Looking for dramatic YA Books About Wilderness Survival, or heart-stopping, heartbreaking books about YA characters facing natural disasters, like wildfire or an earthquakes? Here’s a list of YA Wilderness Survival Stories! If you are looking for my list on YA Climate Fiction, you can find that here on YA All Day!
YA Books About Survival in the Wilderness
Table of Contents:
8 YA Books About Survival After Outdoors Trips Go Wrong
YA Books About Surviving a Plane Crash
5 YA Books About Surviving Wildfires
YA Books About Kids Sent to Wilderness Camps
2 YA Books About Mountain Climbing
YA Books About Earthquakes, Floods and Blizzards
The Trend of YA Wilderness Survival Books
- A strong trend of YA books about survival in the wilderness started around 2020, with books about characters facing dramatic natural disasters (like wildfires and earthquakes) survivalist YA, and books with themes like “survival in the wilderness” or “human vs nature.”
- The trend has continued (possibly thanks to the pandemic, more recent wildfires, and more extreme weather).
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YA Books About Wilderness Survival After Trips Gone Wrong
The Woods Are Always Watching by Stephanie Perkins (2021)
When two best friends go on a hiking trip, they feel like someone’s watching them. This combination of horror and wilderness survival will give you the chills!
Check out my review of The Woods Are Watching here!
Best friends Neena and Josie are headed to college and decide to spent three days together hiking in the Pisgah National Forest. But simmering tensions between the girls lead to a detour off the trail and straight into a waking nightmare; and then into something far worse.
Lies Like Wildfire by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez (2021)
Hannah, the daughter of a sheriff, and her friends accidentally start a wildfire.
In Gap Mountain, California, everyone knows about fire season. But when Hannah and her friends accidentally start an enormous and deadly wildfire, their instinct is to lie to the police and the fire investigators. Because sometimes good people do bad things. And if there’s one thing people hate, it’s liars.
The Distance Between Lost and Found by Kathryn Holmes.
Bullied over rumors, Hallie gets separated from the group on her church trip and has to survive in the wilderness.
On a group hike, the bullying of others pushes Hallie to her limit. When Hallie, Rachel, and Hallie’s former friend Jonah get separated from the rest of the group, the situation quickly turns dire. Stranded in the wilderness, the three have no choice but to band together.
Switchback by Danika Stone
Two students get separated from the group during a class overnight in the wilderness.
Ashton and his best friend—social outcast Vale—head out on a camping trip to Waterton Lakes National Park with their P.E. class. Ash figures it’ll be two days of bug bites, bad food, and inside jokes.
Instead, the two friends find themselves in a fight for survival as an unexpected October snowstorm separates Ash and Vale from the rest of their class.
Be Not Far From Me by Mindy McGinnis
When a girl finds her boyfriend is cheating on an outdoors trip, she flees the group and finds herself in dire danger.
Ashley goes hiking in the Smokies with her friends for a night of partying, but Ashley catches her boyfriend with another girl. She goes running into the night, stopped only by a nasty fall into a ravine. Morning brings the realization that she’s alone, lost, and with an infection that could cost her a leg.
When I Am Through With You by Stephanie Kuehn
Part thriller, part wilderness survival story.
Ben Gibson will tell you exactly how what started as a simple school camping trip in the mountains ended the way it did. About who lived and who died. About who killed and who had the best of intentions.
Check out my review of When I Am Through With You.
I Am Still Alive by Kate Alice Marshall.
Jess moves to her survivalist father’s cabin to get to know him, but is stranded there after he dies.
Jess hadn’t seen her survivalist, off-the-grid dad in over a decade. But after a car crash killed her mother and left her injured, she was forced to move to his cabin in the remote Canadian wilderness. Just as Jess was beginning to get to know him, a secret from his past paid them a visit, leaving her father dead and Jess stranded.
The Other Side of Lost by Jessi Kirby
A YA version of Wild by Cheryl Strayed.
