TL;W[on’t]R[ead the review]: Oh my fucking GOD. Just look at that cover. That cover cannot steer you wrong.
Content warnings: transphobia, murder, gore, body horror, extreme abuse [see more on the author’s Goodreads post]
Summary [courtesy of Goodreads]: Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with. But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC’s leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji’s darkest secret: the cult’s bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all. Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick’s terms…until he discovers the ALC’s mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own.
[Note: This review is based on an eARC from NetGalley and Peachtree Teen.]
Jesus fuck, y’all. This is an astounding book, full of fury and force. It’s like if you took Sorrowland, foregrounded the religious dystopia even more, added toxic white evangelism along with dashes of Wise Blood and Evangelion, and tied it all together with one hell of a strong trans boy protagonist. If you couldn’t tell, I fucking loved it.
I picked it up thinking I’d read for an hour and pace myself, but I basically could not put it down and read it all in one night. (Yes I am an adult, and yes I allegedly could have self-control, but…NO.) I loved Benji and how prickly he and all of the core characters at the ALC could be, and I loved the mid-apocalyptic queer teen community that White so heart-wrenchingly brought to life. The plot moved astonishingly fast, and while I wish the ending had been drawn out a little longer, up-long-after-my-bedtime past-me was VERY happy to get to the end when I did, despite it feeling like a breathless tumble to get there.
Seeing white Evangelical bigots stand revealed as the eco-fascists they are (or would like to be), and THEN seeing them get exactly what they have coming to them…I can’t describe how joyful and cathartic that is. That’s not to undersell how much trauma and sorrow there is in this book, too–it’s not a full-on revenge fantasy all the time, by any means, and Benji suffers A LOT. (See the Evangelion reference earlier…) BUT, it’s a far cry from misery porn, and its ending is, in some ways, exultant. (See my Sorrowland reference earlier too–these books echo each other in really gorgeous ways.) I won’t be doing a spoiler territory section here, since the book just came out TODAY, but know that there are shocking twists, gore-splattered eruptions, and DEEPLY moving transformations of all sorts to keep you going.
If you’re in the mood for some Queer Rage to go along with that Pride, pick this up NOW.
