Cemetery Boys

This was a very sweet story. It features a trans teen boy from a Latinx community where the women can heal people, and the men can release earthbound spirits to the afterlife. As a trans boy, the main character wants to prove that he can perform the tasks of the brujos, but his father, one of the community's leaders, won't let him. Immersed in mystical Latinx magical culture, this story of identity and belonging was one of the most heartwarming stories I've ever read. However, I had trouble getting pulled into the story until the last one hundred pages, even as the relationship with the main character and the spirit of a gay teen boy develops. I'm not sure why, because I loved the protagonist, his best friend, the love interest, and the development of the other characters. There's also a murder mystery amidst all this, but I still found it hard to get into. Despite my inability to connect with the story, I think this book may well end up a contemporary classic of YA transgender and Latinx experience.

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