Now back to your regularly scheduled content! Books!
I actually read Cemetery Boys back in August—it was my pick to read with my book club!—but due to the general chaos of my life for the past few weeks, I haven't felt like sitting down and writing a review until now. It's maybe for the best though, because I feel like it's such a fun book for autumn/spooky season, and maybe more appropriate to talk about now than in the throes of summer.
On that note, it’s officially autumn, and I am READY. Bury me in a pile of sweaters and crunchy leaves, honestly. I cannot wait to be able to leave my house and not immediately be covered in a sheen of gross NYC grime/sweat!
Anyway, I can't remember exactly where or how I first heard about this book—but I do remember reading that it was a queer YA tale about a boy who falls in love with a ghost, and my reaction was, "Wow, this checks…a lot of boxes for me!" I added it to my list immediately and honestly, this was such an absolute joy to read. Thinking about it again has me grinning at my computer like a dork—it's just so good!
So, let’s get into the review:
Cemetery Boys, by Aiden Thomas
Plot: What would you do if you summoned a ghost, and then you couldn't get rid of them?
This is the predicament Yadriel finds himself in. Yadriel is a trans boy born into a traditional Latinx family of ~magical~ brujos/brujas. Most of his family members struggle to really accept his gender (with the exception of Maritza, his super cool vegan cousin and bff), and as such, they don’t accept him as a brujo—which is all Yadriel wants to be.
Magic in the story is really gendered—men are brujos, endowed with the power to help the spirits of deceased individuals pass into the next life, and women are brujas, who are able to perform healing magic. Usually brujx's come into their powers during their quince celebrations, but because Yadriel is trans, his family doesn't think of him as being a "real" boy, and so he was never celebrated as a brujo when his time came.
Determined to prove them wrong, Yadriel decides to perform the sacred brujo ritual himself (with the help of Maritza), and is thrilled when Lady Death grants him his brujo powers. Yadriel decides that the next step is to summon the ghost of his recently murdered cousin to help him pass into the next world—obviously, if he does this, his family will have no choice but to accept him as a brujo, right?
Yadriel's plan backfires when he accidentally summons the spirit of Julian, who he recognizes as the resident bad boy from his school (and, incidentally, a total heart throb). Yadriel is annoyed at the mistake but also figures, a spirit is a spirit, and all he needs to do is release any spirit into the next world to prove himself as a brujo. so, pitches the idea to Julian, but Julian has other plans—he's determined to figure out what happened to him (ie: how the heck did he wind up dead?!) and wants to check on his friends/tie up loose ends before he goes.
Yadriel and Julian make a deal: if Yadriel will help Julian with his unfinished business, Julian will let Yadriel release his spirit. The two boys join up with Maritza and her adorable, doofy dogs to set their plans into action—but, the more time Yadriel spends with Julian, the less Yadriel wants Julian to leave this world for the next…
Thoughts: Okay, wow. Again, this story checked a lot of boxes for me: It's queer, it's YA, it's an adorable love story, it involves GHOSTS, it involves a MURDER MYSTERY…I mean!!! Hello!!!
Things I especially enjoyed:
FIRST OF ALL, I read an interview with the author where they said that the idea from this book came from a TUMBLR WRITING PROMPT. I scream, I shout, I love this fact so much. I don’t know why this is so cute to me, but as a former devotee of the Tumblr (aka the pit of hell), I think this is so cool??? Anyway!
I liked that this story was decidedly not a coming out story. Don’t get me wrong—coming out stories are SO important, but I feel like for a while we got a lot of coming out stories, and at this point I’m really more interested in having characters who just are queer, without having the whole story centered around that aspect. Like, I want more stories that happen after the coming out has happened, and that’s what I got with this.
It felt like the story gave a super realistic portrayal of a family's reaction to someone being trans. By this I mean…I feel like there are a lot of stories where either the trans character is immediately accepted with open arms, or else they are completely shunned/rejected. In my reading experience, I haven't seen as many stories that exist in the huge, vast gray area in between the two extremes.
In this story, we know that Yadriel's family loves him—we see that very clearly. They haven't cast him out of the family (the bare minimum, but…), and they try their best to use his correct name and pronouns. At the same time, they won't accept him as a brujo because they don't really think of him as being a boy. We see Yadriel's grandmother use his dead name and make a comment about how he'll "always be her little girl." We see his father instruct him to "stay with the rest of the women." And so on.
I think that this is so interesting, because it shows how layered and complicated acceptance and coming out can be! Yadriel loves his family so much, but also deeply resents that they can't seem to fully embrace his identity. And like, Yadriel's family is not transphobic or homophobic, and they aren't trying to be purposefully hurtful when they say the wrong things—they just don't fully understand. I think that this portrayal of Yadriel's family dynamic felt really authentic and probably is super accurate to a ton of queer people's experience—as is the fact that Yadriel, like many trans people, often has to shoulder the burden of educating people about what it means to be trans, which I'm sure is SO exhausting. Like, imagine having to constantly educate people about your very existence? Phew.
Basically I just really, really appreciated the way that the author treated this aspect of the story and I think it's not something that you usually see on the page.
I really enjoyed the way that the author depicted "family" in the traditional sense, as well as in the "found family" sense. Yadriel is extremely close to his blood family. They are everything to him. I don't think we really even ever hear about friends or anyone else in Yadriel's life—even his best friend, Maritza, is also his cousin. At the same time, Yadriel's story is very much about trying to prove his birthright and prove where he belongs within his family, which is a struggle.