Mari Turner’s life is perfect, at least to the thousands of followers who have helped her become an internet starlet. To get away from it all, she makes an impulsive decision: to hike the entire John Muir trail. Mari and her late cousin, Bri, were supposed to do it together, to celebrate their shared eighteenth birthday. With Bri’s boots and trail diary, a heart full of regret, and a group of strangers that she meets along the way, Mari tries to navigate the difficult physical and emotional terrain ahead.
I reviewed The Other Side of Lost!
YA Books About Survival After a Plane Crash
No Accident by Laura Bates (2022)
After a small plane crash ends with a group of seven teens washed up on a desert island, their first thought is of survival.
But a terrible secret from a party the night before they flew has followed them ashore.
Survive by Alex Morel
Jane is flying to a treatment clinic (and contemplating suicide). When the plane crashes, she will have to re-evaluate how much she wants to live.
Jane wakes up amidst piles of wreckage and charred bodies on a snowy mountaintop. There is only one other survivor: a boy named Paul. Jane and Paul scale icy slopes and huddle together for warmth at night, forging an intense emotional bond. But the wilderness is a vast and lethal force, and only one of them will survive.
YA Books About Surviving Wildfires
A Catalog of Burnt Objects by Shana Youngdahl (2025)
A girl trying to figure out her life is shaken as wildfires consume her California town.
Inspired by the true story of the Paradise, California wildfire.
10 Hours to Go by Keely Parrack (2024)
As a wildfire cancels Lily’s train home, she is forced to accept a ride from her ex-best friend and a girl that Lily got expelled from school. But these girls’ revenge plans against Lily go sideways as they all get stranded in the woods.
Jumper by Melanie Crowder (2023)
Blair Scott is in her second season as a wildland firefighter when the Forest Service puts out a call for an additional class of smokejumpers. Blair begins taking unnecessary risks to prove herself. It doesn’t take long before everything spins out of control.
Playing With Fire by April Henry (2021)
When a fire cuts off a popular trail in the Oregon forest, a small group trapped by the flames must find another way out―or die.
Natalia barely survived the house fire that killed her baby brother. When a wildfire breaks out, blocking the trail she is hiking, a perfect day turns into a nightmare. With no cell service, few supplies, and no clear way out of the burning forest, a group of strangers will have to become allies if they’re going to survive.
Wildfire by Carrie Mac
A story of friendship, grief, and survival about two friends on a backpacking trip who get trapped by wildfires.
Annie and Pete have been best friends since they were little. They’re headed out on a ten-day backpacking trip through the mountains of Washington State. The woods spark with the promise of adventure, but a freak climbing accident interrupts their progress, the wildfires close in and smoke envelops them.
Read my review of Wildfire!
YA Books about Kids Sent to Wilderness Camps
Lola at Last by J.C. Peterson (2023)
Join Lola Barnes, a.k.a. a modern Lydia Bennet, at the beginning of a summer gone truly wrong: where a boat party-turned-fiery-fiasco ends with the ship. Given an ultimatum—jail time, or spending the summer with the nonprofit Hike Like a Girl—she laces up her hiking boots and takes to the wilderness.
The Wild by Owen Laukkanen (2021)
A girl is sent to a wilderness boot camp where things go terribly wrong.
Dawn isn’t a bad person–she’s just made some bad choices: wrong guy, wrong friends, wrong everything. But she wasn’t expecting her parents to pay a boatload of money to ship her off to a wilderness boot camp with a bunch of other messed up kids to learn important “life lessons.” But sometimes plans go very wrong.
Wild Bird by Wendelin Van Draanen
A girl is sent to a survivalist wilderness camp by her family.
Wren Clemens gets hustled out of her house and into a waiting car, then a plane, and then taken on a forced march into the desert. This is what happens to kids who’ve gone so far off the rails, their parents don’t know what to do with them any more. This is wilderness therapy camp.
Check out my thoughts on Wild Bird.
