15+ Best YA Book Villains

We tend focus a lot on the heroes and heroines when describing great books but so often it’s the villains that really make a story magical!

In honor of the fact that two of most notoriously hated villains in Young Adult Literature can be found in the Harry Potter books and because the theme of this month’s Owl Crate is Good vs. Evil, that my sister and I would share our most memorable villains. (Are you as excited about week two of the Happy Harry Potter series as I am?)

We were guests on the We Heart Books facebook page to chat through the WHYS of our choices which you can watch the replay of below but I’m also linking my Amazon associates links for each book so you can get a description and learn more about each title. I’ve got to say I found it surprisingly hard to come up with a non-spoiler villains list. It seems the plot of A LOT of books with GREAT villains is pretty much “who done it?”

• The King You know that saying about power corrupting? Well that plus magic! – Throne of Glass
• Dolores Umbridge I must not tell lies and okay we’ll say Voldy too ;) – Harry Potter
• Queen Levana Why wouldn’t you just mind force everyone to do your bidding even to say marry you if you could? – The Lunar Chronicles  (starts with Cinder)
• The Darkling – The Grisha Trilogy (starts with Shadow and Bone)
• The Dad Well he’s a serial killer who raised his son as an accomplice no biggie – Jasper Dent Series (starts with I Hunt Killers)
• Commandant Oh she’s the worse kind of head mistress meets drill Sargent but there are lots of baddies – An Ember in the Ashes series
• Defiance Bolton Ramsey – Song of Ice and Fire (not YA starts with A Game of Thrones)
• The Duchess of the Lake I don’t care how dangerous it is for you I’ll use YOUR body for what I want when I want oh and if it doesn’t work out I’ll find someone else to give it go – The Lone City Series (starts with The Jewel)
• Adelina Amouteru  We absolutely love that this is told from the villain’s perspective which of course makes it hard to totally see her as a villain – The Young Elites series
• The Uncle Yeah this guy gave me the major creeps. The lengths he’ll go and the evil he’ll do makes me really anxious about reading the sequel  – Gold Seer Trilogy (starts with Walk the Earth a Stranger)
• The Seeker She totally stressed me out why won’t she just give up already!? – The Host
• Everyone – Penryn and the End of Days Series (starts with Angelfall)
• Cole Big whoop that he’s boss of the Underground he’s awesome a super hot musician – Everneath series
• Alexandra Miles  She’s the ultimate High School mean girl. But the depths of her scheming oh my! – Winning series
• General Holland He’s awful from the beginnin but as the series go on you realize just how twisted this guys intentions are!  – Mila 2.0 series
• Warner He’s done SO many bad things but he was raised that way, is he bad, but he’s cute too – Shatter Me series

Just remember that this is an unedited repost of the FB live video :)

So who are some of YOUR all time favorite villains?

And there’s still time to enter the giant Harry Potter Giveaways if you haven’t already!

You also might like: