A review by perkyanda
Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

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

5.0

If you like horror dark academia mystery southern gothic chaotic bi energy death magic, all with a trans character who it literally does not matter is trans and who you can’t tell is trans til it just happens to come up, I cannot recommend Summer Sons highly enough. The only thing that could improve it are more female characters but then it couldn’t be a book that is largely about male relationships. And it has one of the BEST scenes with a female character who is otherwise unimportant I’ve seen in a long time.

And it’s spicy at points which was NOT expected in a, well, horror but not horror but horror ok mystery maybe maybe suspense? Is dark academia even a genre or just a sub genre or a blend genre I don’t fucking know book

And while I normally don’t actually love spice in normal books and was surprised at the level of detail it didn’t feel gratuitous it felt extremely relevant to character development bc repression and male friendship and sexuality is a big part of the book

Honestly this book is just a sweltering mess of OH MY GOD GO TO CLASS and DO YOU WANT TO GET YOUR DUMB ASS MURDERED TOO and IF YOU TALKED ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED which I guess is a big part of why it has to be about idiot boys instead of idiot girls, even though as an idiot woman I prefer reading about idiot girls. But anyway, these idiot dirt bag druggie boys are adorable and I want to give them all a good talking to. But hey really excellent book about male friendship and relationships and the blurry (ha!) line between homoeroticism and brotherhood. 
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