | 30% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Coming of Age
- Contemporary YA Fantasy
- Holiday YA
- YA Horror
Show all 8 publisher categories
- Paranormal & Supernatural for Teens
- African American YA
- YA Romance - LGBTQ+
- Paranormal YA Romance
- Authors
- Kosoko Jackson, Desean Terry, Quill Tree Books
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Published
- August 19, 2025
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- Coming of Age