Are you a Stranger Things Fan looking for books to read that are like Stranger Things on Netflix? I’ve assembled a whole list of books about a group of friends fighting paranormal evil in a small town. Check out these Books To Read if You Love Stranger Things!

Books to Read if You Love Stranger Things

Stranger Things 5 is coming this fall on Netflix! What are these crazy kids up to now? Last season they were tweens, now they are teenaged high-schoolers – how time flies.

Things I am looking for in a book that feels like Stranger Things:

• A small town setting
• A group of friends or a “Scooby Gang” who bands together in danger
• Paranormal elements
• A retro feel or actual setting in the 80s or 90s is also a plus!

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Books for fans of Stranger Things

Because Stranger Things on Netflix is about a group of kids, most of these Stranger Things readalikes are young adult books.

BUT I have one adult title that I really recommend!

A Step Past Darkness by Vera Kurian (Park Row Books: February 20, 2024)

I described A Step Past Darkness in my review as a mash-up between Stranger Things and the Breakfast Club. It’s also a friend group mystery!

A Step Past Darkness has a past/present timeline story about a random group of high school students in a small town assigned to do a senior project together (that’s the Breakfast Club part).

As part of this research, they stumble on a horrible crime. One so dangerous to know about that they make a pact never to speak of it (or to each other) again.

But decades later, one of the group ends up dead, and they reconvene back in town to find out what happened to her.

Highly recommend this one as it has a great Stranger Things vibe!

Dead Flip by Sara Farizan (Algonquin BFYR: August 30, 2022)

This one sounds amazing and has all the Stranger Things elements: a retro setting, a trio of friends and a *checks notes* supernatural pinball machine?

Growing up, Cori, Maz, and Sam were inseparable, sharing their love for Halloween, arcade games, and one another. Now it’s 1992, Sam has been missing for five years, and Cori and Maz aren’t speaking anymore. How could they be, when Cori is sure Sam is dead and Maz thinks he may have been kidnapped by a supernatural pinball machine?

These days, all Maz wants to do is party, buy CDs at Sam Goody, and run away from his past. Meanwhile, Cori is a homecoming queen, hiding her love of horror movies and her queer self under the bubblegum veneer of a high school queen bee. But when Sam returns—still twelve years old while his best friends are now seventeen—Maz and Cori are thrown back together to solve the mystery of what really happened to Sam the night he went missing. Beneath the surface of that mystery lurk secrets the friends never told one another, then and now.

Imagining Elsewhere by Sara Hosey (Camcat: June 28, 2022)

An 80s small town setting, a teen tyrant with supernatural powers and a group of friends digging into the dark history of a spooky town? This one has all the Stranger Things vibes!

Being a better person can be a lot harder than it looks.

It’s 1988, and former bully Astrid is forced to move from Queens to the small town of Elsewhere. Although this town is totally weird, Astrid sees the move as a way to reinvent herself. That is, until Candi—the teenage tyrant with supernatural powers who rules Elsewhere—decides she wants Astrid to be her new bestie.

Having to choose between the perks and safety of being the Queen B’s best friend and the desire to be a better person could literally cost Astrid her life. As Astrid and her new friends begin to dig into the dark history of Elsewhere and the source of Candi’s powers, they form a dangerous plan to resist Candi’s compulsion and to escape Elsewhere, or else be doomed to live under Candi’s rule forever.

Direwood by Catherine Yu (Page Street Kids: September 20, 2022)

Small town? Check. Strange supernatural happenings? Check. Missing teenager? Check. Firewood is 1990s-set Gothic vampire horror, so it’s a close cousin of Stranger Things.

Aja and Fiona live in Glen Hills, a small town plagued by a mysterious fog. At night it rains black stones and a pair of vampires roams the town. With so many perils lurking in the night, everyone in town observes a curfew. But when her older sister disappears, Aja follows a vampire through the fog and into the forest to find her.