On the other hand, we have Julian, who doesn't have much in the way of blood family (except his older brother), but does have an extremely tight knit group of friends who he thinks of as his family. His friends are basically a group of queer misfits, and they all accept each other without question. It was an interesting juxtaposition: we have Yadriel trying to be accepted by family who he is bound to by blood and who should inherently accept him, and then we have Julian choosing the people who are his family because they accept him in the first place.
Maritza!! I have to talk about her because I really loved her, even though she was a side character. She was loud, feisty, feminist, and sure of herself—A+ tbh. She is vegan, which I'm sure is super difficult for a lot of cultural reasons—not the least of which is that as a bruja, her magic requires animal blood.
As such, Maritza refuses to use her powers, because it would go against her vegan beliefs. Obviously this warmed my own lil vegan heart—but also, as a part of the overall story, I thought it was really interesting to think about how Maritza has powers that she won't use because tradition requires something that she doesn't believe in, whereas Yadriel wants so badly to use brujo magic but cannot, also because of what "tradition" dictates.
In both cases, we see examples of what is "traditional" ie, the way things have always been…which, despite the best efforts of the elders (lol), don’t jive with modern ways of thinking. In a way, I think this shows how maybe traditions need to be adjusted to better fit the new, younger generations—or even just in general, people who exist outside of expectations. When Yadriel and Martiza do eventually use their powers, we see that they are capable of it and even good at it—so it was never that they couldn't do it, it was simply that tradition was holding them back. SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!
I obviously super loved the relationship between Yadriel and Julian. I loved how Julian just accepted Yadriel without question, and it was SO wholesome to watch Yadriel experience true, unconditional acceptance for maybe the first time. MY HEART.
There was one part in the book where Yadriel makes a comment about being "the first trans brujo," and Julian kind of scoffs at him and is like "You're definitely not the first one, " implying that there were certainly other trans brujxs that came before Yadriel, but they probably just weren’t talked about because they don’t fit the popular narrative.
This was honestly a minor, passing comment in the book, but I loved it so much! Queer history is history, period. Queer people have always existed, we just don't always hear about them. I feel like a lot of OLD PEOPLE love to make comments about how "everyone is queer nowadays," and "people weren't TRANS back in my day," and it's like…nah dude, there aren't more queer people today than there ever were—the difference is just that there is more cultural acceptance of queerness today than there ever has been. People are more comfortable being out and public now than in the past. Queer people and trans people have always been here!More generally, I really enjoyed like…how I didn't feel like any part of the story was "overdone," if that makes sense? I feel like sometimes with YA books, you really get beaten over the head with like…the point the author is trying to make, haha. I could see a lot of ways the author could have really smacked readers upside the head with queer activism, Latinx representation, and so on—but, I never felt like it was trying too hard to be profound or make the point.
The things I didn't like:
Honestly there are not many things I didn't enjoy, but one glaring plot hole kinda nagged at me. The magic that's discussed in the book is, again, very gendered. Women have healing powers, men have the spooky dead people powers. Yadriel cannot do healing magic because he's a boy. We hear about a time when he tried and lit (literally) backfired. Okay, fine.
The thing that bothered me about this partcular explanation of things is that the author never addressed what kind of magic could be done by people who…exist outside of the gender dichotomy. Like, not everyone identifies one way or the other, right? Gender is a spectrum and there's a whole lot of area in between "male" and "female," so….SO!?
I guess part of me just wished that there was even a passing discussion of nonbinary people within the brujx community because surely they, too, exist. I realize that not every book can touch on everything, but I felt like this was kind of an oversight to not mention at all, especially because so much of the book was about Yadriel’s magic being linked to his gender identity.
A minor point and a low-key spoiler so don't read the italic if you don't wanna know:
At the end of the book, Julian is able to see all of Yadriel's deceased family members at the day of the dead celebration, even though earlier in the book we are told that only brujx can see spirits (ie, Julian is not a brujo so he shouldn't be able to see them)??? Idk, just a minor plot hole, unless I missed an explanation for this? Shrug.
So there you have it! I thought this was super cute and fun! It has all of the ghosty spooky elements that I love while at the same time being extremely adorable and romantic, somehow?? I loved it!
Would recommend for people who want a cute Halloween-y read, especially if you don't do ‘scary’ but appreciate the vibes (ghosts, graveyards, murder mystery).
Other stuff:
As I said, I am *very* excited that it’s finally fall, aka SPOOKY SEASON. I have lots of ~on theme~ books lined up for the coming weeks—probably too many, if I am being realistic, haha.
Also, tis the season for CRAFTS and boy oh boy, I’ ve got some good stuff planned. Given the current financial constraints (Penny, my child, is very expensive) and the fact that I cannot walk into a craft store without spending 5 billion dollars, I am having to make due with the supplies I already have on hand—but that will hardly limit me, because your favorite grandma (me) enough supplies from projects past to fill an apolypse bunker (in case of the end times, I’ll die wearing homemade sweaters and wrapped in crochet blankets). It is actually kind of fun to try to do projects using only the stuff I have on hand—fun in the most absolutely nerdy sense of the word—so, yeah, we’ll see what I come up with.
Looking forward to a few weeks of pure joy, before the weather drops to frigid degrees and I am a cranky curmudgeon again until spring. Wheee!
Until next time,
-Amy