Rating: 4 stars
#CBR15 Passport Challenge: Different genres (paranormal fantasy)
Being a queer teen can be difficult enough, even if you don't come from a long line of magic users with very traditional gender roles. In Yadriel's family, the brujos can summon the spirits of the dead and help them find peace in the afterlife. The brujas have tremendous healing powers. However, Yadriel's family won't let him go through the traditional rite for brujos, because of the gender he was born with. The only ones who seem to fully support him are his uncle, who never really seemed able to tap into the family's magic in the first place, and his cousin Maritza, who is vegan and refuses to use blood of any kind (chicken blood is traditional) to perform her healing spells.
Yadriel and Maritza sneak into their church and perform the ritual themselves. Yadriel appeals to Lady Death, their family's patron saint to grant him the abilities of a brujo, and is both a bit shocked and elated when his chosen gender is accepted and he gains the powers to raise the dead. Of course, the first spirit he raises refuses to be sent off to his final rest - he wants to know both how he died so suddenly and unexpectedly and make sure that his friends are safe. So Yadriel is forced to hide the ghost boy from his family, who can all see the spirits of the dead, and help Julian (the ghost) try to figure out how his little gang/found family of outcasts is doing.
It helps that most of Yadriel and Maritza's family members are busy both preparing for the upcoming annual holiday that they all celebrate and trying to figure out what has happened to Yadriel's cousin Miguel, who seems to have disappeared without a trace. Of course, because this is a young adult novel, there is also the rather impractical and rather impossible attraction that Yadriel feels for Julian (who may not be gay, who may have an issue with Yadriel being trans, and most importantly, who is already dead and supposed to be sent on to his final resting place). Without spoiling too much, the first two issues don't turn out to be problems, the third is rather insurmountable.
This was the February pick for my local fantasy/sci-fi book club, but I was unable to go to the meeting to discuss it, as my mother very suddenly passed away on the very day that I was going to help chair the meeting. So no book club for me that month. From what I gathered from the other members, however, the book was fairly well received, although some felt it was not exactly aimed at them. Trine, the lovely lady who founded the book club in the first place, said that she very quickly needed to find out more about the author and the author's background, as there is so much in this book about being Latinx, and also about being trans, and it set her mind at ease that this was very much an #ownvoices story based in part by the author's own experiences (pretty sure the raising the dead part is creative licence, though).
I liked the central characters, Yadriel, Julian, Maritza (so great), Maritza's "boys", the little group of queer kids who Julian has been the leader of. It may be just that I've read a lot, but the overarching mystery of what happened to Julian, or what was up with Miguel's disappearance, and who was behind it all was not very difficult to figure out. It didn't really ruin the book for me that I had both the guilty party and the circumstances surrounding the crimes all figured out but to some readers, it might be annoying. I'm assuming some of it may come down to the fact that this is the author's debut novel.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that a young adult novel about a gay, trans Latinx kid falling in love with a ghost boy has appeared on a bunch of Banned Books lists in the USA, especially in Texas. I hope it means that a lot more teenagers get tempted to read it because it was a very worthwhile read (even with the partially predictable ending).
Judging a book by its cover: I really like the cover, and the characters look very much like they are described in the novel. I think my favourite part is the rather macabre depiction of Lady Death in the background.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.
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