e-Audio, 07:30:19
Narrated by: Kevin R. Free & Michael Crouch
Release Date: July 13, 2021
Published by: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Read from: July 23-26, 2021
Stand-alone
Source: Overdrive Audio
TW: Black Queer Trauma, Microaggressions, School Shooting, Suicide, attempted rape, Gore, bullying, insects
For Readers Interested In: Horror, Supernatural, YAGet Out meets Danielle Vega in this YA horror where survival is not a guarantee.
Jake Livingston is one of the only Black kids at St. Clair Prep, one of the others being his infinitely more popular older brother. It’s hard enough fitting in but to make matters worse and definitely more complicated, Jake can see the dead. In fact he sees the dead around him all the time. Most are harmless. Stuck in their death loops as they relive their deaths over and over again, they don’t interact often with people. But then Jake meets Sawyer. A troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school last year before taking his own life. Now a powerful, vengeful ghost, he has plans for his afterlife–plans that include Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about ghosts and the rules to life itself go out the window as Sawyer begins haunting him and bodies turn up in his neighborhood. High school soon becomes a survival game–one Jake is not sure he’s going to win.
*MY THOUGHTS*
All I needed to know about this book was that it was about Black Horror and I was sold. But ultimately when it came down to it, I wasn’t as scared as I wanted to be. More grossed out. But we’ll get into why. I just wish some things had been different.
Jake is one of the only Black kids at his school. He’s so much less cooler than his brother, which makes him an easy target to be bullied. Add on to that the fact that he can see the dead, and you can see why it’s always said that he’s weird. But one of the dead people he meets is Sawyer. He is a teen who did committed a school shooting and then turned it on himself. Now as a ghost he has vowed to get revenge from in his after life. And it involves taking Jake.
Ok so I went into this wanting something light and outside the box when I started reading this. I wanted something that that would be scary and completely different from my last read. But then when I read this, it was a lot heavier than I thought it would be. I thought it just be scary, but this turned out to be so much more. It took a look at the pain of being African American and LGBTQ and living with a parent who doesn’t accept you. It explored the pain of feeling like no one is there to protect you because the other parent is too scared to call the other out.
I guess what I’m saying is I thought it tried tackling so many topics that another aspect of the story got lost. It wasn’t scary at all. The ghosts were in so many scenes, but they weren’t doing creepy things. (If that even makes sense…) Like the story opens with ghost, but instead of being scared, I think I laughed and said wth out loud.
The was a surprise. Since it was Black Horror, I figured I needed to love it. But even though it didn’t quite hit the mark for me , there were some surprises. Like the ending. That’s when it seemed to actually have some really scary/serious shit started happening. I just hate that once you’re like ok, this is scary it ends.
Normally I don’t care for more than one POV, but this time I was ok with it. To be honest, I think this was the best way to handle this story. Especially the way things ended. It wasn’t something that could easily be explained from just one person. I was glad that the author decided to do more than one POV. Which brings me to the narrators. They were also wonderful. Michael Crouch is one of my all time favorites. I love reading whatever it is he has narrated because it always turns out amazing. And this one was no different. This was my first time listening to anything that Free narrated tho. He also did well which made this audio even better.
This book wasn’t what I was expecting and took things a lot deeper than I expected. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it should be, but I thought it turned out to be a great story. It had a surprising and shocking ending, all things I like. So its no surprise that I liked this one too.
Overall I give this
