A review by _viv_
Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

This book tore me apart in the best way possible.

By going into this book being surrounded by religious grandparents and their homophobic and transphobic rhetoric I latched onto this book with vigor. The shame the main character, Benji, felt hit close to home. I found myself aching with understanding.

I loved the prose and actually enjoyed the quotes at the beginning of the chapters. I believe it set the scene well and drew readers into the story along with the characters. Being raised religious made it feel as though I was in on an inside joke. While many of the quotations were fictional or modified by the main antagonist group The Angels, they honestly felt as though they were something my grandmother would say to me like it was factual.

While this is a five star read for me, there were a few things that could be improved.

Namely, the side characters. None of them, other than the love interest, are memorable. I found myself mixing them up throughout the book and by the end I'd realized it was because I had not attachment to any of them. They felt more like a grocery list of representation through different gender identities, ethnicities, and sexualities.
Once they were introduced they all served basically the same function: stay in the background and, if necessary, be severally injured or die to serve the plot and make Benji feel bad.
They didn't really have hobbies or interests or their own goals other than to keep the people in their group safe, something they all wanted. While I do think the author had good intentions with this the overall story suffers for it. By not caring about any of these characters, or not remembering them in great detail, I didn't care when anything happened to them. They felt more like dialogue fillers than real characters. 

It also meant Benji only had real relationships from his abusers, people in the cult, and Nick (his love interest). I would've loved to see Benji form more platonic relationships with the other characters. This was honestly such a small issue to fix. If the author had stuck to only a few side characters we would've had more page time to focus on them. We would've had time to form attachments to them, their goals, their hobbies, their love lives, etc... (plus it would've left more time to explore the identities, cultural aspects, etc... they were representing) 

Which would ultimately lead to more hard-hitting moments when someone died because we care and love and want them to succeed because we know them as a character. We know all they didn't get to accomplish and all the business that went unfinished. We know why Benji would hold so much guilt over them dying, not only because he was taught not to feel/process grief, but because they were his friends.


I am not autistic and as such I do not feel comfortable speaking about the autism representation through the love interest Nick. I will say that I wish Nick's POV was included more throughout the book. We see him sparsely and at seemingly random intervals. His POV is in third person rather than Benji's, which is in first.
Now I understand we couldn't know too much because of his backstory as an Angel himself, but that doesn't negate my point.
Perhaps this is just the part of me that was starving for more character dynamics to be introduced (I will focus more on characters than plot in most books, if you can't tell by how character-centric this review is). I wish his and Benji's relationship was more fleshed out before they got together and I think that would've helped by showing more of Nick's POV throughout the book. Such as three Benji POV chapters and one Nick chapter. That way we could've learned about him slowly and helped balance out where the hell their relationship came from. Plus, it would've offered more chances for us to see his character development as the book progressed. Rather than the giant leaps it takes by the time we see his POV again. 

Next up we have world building. While the Angels and the town near them are described in great detail, along with the history of the Angels, the rest of the world just...isn't. Now this partially makes sense considering Benji was raised in a cult that likely restricted that kind of information from him and other members. I think a lot of the lack of overall world building can be attested to this fact. Which is another reason I think more of Nick's POV was necessary as it could flesh out the world where Benji was blind to it. 

Lastly, the body horror element. I absolutely loved, loved, loved the genre, the setting, the horror. It was well balanced horror between being beautifully intriguing and grotesque. It reminded me of a car crash in that way. This goes back to the prose, but I just had to mention the fact. Even the horror elements have a certain kind of beauty to them that just wraps around you. 

This is the kind of book that sticks with you. The anger in every page is potent and perfect if you're an angry, queer teen. Or just anyone really. But especially if you are angry. It is asking you to be angry with it, to let that feeling sit with you for a moment. To revel in anger rather than try to push it down and away. It illustrated perfectly what I think the first step of healing is: rage. At who/what hurt you, at those who didn't fix it, at yourself for staying in a system of abuse that hurt you for so long. It showed that sometimes there isn't niceness and harmony in healing but instead the gritty underbelly that comes first. 

TWs for Hell Followed With Us:
Graphic body horror, graphic transphobia, homophobia, murder (of children), gun violence, graphic gore, eco-fascism, religious abuse/evangelical cults, vomiting/bodily fluids
 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings