Dead Girls by Beck Kubrick

Y’all, I would kill to protect Cassie. When Ash Hargreeves, the heroine of this YA graphic novel, calls her foster sister “terminally delightful,” she is being 100% accurate, as Cassie is the absolute best no matter what life and serial killers try to throw at her. I love her and want to embody her positive spirit as much as humanly possible.

But this is not a book entirely about Cassie, amazing as she is. By contrast, Ash is the perpetually angry seventeen year-old whose choices as to whom to trust may seem tenuous at best. But can you blame her? When she was a little girl, her mother committed some of the most horrific serial killings the small town of Clossdale had ever seen. After slaughtering five other young women, “Evil Evelyn” perished in a fire that almost killed her daughter as well. Ash has been in foster care ever since. She doesn’t really trust her foster parents — and she definitely doesn’t trust the system — but she believes in Cassie and in their other best friend Jamie, whose own less than awesome home situation prompts Jamie to spend as much time at Ash and Cassie’ place as possible.

When girls start dying in the woods around Clossdale thirteen years after Evelyn’s initial rampage, suspicions almost inevitably turn to her maladjusted daughter. Ash knows she didn’t do it, but that doesn’t mean that someone isn’t targeting some of the most rich and popular girls of their high school. The sheriff has made little secret of the fact that she believes that Ash has “bad blood” running through her. But when the girl Ash has fallen for disappears, and the killer seems to be hunting Ash next, will she be able to tap into the killer instinct she allegedly inherited from her mom in order to save the day and stop the real murderer?

Dead Girls is already incredibly clever as far as horror comics go, but then adds in some of the best characterizations I’ve ever encountered in the graphic novel format. Ash’s anger can be as off-putting as her stubborn beliefs, but the people who know her trust her for good reason. The dialog between her, Cassie and Jamie especially rings incredibly true of contemporary teenage voices. I was once an angry teenager too, and while I’ve learned to not lash out at people, it’s very clear that Ash is just a kid who is doing her best in the face of barely imaginable horrors. More importantly, the ways that the book deals with her underlying impulses and depicts the power of friendship and the value of social justice make this a must-read for anyone who gives a shit about teenagers and where we’re going as a society.

The art is also superlative, primarily in the expressiveness it gives its characters. It’s not the most sophisticated or innovative work — backgrounds get sketchier as the book progresses, and I got lost twice when the girls transitioned from location to location — but the colors are exceptional and the action propulsive. The contrast between gore and cuteness was also charming in a way that made total sense. The opening and closing splash pages in particular were absolutely wonderful.

Beck Kubrick is incredibly talented and I can’t wait to read more of their work. Of the 194 books I’ve read this year so far (I know, it’s been a slow year for me what with the fatigue,) this is absolutely in my Top 10.

Dead Girls by Beck Kubrick will be published tomorrow September 22 2026 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers and is available for pre-order from all good booksellers, including