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

dark emotional hopeful tense fast-paced

3.0

The YA dystopian genre is a strange one, because it attempts to depict corruption and destruction at a societal scale while being primarily focused on (and limited by) the concerns and perspective of teenagers. Hell Followed With Us is about babyqueer angst and awkward teen romance; the apocalypse is merely a backdrop.

Well, no, that’s not fair. Hell Followed With Us is about queer rage, and the urge to go apeshit on your abusers. Except that emotion is overshadowed by more literal viscera.

Body horror and gore galore – too much, I think. It felt kind of unearned, maybe because the emotional beats weren’t hitting for me, maybe because there’s blood and guts right from the start with no build up.

The book wants to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to

the Graces; they’re hideous and brutish monsters, but also they’re not monsters and they deserve love and dignity, but also they’re hideous and brutish monsters.

There are more inconsistencies. For example, if Benji was raised by a Christofascist doomsday cult, why does he speak and act and think like he grew up on Tumblr? We’re told he read a book about queerness but, sorry, that doesn’t explain what ought to be a total ideological overhaul, not to mention how he learnt all the correct terminology, made sense of his identity and came to terms with it, etc.

He isn’t shaped by the cult (except literally in his Seraph transformation).

It’s as though he came from a different story altogether and was transplanted into this dystopian AU. And I find it hard to believe that Benji’s top priority right now is finding a boyfriend like cmon...

You’re a divine bioweapon, remember?

The thing is, Hell Followed With Us is a melodramatic exaggeration of a queer kid who grew up religious and found community at a youth club. That’s all it is, once you strip away the gory set dressing; all the apocalypse stuff is angst-ridden hyperbole. It’s appealing to the imagination of teens. It’s YA. It’s not for me.

CONTENT WARNINGS: transphobia, abuse, violence (including lots of gun violence), blood and gore, body horror, vomit, disease, death