A review by deedireads
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

emotional sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Those who liked Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie will like this, and vice versa. I thought it was a bit repetitive of Shuggie and started a little slow, but I loved the Romeo & Juliet retelling and liked the book overall.

For you if: You like emotionally devastating queer literary fiction.

FULL REVIEW:

Thank you, Grove, for the advanced review copy of Douglas Stuart’s highly anticipated second novel, Young Mungo. I was a big fan of Shuggie Bain, and so it’s no surprise that I enjoyed this one too.

Young Mungo is about a 15-year-old boy in Glasgow, Scotland who’s secretly gay and caring for an alcoholic mother (sound familiar, Shuggie readers?). We bounce back and forth in time; in the “present,” Mungo is whisked off on a “fishing trip” with two imposing men his mother met at AA. In the “past,” we see him meet and fall in love with another young man named James, manage the expectations of his infamous older brother and doting older sister, and forgive his mother over and over — until the two timelines crash together, tragically. No spoilers, but I will say this: mind the trigger warnings on this book, if you have any need of them.

I liked this book overall, but I’ll start with the parts that didn’t work as well for me: First, this felt really, really repetitive of Shuggie. That’s sort of obvious from the synopsis, but even the mood, tone, and pace mirrored Stuart’s first novel. And that leads to the second thing: I felt so impatient as I made my way through the slower first half of the book; when would I get to something that felt different?

But if you can make it to the halfway mark, you’ll be rewarded;  it does pick up and distinguish itself. Young Mungo is, eventually, a much more explicitly gay story (a love story!). And I didn’t realize this before I read it, but it actually turns into a legit Romeo and Juliet retelling, which was a fun discovery that I loved. It’s what finally lent the book a fresher feeling, in my opinion. By the end, I couldn’t tear my eyeballs away.

Fans of Shuggie will like this one, I think, and vice versa. I can’t wait to see what others think!
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