Trespass Against Us

Three teens return to a haunted building following the traumatic events that occurred there in this harrowing debut. Two years ago, 16-year-old aspiring ghost hunters Riley Fox, his boyfriend Ethan Hale, and friends Vee Cho and Colton Pierce broke into Saint Dominic Savio’s School for Troubled Youth, the site of an unsolved disappearance of a priest and five boys in the 1980s. Ethan vanished without a trace, and Riley bears deep facial scars from injuries he received during his own perilous escape. When ghost hunting television superstar Jordan Jones arrives and offers Riley $25,000 to gather his friends, return to the school, and record their excursion, he reluctantly agrees. Once inside the crumbling structure, Riley is certain he sees Ethan, and when filming equipment malfunctions, Colton goes missing, the car is destroyed, and their cellphones stop working, the teens, skeptic Jordan, and her crew panic. Kemp employs a dual timeline, alternating between flashbacks that slowly reveal what happened during Riley’s first visit and building hair-raising tension in the present-day via the group’s gratifyingly grim uncovering of the school’s history. Fans of supernatural horror driven by self-assured protagonists will enjoy this creepy tale. Most characters read as white; Jordan is described as having dark skin. Ages 13–up. Agent: Madelyn Burt, Stonesong Literary. (July)