Review by Ms. Masters
TL;DR
Overall rating: 4.5/5
Genre: Mystery & thriller; romance & relationships
Length: 344 pages
One-sentence summary: Determined to prove himself a real brujo (shaman who can communicate with the dead) to his very traditional Mexican family, transgender teen Yadriel accidentally summons a ghost of a former classmate days before DÃa de Muertos and starts the difficult task of finding out what happened to him.
Tough topics: transphobia, deadnaming, gang violence, homelessness, loneliness, supernatural violence
Read-alikes: Tigers, Not Daughters, by Samantha Mabry; When the Moon Was Ours, by Anna-Marie McLemore; Shadowshaper, by Daniel Jose Older; Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Available formats: Print version is in the library; borrow the audio and electronic versions on the Sora app or SoraApp.com. Sora also has the book in Spanish!
I had heard great things about this one--and they turned out to all be true! There is a lot to like about Cemetery Boys:
LGBTQ+ representation. Both the author and the main character are transgender. The narrator of the audiobook is transgender, too, actually! The two main characters who fall in love over the course of the book are both guys.
Latinx representation. The main character is Mexican, but many other Spanish-speaking cultures are represented tangentially.
East LA setting. I always like to see my own city featured in a good book.
Tough topics handled sensitively and naturally. This isn't a book about being gay or about being transgender or about being homeless or about being Mexican. It's a murder mystery and a paranormal romance and some of the people in the book have the experience of being Mexican or gay or transgender or homeless because some real people in real life have those experiences too.
Believable romance. So much YA romance is either at-first-sight or fraught with drama, a la Romeo and Juliet. The romance in this book grows slowly and believably and is very functional and sweet. The banter between Yadriel and Julian is natural and fun.
Surprising conclusion. The climax of the murder-mystery plot of the book was one I didn't see coming, which is always nice.
There was some exaggeration or stereotyping in the story--mostly of "bad boy" Julian, who falls into all the bad-boy tropes, but also of vegans and even of Latinx people. I think none of it is offensive, though, and the relationships between the characters are totally believable. I highly recommend this book for readers who enjoy adventure, mystery, romance, or the paranormal. It's got something for everybody!