• Genre: Contemporary Fantasy
• Age group: Adult Young
• Pub. date: September 1st 2020
• Format: Audiobook
• Pages: 352
• Goodreads link

A trans boy determined to prove his gender to his traditional Latinx family summons a ghost who refuses to leave in Aiden Thomas’s paranormal YA debut Cemetery Boys, described by Entertainment Weekly as “groundbreaking.”

Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him.

When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.

However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.

This was a bookclub read for me, our January GR Book of the Month pick on reddit.fantasy.com, and in short, I loved it. It was so much fun and happy-making, even though it had plenty of challenges and sad things going on.

I loved the setting, it mixes the familiar with the macabre in such a great way. There’s this big family that has huge get-togethers with lots of amazing sounding food, and they live in the cemetery, and some of them don’t so much live because they are ghosts. They worship Lady Death, summon ghosts, perform rituals fueled with blood. There were a lot of Spanish words all through the text and I really enjoyed the bilingual aspect, it was generally pretty clear what they meant from context. Audiobooking probably helped cause otherwise I would’ve pronounced that all wrong in my head.

The characters were great, Yadriel and Julian are precious and I would die to protect them. Yadriel is such a good kid, he’s got such a hard time fitting in and being accepted by his family, the worst part is when they mean well but still say something completely invalidating and wrong, he deserves all the happiness and the breaks. School is not better and it’s usually just him and Maritza taking on the world. Julian is a whirlwind, he exudes energy all over the place, is full of optimism but also quick-tempered. The way they interact works perfectly and there’s a lot of fun tension/relief. He’s so easily accepting of Yads, it’s such a great change from most of the people in his life. The relationship is really nice and I’m so glad the book had a few quiet moments for the characters to breathe in between it all. Martiza, Yadriel’s best friend, seemed a bit sidekicky, in that she sometimes disappeared only to reappear at the most convenient time. She’s very supportive and has two huge cuddly dogs, so she’s alright. I also liked the others in the family, even though I initially thought Tio and Tito were the same person because I am very bad with names (and I think Tio isn’t even his name, it just means uncle). There’s really strong found family going on, and I really liked what this book had to say about even disregarded people having others that care and worry about them.

I found the story gripping, there were some times where I thought I knew where things were going, but even then I was still glued to my book saying “no no no no don’t be that”. Mostly the story is a mystery, trying to solve some murders, and it was really fun to follow along, even though the motive is a hint dropped early on not exactly subtly.

It all ends with a wonderful epilogue that brought on the waterworks.

Recommended for: people looking for a good mix of creepy graveyards and cinnamon bun characters

r/fantasy Bingo squares:r/fantasy Book Club; Ghost; Published in 2020 (Hard Mode); Features a Necromancer (Hard Mode); Optimistic (Hard Mode)

Scroll down on the author’s website to see some gorgeous art that I couldn’t figure out how to link to directly.