WoW: Sundown Girls by L.S. Stratton

This bookish meme tells the blogosphere what we’re waiting patiently (and sometimes not so patiently) for! It’s hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine!

A YA thriller about a Black teen whose family vacation to a town with a terrifying history becomes a desperate search for two missing girls and a fight for survival.

When sixteen-year-old Naomi Stoakes and her family head to a secluded cabin in the Shenandoah Valley for summer vacation they don’t know the small, mountainous town of Sparksburg, Virginia has a dark and twisted past. But when they arrive, Naomi can’t shake the feeling that something about Sparksburg just isn’t right. When she learns Sparksburg had once been a Sundown Town—a town where Blacks weren’t allowed after sunset lest they be murdered—well Naomi’s unease starts to make sense.

As Naomi digs more into Sparsburg’s violent origins, she finds herself haunted by the ghost of a girl, appearing nightly outside her window. Then she learns of two girls who’ve recently gone missing and suspects the past may still be present in Sparksburg and beneath the quaint façade of this tourist town is a palpable danger.

When Naomi decides to track the disappearance of the two girls herself and confronts the ghost of another, she become suspicious of a local man who has kindled fear in Naomi more than once. When she learns he has a connection to one of the missing girls, Naomi is certain he’s responsible for the disappearances.

When no one believes her, Naomi takes matters into her own hands. But to save the missing girls, she’ll have to finally face her own past trauma as a “missing girl”, and risk losing everything she loves.

Published by: Nancy Paulsen Books
Expected Publication: January 27, 2026

Why I’m Waiting: Never in my wildest dreams did I think there was going to be a book about Sundown Towns. Especially in this context. Some people like to think these spaces never existed, so this is going to be GOOD. And there’s ghost and a jerl from before, THIS SOUNDS SO GOOD! I’m assuming it’s going to be banned in at least a few places tho. But I’m going to do my very best to read and make sure I make more teens read this before those people get their gross hands on it. Also let me just say this cover is MAGNIFICENT.

What about you? Will you read this? Have you read any books by L.S Stratton? Let me know in the comments!