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A review by diifacto
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
WOW.
I JUST finished this, so excuse my incoherence, but simply: WOW.
Y’know those little things—movies, shoes, books, Starbucks drinks, etc.—in life that you just KNOW you’re going to love? Like, you might see it in an ad, or catch a promotional Tweet from the author in your feed, and it piques your interest enough that you keep looking for it, until suddenly you’re following the author, and the publisher, and scrolling through ARC reviews, and rereading the blurb (and crying a bit), and looking for it on release day except your store has no copies yet, and so you buy a Kobo and buy the ebook, and then your store does get copies so you buy one of those too even though you’re only 18% of the way through but you already know it’s a five star? Y’know those? Yeah, that’s where I was with Cemetery Boys.
Good news: I now own a Kobo. More good news: I also own two copies of this fantastic novel.
And even more good news: I had every expectation for this novel, and it surpassed all of them.
It’s been a while since I felt that way about a book, and a long time since a book made me cry. (Three times, to be exact—roughly, 18%, 72%, and 100% through.) Even longer has it been since I finished a book and had absolutely no complaints. I’ve been sitting here for a half an hour since marking Cemetery Boys as “Read” on my Kobo, trying to think up critiques—c’mon, reviewer brain, critiques—and I’m sure some are there, but they’re entirely inconsequential. To be honest—and reviewer brain does not want to admit this—I rate things based on how they are objectively, yes, but much more so on how they make me feel. And this novel checked all the boxes. Fantastic, OwnVoices LGBTQ+ representation (gay and transgender)? Yep! More OwnVoices representation of beautiful Latinx culture and legends? Of course! Strong familial ties both through blood and found family? Thank you! A brilliant, captivating mystery and an incredible plot twist? Yes, and you won’t see it coming! And on top of it all, Aiden Thomas SOMEHOW manages to write one of the saddest, most angsty, most traumatizing (seriously, guys, oh my god) romances I’ve ever read in YA, while also having it be one of the cutest and the healthiest. I don’t know how they did it, and I don’t know what else anyone could want.
Like, on the topic of that last point—Julian’s DEAD, guys. That’s not a spoiler, that’s part of the blurb I read over and over, thinking to myself, “Do I really wanna make myself suffer like this? Do I want to read this? I do. Yeah, I do.” Like, it’d be all sweet, funny, love the characters, but then I’d put my Kobo down and have to be like, “Huh, Julian’s dead. And not just ‘dead’—murdered-at-sixteen, body-never-found dead. Like, INCREDIBLY TRAUMATICALLY dead.” And this novel just hits so hard, guys, because it deals with so many big, heavy topics, but somehow Thomas manages to write them in a way that hits you over and over again, long after you’ve put it down. Cemetery Boys will be living in my head rent-free for months.
So yeah, in conclusion: WOW.
I JUST finished this, so excuse my incoherence, but simply: WOW.
Y’know those little things—movies, shoes, books, Starbucks drinks, etc.—in life that you just KNOW you’re going to love? Like, you might see it in an ad, or catch a promotional Tweet from the author in your feed, and it piques your interest enough that you keep looking for it, until suddenly you’re following the author, and the publisher, and scrolling through ARC reviews, and rereading the blurb (and crying a bit), and looking for it on release day except your store has no copies yet, and so you buy a Kobo and buy the ebook, and then your store does get copies so you buy one of those too even though you’re only 18% of the way through but you already know it’s a five star? Y’know those? Yeah, that’s where I was with Cemetery Boys.
Good news: I now own a Kobo. More good news: I also own two copies of this fantastic novel.
And even more good news: I had every expectation for this novel, and it surpassed all of them.
It’s been a while since I felt that way about a book, and a long time since a book made me cry. (Three times, to be exact—roughly, 18%, 72%, and 100% through.) Even longer has it been since I finished a book and had absolutely no complaints. I’ve been sitting here for a half an hour since marking Cemetery Boys as “Read” on my Kobo, trying to think up critiques—c’mon, reviewer brain, critiques—and I’m sure some are there, but they’re entirely inconsequential. To be honest—and reviewer brain does not want to admit this—I rate things based on how they are objectively, yes, but much more so on how they make me feel. And this novel checked all the boxes. Fantastic, OwnVoices LGBTQ+ representation (gay and transgender)? Yep! More OwnVoices representation of beautiful Latinx culture and legends? Of course! Strong familial ties both through blood and found family? Thank you! A brilliant, captivating mystery and an incredible plot twist? Yes, and you won’t see it coming! And on top of it all, Aiden Thomas SOMEHOW manages to write one of the saddest, most angsty, most traumatizing (seriously, guys, oh my god) romances I’ve ever read in YA, while also having it be one of the cutest and the healthiest. I don’t know how they did it, and I don’t know what else anyone could want.
Like, on the topic of that last point—Julian’s DEAD, guys. That’s not a spoiler, that’s part of the blurb I read over and over, thinking to myself, “Do I really wanna make myself suffer like this? Do I want to read this? I do. Yeah, I do.” Like, it’d be all sweet, funny, love the characters, but then I’d put my Kobo down and have to be like, “Huh, Julian’s dead. And not just ‘dead’—murdered-at-sixteen, body-never-found dead. Like, INCREDIBLY TRAUMATICALLY dead.” And this novel just hits so hard, guys, because it deals with so many big, heavy topics, but somehow Thomas manages to write them in a way that hits you over and over again, long after you’ve put it down. Cemetery Boys will be living in my head rent-free for months.
So yeah, in conclusion: WOW.