A group of road-weary, adrenalin-filled teens carry only backpacks and essentials. No parents to go home to, ever. No authority figures to provide them answers, and no idea how much of the modern world still exists outside the boundaries of whatever narrow strip of survival they’ve landed on.

Wherever these teens make their stand — an island, a cruise ship, an arena, a mountain outpost, perhaps an abandoned stadium or network of subway tunnels — it’s sure to be a world in which our heroes can’t spare a thought for tomorrow because every moment of today is about immediate survival.

Now take away the word “apocalypse,” and switch out the MRE’s for some Hot Pockets, and we’ve constructed most teenagers’ ultimate fantasy. No parents to please, no corporate future to work toward, no SATs, no curfew, and best yet, vast stretches of unfettered time with companions who actually understand what they’re going through.

Readers of all ages long to relive a better teenage experience, one that might have been improved with zombies chasing us instead of our insecurities. Let’s face it, if we could do it over, most of us would chuck the rules and expectations and take more control. In YA thrillers, teen protagonists are not only saving themselves from a dangerous world, they’re changing that world in the ways we’d always hoped to. And what’s more, they’re doing it on their own terms.

So why are we so hooked by YA thrillers? (Or perhaps impaled, imprisoned, consumed, and conscripted?)

Young Adult Thrillers are Unflinchingly Suspenseful

Just like in real life, teens are forced to navigate unfamiliar terrain at breakneck speed, and YA thrillers absorb this unrelenting pacing. Hyperbole is the norm, dialogue is clippy and bright, and chapters end on cliffhangers that leave readers scrabbling for handholds. I’ll never forget the weekend I picked up the Razorland series. Come Monday I was so behind at grading that I had to invent a stomach flu as an excuse for my students. Likewise, when my colleague got hooked, she spent three heart-thumping, sleepless nights only to be woken at dawn by her toddlers demanding pancakes. “I can’t stop reading,” she nearly sobbed to me halfway through Horde. “I might need to hire a babysitter!”

For teens, every day feels like the end of the world, so YA is a headlong rush from crisis to crisis, from one sinking ice floe to the next. Soon we’re reading too quickly and running too quickly to care about anything outside of the page. Likewise, YA thrillers propel readers forward without our adult brains slowing to question the likelihood of a plot point. Yes, YA is often criticized for being commercial, and it’s true some teen novels contain significant plot loopholes. It was admittedly unclear to me how the Enclave survivors, who formed a post-apocalyptic society in pitch-black abandoned NYC subway tunnels, gathered any vegetation or greenery by which to avoid scurvy. Luckily, I was too busy tearing through the pages to see if fifteen-year-old Deuce would survive topside to care about the properties of fungi.

Teens Resist Authority, and It’s Thrilling

The struggles teens face during the end times echo the same struggles we face in an adult world — how can we stay true to ourselves when it feels like the structure of organized society is gnashing us between its teeth? Teens are already struggling to claim their identities, and this instinct for survival is paralleled by pandemics and ice tornadoes and vampire armies. In the Edge of Collapse, a single glaring lightbulb bears down on Hannah for years until she wakes up, enlightened by the darkness, freed from a cruel sociopath’s imprisonment by an EMP that unlocks her remote prison cell. That accusatory lightbulb is a metaphor for the inquisition we face when our own bathroom-mirror lights glare at us before another day of adulthood.

So we read YA thrillers and watch Katniss from The Hunger Games unseat the gods with a single arrow and slay the monsters in the maze with only her wits. We watch Thomas in The Maze Runner race to escape his post-apocalyptic prison while dodging the Grievers. We watch Tris in Divergent defy categorization and claim her own identity. And we watch Jane McKeene, in Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation, refuse to accept society’s subjugating role for her as an “Attendant” to wealthy white people. Unsurprisingly, in the process, Jane ends up having more to fear from humans than the undead, and we watch her fight for her rights as well as her life.