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| My cat with my copy |
Title- Cemetery Boys
Author- Aiden Thomas
Series- N/A
Published- 2020
Page Count- 352 pages
Publishing House- Swoon Reads
Genre- YA Urban Fantasy, LBGTQIA+ Fiction
Rating- 4/5 stars
About the Author
Aiden Thomas is a New York Times Bestselling Author with an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. Originally from Oakland, California, they now make their home in Portland, OR. As a queer, trans Latinx, Aiden advocates strongly for diverse representation in all media. Aiden’s special talents include: quoting The Office, useless trivia, Jenga, finishing sentences with “is my FAVORITE”, and killing spiders. Aiden is notorious for not being able to guess the endings of books and movies, and organizes their bookshelves by color.
Aiden's debut novel, CEMETERY BOYS, is a Dia de Muertos paranormal romance about Yadriel (a gay, trans brujo) who accidentally summons the wrong ghost (Swoon Reads/Macmillan, September 1st, 2020).
Taken from Aiden's website.
Plot
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.
Taken from Goodreads.
Opinions
I had seen Cemetery Boys around a lot when it came out in September 2020, but for some reason I just didn't get to it. I had received some vouchers for Christmas, which I obviously used to buy books and one of them was Cemetery Boys. As this book is set around Halloween and Day of the Dead, I do now wish I had saved it for October as it's the perfect book for then, however, I hadn't read any YA in 2021 so I decided to make this my first YA book of the year.
I struggled with the first chapter, having to reread it to get more invested in the story. This rocky start did put a bit of a damper on my experience, especially after hearing so much about this book. However, I think this was just a personal preference as the writing was easy to engage with throughout. First chapters can be quite difficult to get right, but are so important to get right.
Despite the rocky start, I will say that the characters shone throughout, especially our main characters of Yadriel, Julian and Maritza. Each felt very unique and real. They had their own quirks, which meant they interacted really well as a group. I felt the banter between them was funny yet realistic. It didn't feel out of place for teenagers (I feel really old writing that as I'm only just twenty). I felt that Aiden handled the more serious side of their conversations well. It's important that these topics are handled among all ages and having these characters discuss identity, sexuality and religion was nice to see. The relationship between Yadriel and Maritza was so strong throughout. They were always supporting of each other, despite their differences and views. It could have easily become spiteful and it was nice that it didn't go down that route.
This isn't really a critique about the book, but the romance did feel a bit rushed, yet it worked. This book takes place over three-four (I'm unsure) days and by the end of it Yadriel and Julian are a couple. Romance is normally where I have a lot of issues with books, but something about this one and how they bonded worked for me. I did think at first that the final chapter was over a year after the initial events, which would have made more sense for their relationship, but it was actually the next day. I would have preferred a longer time frame for their relationship, but the time pressure made the stakes higher and for once convinced me that romance in books isn't always a bad thing.
I felt that the middle section of this book was really where Aiden Thomas was able to show their talents as a writer. There was a nice balance between action and calmer moments. The plot progressed at what felt like a natural pace, with information being revealed about characters at the right moment and the characters development (across such a short time span) was really good. This was the section where I became fully invested and didn't want to put the book down.
Having already talked about the beginning and middle, let's talk about the ending. I didn't like the ending. I felt the reveal of his uncle being the killer came out of nowhere. Normally, you get a few clues as to who the killer could be, but this came out of nowhere and felt out of character. The motives were also quite weak, with it just being out of spite. I feel like once they resolved the issue and the dead where brought back to life, the emotional repercussions of it being a family member were skated over a bit. I would have liked more emotional exploration there.
Ultimately, I did enjoy this book despite the rocky start and end. Aiden Thomas has established themselves as a good YA writer. I know they have another book coming out this year and I am interested to see what they do. It reminded me how much fun YA can be, especially as I'm not reading as much and am slowly moving away from YA.
What did you think of Cemetery Boys?
Carenza :) x
