This is not a book review.

It is not a book review because I loved Legendborn by Tracy Deonn and Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas so much that I can’t review them because a review requires at least some objectivity, and I don’t have any. Nor do I have any chill. I read each of these two new releases in less than 36 hours, and I would have gone through them faster if I didn’t have to eat or sleep, and if I didn’t have to occasionally check on my kids to make sure they hadn’t burned the house down while I was reading reading. (For the record, Legendborn clocks in at 501 pages including author’s notes and acknowledgments, and Cemetery Boys is 344.)

But this isn’t about how fast I read Legendborn and Cemetery Boys. It’s about why you should read them. There are far too many reasons to fit into a single post, so I’ll hit the highlights here and let you discover the rest for yourselves as you gobble up what will definitely end up on my top 10 books of 2020 list – and may end up vying for #1.

Extraordinary Characters

I’ve admitted it before and I’ll admit it again; up until five or so years ago, I was one of those people who thought YA lived over there where the youngs were, while I lived in the “adult” section. I count myself among the fortunate who have been enlightened, however, and now I read at least as much YA fantasy as “mature” work – if not more – because it’s where some of the best and most diverse genre fiction is happening these days. YA also tends to be where the most character-driven fantasy lives… and fiction of the character-driven sort is absolutely, positively my jam.

One of the most compelling aspects of both Legendborn and Cemetery Boys is that Deonn and Thomas have spent the time building fully fleshed out personalities and realities not only for their protagonists and main supporting characters but also for all the characters who inhabit their pages. Not all of those details make it to the page, of course. If that were the case, every book in the world would be interminable.

Nevertheless, a reader can tell when the author knows because all the pieces fit perfectly, interactions are consistent, characters react to various situations in ways that makes sense given past responses, and we can feel characters grow and change over the course of the story – even if every step isn’t laid out in full view.

The person who binds everything together, of course, is the protagonist (and sometimes the antagonist as well), and it’s easy to forge connections with Bree and Yadriel. Many adults make the mistake of thinking teenagers are (1) physically larger children, (2) thoroughly selfish beings requiring instant gratification, or (3) smaller adults with impulse-control issues. The rest of us know those interpretations are complete bullshit.

Teenagers are multilayered individuals who are experiencing a lot of big emotions for the first time. Many experience various kinds of trauma. They’re trying to figure out who they are in communities that don’t always welcome who they need and want to become. They may be citizens whose parents have been deported. They may have joined a gang because they didn’t have another family. They may be brilliant scholars of color thrust into elite, white academia.

Both Deonn and Thomas have captured the essence of being a complicate, messy, strong, delicate, angry, determined, powerful teenager with such understanding and grace that teens will find understanding and hope and adults will find a reminder of what it was like to be young: how difficult, terrifying, and wonderful.

Extraordinary Stories

Of course, of all the things that bring you to a book, the most important thing is the story. I don’t want to give away too many details (because spoilers), and I would have been a trench coat filled with rage bees if anyone had spoiled Legendborn or Cemetery Boys for me, so we’ll keep it brief.

Legendborn: After her mother’s death, Bree Matthews and her best friend decide to attend a high school residential program at UNC. Once there, Bree witnesses several strange, supernatural happenings and stumbles upon a secret society called the Legendborn who claim to be the heirs to Arthur and his Knights, trained to keep the world safe from demons. As Bree becomes involved with the group, she discovers she too is heir to a magical heritage, but what will the Legendborn do when they discover her secret?

I mean… that’s the summary, but the story is so much more nuanced, so much more… alive than I can explain without ruining your opportunity to discover as you’re reading, and I refuse to do that. What I will do is tell you that you’ll learn about African inspired magic, real Southern history with a hint of Southern Gothic, and what happens when a traditionally white – and very powerful – organization is asked to face the consequences of the violence it has wrought.

Cemetery Boys: Yadriel comes from a family of traditional brujx, which means they have trouble accepting he’s trans and, therefore, should be be a brujo and not a bruja. When he can’t wait any longer, Yadriel and his cousin Maritza perform his quinces ritual – and it works, thereby affirming what Yadriel and Maritza already know and that their patroness, Lady Death, accepts Yadriel as he is.

Immediately after their success, however, their cousin Miguel is murdered. When no one is able to find his body, Yadriel attempts to call his spirit but ends up stuck with the spirit of Julian Diaz, a boy he knows vaguely from school, instead. Yadriel and Julian strike a deal: the former will help the latter make sure his friends are okay, and Julian will let Yadriel release his spirit so his family will know he’s a true brujo. Of course, the more time the boys spend together, the less they want to be parted…

Again, there’s much more to it, but one of the things I love most is the way that, though there are a lot of bumps with his family, Yadriel’s deity accepts him immediately for what he knows he is. There’s something very special and comforting in that interaction and also in Julian’s acceptance of Yadriel amid his bad boy machismo. We know almost right away that even though the world has made him hard, he’s deliberately chosen a specific place that will remain soft and kind. It sets him apart from other characters like him, from tropes and stereotypes, and makes him very fully Julian Diaz. It allows this particular story to work its magic in its own special way and to flow the way it flows.

Which, by the way, is absolute perfection.

What We Can Learn from Legendborn and Cemetery Boys

What? Learn from fiction? The audacity!

Both of these extraordinary books function on two different teaching levels.

Level the first: Deonn and Thomas have done more work than we, the ignorant, deserve in including any explanation whatsoever of what it’s like to be part of a marginalized group in their books. Because if you’re not, if you never have been, the onus is on us to do the work. It’s on us to make the effort in digging it out, taking it in, and then going to learn more. As a queer Jewish woman, I know how uncomfortable the history of a marginalized group can make people, but we’ve spent the last four years watching what decades of polite inattention can do – what “oh, that’s not an issue anymore” can do.

Trust me, it’s still an issue. We all have gaps. We’ve all made mistakes in not digging deeper. Okay. Fine. Put on your gown-up pants and do it now. Take cues from books like Legendborn and Cemetery Boys, figure out what you don’t know and ask questions. Get book recommendations. Go to a lecture. Do something. Deonn and Thomas and countless others are offering you opportunities to jump in. So jump.

Level the second: Reading choices have certainly grown more diverse, especially in the last couple of years, but there are many, many people who are still searching for themselves in fantasy – still looking for a very special book that feels like home. In 2019’s The Dark Fantastic: Race and Imagination From Harry Potter to The Hunger Games, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas examines the treatment of Black characters in fantasy, Black female characters in particular, and found their roles to be, for the most part, villainous, ancillary, or sacrificial. Deonn’s Bree Matthews is none of those things. She has agency, she will “Survive. Resist. Thrive” not in spite of her history (which I’m not going to talk about here because spoilers) but because of it and because of who she is. Because even though there are things she gets from others, she has a will that is her own and no one else’s.

And Yadriel is so brave, so different from anyone else in his community – yet willing to take the risk of existing on the margins – because he knows who he is and isn’t going to let anyone take it from him. There are countless kids walking that line right now who feel alone and terrified. He will give them companionship and maybe even a little but of peace. Bree and Yadriel will teach so many people that even if things are hard right now, there are others on the same path and that, eventually, you will find one another. That it will get better.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas (Swoon Reads) is out now.

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (Simon Teen) releases September 15th.