It’s one thing to bring a boy home in Yadriel’s traditional Latinx family—but it’s quite another thing to bring home a ghost boy… It’s finally here! The book I’ve been most excited for this year. Cemetery Boys is a YA fantasy novel by debut author Aiden Thomas that combines queer romance, gender transition, coming-of-age, latinx culture-inspired magic, and a murder mystery. It was originally scheduled to come out in June, but thanks to coronavirus reschedulings, we’ve had to wait three more agonizing months. Thankfully, the book will finally be out tomorrow, September 1.
Yadriel knows that he is a brujo, capable of fulfilling the men’s role of summoning and releasing spirits—he just has to convince the rest of his family and community of this. The other brujx don’t seem to know what to do with Yadriel and have been putting off the ceremony that would grant him access to the magic entrusted to them by Lady Death. So Yadriel takes matters into his own hands, with the help of his cousin Maritza. They perform the ceremony and Yadriel summons a spirit—the spirit of the recently murdered Julian Diaz, his school’s resident bad boy. Julian is one stubborn ghost, and he won’t let Yadriel release him until they investigate what happened on the night of his death and check on his loved ones. But the more time Yadriel and Julian spend together, the harder it’s going to be to let him go.
As you might guess, I’m a sucker for any book that takes place in a cemetery. In this case, Yadriel’s family lives within the grounds of a secret cemetery that serves the brujx community of East Los Angeles. Not only is it populated by ghosts and witches on a daily basis, but it’s also the site of their most important celebration, Dia de Muertos. The cemetery comes alive with food, flowers, and family as the brujx prepare for the one time of the year that their loved ones who have moved on can come back and visit. But just because graves and ghosts are a normal part of life, doesn’t mean they can’t still be scary. This book has some truly terrifying moments. In an early scene, Yadriel and Maritza traipse around the abandoned old church, a crumbling structure that holds memories of ancestors long gone. Even Julian is afraid to be left alone in a building so clearly haunted—by more than just him. And not all ghosts are friendly. Spirits that linger too long are in danger of turning maligno—becoming aggressive, twisted versions of themselves. It’s somehow even more terrifying when a once friendly, familiar spirit suddenly loses control. And of course, there’s the murder mystery. Yadriel may be used to seeing ghosts, but not the ghosts of teenage classmates who have been killed in unknown circumstances. Who is Julian’s murderer, and what did he do with Julian’s body?
Apart from cleverly weaving in threads of horror and mystery, Cemetery Boys also does a great job of tackling the fantasy trope of gendered magic systems. For the brujx community of this book, men are granted the ability to guide spirits while women can heal the living. In this way, they keep life and death in balance. But how does a transgender person fit into a strictly gendered magic system? The unwillingness of the community to confront this question leaves Yadriel stuck in a sort of limbo—unable to fit into the women’s role, but not allowed to step into the men’s. But this isn’t an issue with the magic itself, just the people who practice it. Yadriel is in fact able to summon and release spirits, even without society’s approval. In different vein, Maritza bucks tradition by refusing to sacrifice animals for healing magic, which would violate her vegan principles, and instead follows the male-dominated path of metalsmithing. Together, they help teach the community that honoring tradition should not get in the way of growing and adapting. Magic is big enough to accommodate new situations, and the issues that humans get so hung up on are not such a big deal to the gods. It also takes an outsider like Julian coming in for Yadriel to realize he is not alone. He may feel like the black sheep of his family, but there are other queer and trans people out there in the world and there have probably been other trans brujx before him. He doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone about gender or magic, he just needs to be true to himself.
If you need a simultaneously spine-chilling and heartwarming read about ghosts, romance, and gender-affirming magic, then Cemetery Boys is absolutely the book for you! You can find it in stores starting tomorrow, or order it online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Once you read it, come back and let me hear your thoughts in the comments!