Review: Aiden Thomas – Cemetery Boys

I already shared the Cemetery Boys book tag a few days ago, and today, I’m back again with my 5 star review.

Goodreads Synopsis

Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him.

When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.

However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie up some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.

Review

When a book has you crying at 5% in, you know it’s going to hit hard.

Cemetery Boys was one of my most anticipated releases of 2020. I’ve been desperate to read it for months. So even though I’d preordered a book box with the book, I couldn’t wait for it to arrive and purchased the ebook so I could start it on release day. And I have zero regrets, because as high as my expectations were, this book lived up to them perfectly.

I firmly believe this will be a new comfort read for me, one I’ll reread again and again when in need of comforting, and that’s honestly the highest praise I can give any book. It’s this perfect fantasy with a contemporary feel, full of funny moments but also full of hard-hitting ones. Overall, I found it a rather fluffy fantasy, but it does have its impactful moments, and I thought it had a really great balance between romcom aspects and more impactful ones.

Yadriel and Julian have my absolute favourite dynamic, and it was consistently there from the moment they met. Julian just… will not shut up, and Yads has had this long-suffering weariness from the minute they met. Both of these characters are characters you can’t help but love, and their relationship is so special to me, because they both have these reasons to believe they’re not worthy of (romantic) love and it’s wonderful to see them proving each other wrong. Because they’re both so incredibly loveable, and they deserve the world.

The trans rep was honestly… so incredibly special to me as well. I already cried twice during the first two chapters, because I felt so seen in some really difficult struggles. And it was just amazing to see how this book does deal with transphobia in Yadriel’s day to day life, but in a way that never makes this a heavy book to read, which means it’s such a safe space to process and engage with these issues.

Have you read this book? Are you planning to?