The Best YA Mystery Books with Romance
Looking for books like AGGGTM (A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder) by Holly Jackson? Here are the best YA mystery books with romance — slow burns, love triangles, and hate-to-love drama packed inside seriously addictive whodunits.
The Best YA Mystery Books with Romance: Binge These After AGGGTM
If you finished A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (either the books or the Netflix show – season 2 is coming in May 2026!)and immediately wanted more: welcome, you’re in the right place!
One of the things that makes Holly Jackson’s AGGGTM trilogy so irresistible is how perfectly the romance and the mystery are braided together. Pip and Ravi are a huge part of what makes the story so compelling. Watching them fall for each other while unraveling something is something special!
The great news: there are some seriously bingable YA mystery series that deliver exactly that blend. I’ve organized them below by vibe, so you can find your perfect match.
🔍 The OG: AGGGTM
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
Pip needs a senior capstone project, so she sets out to prove that a local case isn’t what it seems. What begins as a school assignment turns into something far more dangerous. For many YA Mystery readers, Pip and Ravi are the mystery romance goals!
If you’ve already read the trilogy, check out my full guide to the series here, which has a plot summary of all three books.
Mystery + Romance + A Little Paranormal
The Body Finder series by Kimberly Derting
This seriously underrated 2010s YA mystery trilogy features a girl with a rare and unsettling ability: she can sense the dead. Her gift makes her both the best hope for finding criminals and a target herself.
What makes this series stand out in the mystery-romance category is how genuinely steamy the romance gets for a YA series. If you like your mysteries with a touch of the paranormal and your romance with some actual heat, this one’s for you.
Good for: fans of AGGGTM who want a slightly darker, supernatural edge and a more overtly swoony romance
For Readers Who Love a Puzzle (and a Love Triangle)
The Naturals series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
This newly reissued five-book series — from the author of The Inheritance Games — follows a group of teenagers with extraordinary talents (think: reading people, profiling killers, spotting patterns no one else can see) who are quietly recruited by the FBI to help crack cold cases.
It has that same “ordinary teen pulled into something way over her head” energy as AGGGTM, with the added twist of a ragtag group of misfit investigators. And because this is a 2010s YA series, there is an absolutely excruciating love triangle that will have you stress-reading at 2am just to find out who she picks. Perfect binge material.
Good for: fans of The Inheritance Games and AGGGTM who love a found-family investigative team
The Inheritance Games series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
If you like your mysteries on the puzzle-solving side, this series is tailor-made for you. When a complete stranger leaves Avery Grambs a billion-dollar fortune in his will, she’s thrown into a world of riddles, secrets, and a family full of people who want answers — and maybe want her gone.
Yes, there’s a slow-burn love triangle. Yes, two sides of it are brothers. Yes, this absolutely gives off The Summer I Turned Pretty energy and I’m not even slightly sorry about it.
If you fall hard for this one, check out my list of the best YA heist books — same puzzle-solving, high-stakes energy.
Good for: fans of Knives Out, escape rooms, and anyone who likes their romance with a generous helping of “wait, but who can she actually trust?”
Boarding School Mystery with an Angsty Slow Burn
Truly Devious series by Maureen Johnson
Stevie Bell is true-crime obsessed and, honestly, kind of a mess — in the most endearing way possible. When she gets into the elite Ellingham Academy, she immediately becomes fixated on a decades-old unsolved kidnapping that shook the school to its foundations. Of course, history has a way of repeating itself.
Stevie is a genuine fan favorite, and the slow-burn romance between her and her classmate David is angsty in the best possible way. Think: a lot of pointed silences, miscommunication that will make you want to scream, and payoff that is absolutely worth the wait.
Good for: fans of dark academia, Knives Out, and AGGGTM who want a heroine with a genuine obsession and a romance that takes its time
Sherlock Holmes But Make It Romantic (Hate-to-Love Alert)
Can’t resist a good hate-to-love romance? Both of these series reimagine the most iconic detective duo in literary history — Holmes and Watson (or Holmes and Moriarty) — as a male-female couple with seriously smoking chemistry.
Lock & Mori series by Heather W. Petty
Someone has been murdered in London’s Regent’s Park, and sixteen-year-old Lock challenges his classmate Mori to solve the crime before he does. His only rule: they must share every clue with each other. Mori reluctantly agrees — but what begins as a competition quickly becomes something far more dangerous, and the line between ally and enemy gets very blurry, very fast.
Good for: fans of BBC Sherlock, Enola Holmes, and anyone who loves a rivals-to-lovers dynamic with real stakes
Every Breath series by Ellie Marney
When James Mycroft drags Rachel Watts off on a night mission through Melbourne, the last thing she expects is to stumble onto a murder scene. While Rachel battles her very inconvenient attraction to the infuriating, brilliant, completely reckless Mycroft, he’s getting himself expelled, clashing with the police, and somehow becoming murder suspect number one.
This series has crackling tension between the two leads, and Ellie Marney writes the will-they-won’t-they with real skill. A great pick if you finished Lock & Mori and want more.
Good for: fans of Lock & Mori and anyone who likes their detective romance with a Southern Hemisphere setting and maximum chaotic energy
Quick Picks by Vibe
| If you want… | Read this |
|---|---|
| AGGGTM-level mystery + swoony romance | A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder |
| Paranormal mystery with actual heat | The Body Finder |
| FBI investigation + painful love triangle | The Naturals |
| Puzzle mystery + brothers in a love triangle | The Inheritance Games |
| Boarding school + true crime + angsty slow burn | Truly Devious |
| Sherlock reimagined as hate-to-love romance in London | Lock & Mori |
| More Sherlock heat, Australian edition | Every Breath |
Have you read any of these? Drop a comment and tell me which mystery romance series has the best couple — I have strong opinions and I am ready to debate.
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