YA Books About Mountain Climbing
Above All Else by Dana Alison Levy
Two teens attempt to ascend Mount Everest. Rose and Tate have been climbing for years, training in harsh weather and traveling all over the world. Accompanied by Tate’s dad, the two will finally make the ultimate climb at the end of their senior year. The farther up the mountain they go, the more their climbing plans unravel. Rose and Tate will have to dig deep within themselves to determine what—or who—they value above all else.
Valley Girls by Sarah Nicole Lemon
After an intervention over her partying, Rilla is sent to live with her half-sister, a Yosemite National Park ranger. . Determined to make up for her screw-up, Rilla sets her sights on climbing El Capitan.
YA Books About Earthquakes, Floods, and Blizzards
The Quiet Part Out Loud by Deborah Crossland (2023)
Mia is crashing at her best friend’s dorm at San Francisco State, just a few miles away from the University of San Francisco, praying she never runs into the boy whose heart she broke. Alfie is struggling to reconcile with the abrupt ending of his first love. The two run into each other, but their reunion is cut short when a massive earthquake rocks San Francisco, leaving them to stumble desperately across the rubble in search of the ex they still love before the city crumbles—taking one, or both, of them with it.
Don’t Let in the Cold by Keely Parrack (2021)
It was supposed to be just one night in the cabin: one night for Lottie and her brand new stepsister, Jade, to try to get along. When a solar flare causes a massive blackout―no power or cell signal―Lottie knows they’ve got a long night ahead of them. But she didn’t expect things to turn deadly.
Canyon’s Edge by Dusti Bowling
Nora and her father head on an outdoors trip after a tragedy but a flash flood sweeps away Nora’s dad and all their supplies. Nora finds herself lost and alone in the desert, facing dehydration, venomous scorpions, deadly snakes, and, worst of all, the Beast who has terrorized her dreams for the past year. If Nora is going to save herself and her father, she must conquer her fears, defeat the Beast, and find the courage to live her new life.
Aftershocks by Marisa Reichardt
When an earthquake hits, Ruby finds herself trapped with a boy she’s just met.
When a magnitude 7.8 earthquake hits California, Ruby is trapped in a laundromat with Charlie, a boy she had her first conversation with only moments before. As the hours and days tick by, Ruby and Charlie struggle to stay hopeful—and stay alive. Ruby has only Charlie’s voice and her memories to find the hope to keep holding on.
Trapped by Michael Northrop
A group of teens is trapped together during a blizzard.
Scotty and his friends Pete and Jason are among the last seven kids at their high school waiting to get picked up that day, and they soon realize that no one is coming for them.
Still, it doesn’t seem so bad to spend the night at school. But then the power goes out, then the heat. The pipes freeze, and the roof shudders. As the days add up, the mounting pressure forces a devastating decision
Thanks for checking out my list of YA Wilderness Survival Stories!
Do you like books like this? Have any others to add to my list? Talk to me in comments!
Also check out my very (sorry to say) popular list of YA Books About Pandemics which includes both speculative and historical fiction!
Survive, Trapped, and Wildfire sound like my type of read. and I don’t think I’ve actually read a book about survival (aside from dystopian I guess because they have to fight to survive, haha).
Yeah, to me they kind of ARE dystopian as I’m not the most outdoorsy person..
Fun Fact: Trapped is the first book I reviewed on my blog!!
Also– I LOVED When I am Through With You and I can’t wait to read Be Not Far From Me!!
Love it! We are both old timers in the blogging world!!
I don’t read a lot of survival books, probably because I like my books fluffier. I guess Not If I Save You First by Ally Carter could fit in with this group, and I did read Wild Bird, which I liked very much
Thanks for this list. I love survival stories and these all look great!
They kind of scare me, but can be fun!
Not gonna lie, I have not read any of these. Definitely keeping it on my back pocket when the mood strikes.
Thanks for sharing!
I’ve read wildfire and that is a strong story. Loved it.
It was really good – very intense!
Thank you for the list. I haven’t read any of these.
It’s not my usual book topic, but have really enjoyed some of these!