Old Wounds, by Logan-Ashley Kisner

Erin and Max, two trans kids, run away from home.  Driving across the country from Ohio to California, their trip quickly goes astray and they find themselves lost and in deep trouble in Kentucky.  The locals have taken an unnatural interest in them and for good reason: in the local woods lives a monster who grants its inhabitants longevity in return for a human sacrifice.  The tribute has to be a girl and the men have their eyes set on Erin, mistakenly believing she is cis-female.  Once Erin and Max's identity is revealed, the bigger question is whether the monster cares about binary sex.

I'm not a fan of horror novels, but this one packs an interesting conundrum that I was curious enough about to want to read the book.  It doesn't hurt that the novel is well-written and, while including all the typical horror tropes, does a neat job of giving them a particularly trans flavor.  Beyond the key question of whether Erin or Max sate the monster's tastes, there are lots of interesting analogies between dealing with violent transphobes and escaping human-eating creatures from another dimension.  Far more, in fact, than might initially be apparent!

Overall, this is a clever, witty, and suspenseful bit of dark paranoia for a genre that is best known for its misogyny.