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A review by kateywumpus
Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White
5.0
Okay. Let me preface this that I like this book. This is a good book, and will easily be in my top 10 books I've read this year. 5 stars. Would I recommend this to everybody? No. Firstly this book is grim. Even though it ends on a hopeful note, it's only really hopeful in the context of the book because the world the characters lived in is totally fucked. Like completely fucked. But it's fucked in an interesting kind of way that you'd only really see in anime. In fact this book would make a killer anime as long as they don't censor anything.
Secondly this book is squick. Content warning for lots of body horror, monstrosities that are a love child between John Carpenter's The Thing and Cronenbergs and are very drippy, transphobia, religious abuse (onscreen), physical abuse (offscreen), and underage sex (offscreen). If you can get through these things, then, yes, I would recommend this book for you.
The representation in this book is top notch. The main character is a gay trans boy who doesn't have physical dysphoria for the most part. (He's got worse issues to worry about than what his body looks like). Mostly he's just got social dysphoria, which I understand. He just wants people to see him as a boy, which only starts happening when he joins up with the teens and young adults at the LGBTQ+ center where the majority of the book takes place. The center is a smorgasbord of representation of all kinds. Few of the named characters are white, and they're all queer in some way. One of the major side characters even use xe/xir pronouns. God forgive me, but I'm old and neopronouns still throw me for a loop whenever I come across them. I do my best, however.
I really don't want to say much more about the book. The less you know going into it beyond the blurb, the better off you'll be.
Secondly this book is squick. Content warning for lots of body horror, monstrosities that are a love child between John Carpenter's The Thing and Cronenbergs and are very drippy, transphobia, religious abuse (onscreen), physical abuse (offscreen), and underage sex (offscreen). If you can get through these things, then, yes, I would recommend this book for you.
The representation in this book is top notch. The main character is a gay trans boy who doesn't have physical dysphoria for the most part. (He's got worse issues to worry about than what his body looks like). Mostly he's just got social dysphoria, which I understand. He just wants people to see him as a boy, which only starts happening when he joins up with the teens and young adults at the LGBTQ+ center where the majority of the book takes place. The center is a smorgasbord of representation of all kinds. Few of the named characters are white, and they're all queer in some way. One of the major side characters even use xe/xir pronouns. God forgive me, but I'm old and neopronouns still throw me for a loop whenever I come across them. I do my best, however.
I really don't want to say much more about the book. The less you know going into it beyond the blurb, the better off you'll be.