There, Aja discovers the vampires’ lair in a ruined church, filled with her former classmates, most of them turned into enthralled servants. Now Aja, along with her friend Nico and ex-BFF Mary, must face their own differences and work together to escape. But while Aja tries to find and save her friends, her sister, and herself, she must also come to terms with her own secret truth: she’s fascinated by the very monster who lured her in.

More Books to Read if You Love Stranger Things:

Small Town Monsters by Diana Rodriguez Wallach (Underlined 2021)

Small Town Monsters has a bit of a Buffy vibe (which it seems to me is where Stranger Things Season 4 is headed) so I’m putting it on this list!

What’s really going on in the town of Roaring Creek?

Vera Martinez wants nothing more than to escape Roaring Creek and her parents’ reputation as demonologists. Not to mention she’s the family outcast, lacking her parents’ innate abilities, and is terrified of the occult things lurking in their basement.

Maxwell Oliver is supposed to be enjoying the summer before his senior year, spending his days thinking about parties and friends. Instead he’s taking care of his little sister while his mom slowly becomes someone he doesn’t recognize. Soon he suspects that what he thought was grief over his father’s death might be something more…sinister.

Stranger Things: Rebel Robin by A. R. Capetta (2021)

Part of the Stranger Things spin off series by Underlined paperbacks that also includes Runaway Max by Brenna Yovanoff (2019) and Lucas On The Line by Suyi Davies (2022)

High school is a monster, and it’s eating everyone Robin knows. As sophomore year starts, Robin’s Odd Squad friends have decided to try to be just like everyone else. Her best friends couple up and expect her to come along for the ride. They can’t stop talking about school and college and careers. But Robin has bigger problems–she’s been hiding out with the band kids since middle school, hoping nobody would notice that she’s something even stranger than a French horn player who can speak four languages: she’s gay.

Mayhem by Estelle Laure (2020)

It’s 1987 and unfortunately it’s not all Madonna and cherry lip balm.

Mayhem Brayburn has always known there was something off about her and her mother, Roxy. Maybe it has to do with Roxy’s constant physical pain, or maybe with Mayhem’s own irresistible pull to water. Either way, she knows they aren’t like everyone else.

But when May’s stepfather finally goes too far, Roxy and Mayhem flee to Santa Maria, California, the coastal beach town that holds the answers to all of Mayhem’s questions about who her mother is, her estranged family, and the mysteries of her own self.

There she meets the kids who live with her aunt, and it opens the door to the magic that runs through the female lineage in her family, the very magic Mayhem is next in line to inherit and which will change her life for good.

But when she gets wrapped up in the search for the man who has been kidnapping girls from the beach, her life takes another dangerous turn and she is forced to face the price of vigilante justice and to ask herself whether revenge is worth the cost.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (2021)

A tween confronts a monster from his nightmares? This YA classic will definitely give you some Stranger Things vibes!

At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting – he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth.

The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee (2017)

Again, this one leans toward Buffy, but as in Stranger Things Season 4 kids are now teens fighting a Big Bad, I think it fits!

When she’s not crushing it at volleyball or hitting the books, Genie is typically working on how to crack the elusive Harvard entry code.

But when her hometown comes under siege from hellspawn straight out of Chinese folklore, her priorities are dramatically rearranged. Enter Quentin Sun, a mysterious new kid in class who becomes Genie’s self-appointed guide to battling demons. While Genie knows Quentin only as an attractive transfer student with an oddly formal command of the English language, in another reality he is Sun Wukong, the mythological Monkey King incarnate—right down to the furry tail and penchant for peaches.

Suddenly, acing the SATs is the least of Genie’s worries. The fates of her friends, family, and the entire Bay Area all depend on her summoning an inner power that Quentin assures her is strong enough to level the very gates of Heaven. But every second Genie spends tapping into the secret of her true nature is a second in which the lives of her loved ones hang in the balance.

Are you watching Stranger Things Season 4? What do you think and what books do you recommend for my list?

Love books like this? Check out these posts!

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