Rippling with righteous fury. . . . Ultimately a story of both queer survival and queer perseverance. . . . Hell Followed With Us is, truly, like nothing else you’ll read this summer, and its deft balance of destruction and rebirth offers a satisfying, if far from saccharine, end.” —Paste I was supposed to do this with Dad. We were supposed to leave Acheson together. We were supposed to make it to Acresfield County together. Now he’s a corpse in the lawn of a crumbling hotel, brains soaking into the dirt, returning to earth for out of it he was taken. When I started reading Hell Followed with Us, all I knew from friends was that it was spectacular. I’d read the synopsis and expected some level of horror…but I was not ready for the first chapter. Immediately, we are thrown into an apocalyptic world, and the main character Benji’s experience is filled with religious trauma and body horror. And it’s incredible. Andrew Joseph White masterfully crafts a world that we experience, quite literally, on a visceral level. This book contains depictions of graphic violence, trans-phobia, domestic and religious abuse, self-injury, and attempted suicide. I’m almost certain YA horror has never been this good. Striking in both narrative and premise, its no wonder I’ve heard nothing but praise for this book.

A timely and riveting tale of queer teens surviving and resisting fundamentalism any way they can. Andrew Joseph White holds a mirror up to the monstrosities within all of us, and I couldn't look away."— Ray Stoeve, author of Between Perfect and Real A collection of short fics from the universe of Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White Language: English Words: 455 Chapters: 1/? Comments: 11 Kudos: 88 Bookmarks: 4 Hits: 412 The sound of boots slows and stops. My legs fail me. I stumble to the ground, pressing my palms to the burning road. Grief is a sin. Loss is God’s design, and to mourn the dead is to insult His vision. To despair at His will is sacrilege. How dare you betray His plan by grieving what was always His to take? Unfaithful, disgusting heretic, you should be hung from the wall so the nonbelievers will know what’s coming for them. Romans 6:23— for the wages of sin is death.The author uses lots of scripture from the Bible and teachings from these cult leaders and they’re either at the beginning of each chapter and/or interspersed in the chapter. When it was mid sentence, it could throw me off, or sometimes it felt very repetitive. Also with the pacing, I felt it would be a lot going on and then it would slow down to day to day life and it could be jarring. This book made me feel as understood and validated as I was unsettled and pissed off. With vivid prose and a mirror held up to the ugliest parts of ourselves, Andrew Joseph White is poised to become a defining voice of our generation.”— H.E. Edgmon, author of The Witch King

This one wasn't really *for me* I feel like, less because of the intended audience age and more because of intended audience's level of experience. I'm glad to see others getting so much out of it but unfortunately for me there were a few too many half-baked plot elements & inconsistencies to get past and really delve into and appreciate the good parts within. Trans kids fighting off religious zealots in a post-apocalyptic scenario" is a storyline I didn't know I needed so badly, but here we are. There is so much to say about this book. About how the body horror and dissonance intersect with the experience of the trans main character. How it makes space for queer rage in a unique way. The ways in which the found family aspects are some of my favourite representations of queer communities. But I don’t really have words for all of those thoughts and some are not mine to speak on. So instead, here’s a cobbled-together and shortened version of what I can say about this book: White states that this book ‘began life as a fit of rage.’ Rage is expressed in a world under the grip of extremists with their demented version of religion. White has written a book of gore, violence, and literally vomiting out one’s guts. Fast-paced and difficult to read but more difficult to not read, the underlying message of blindly following a leader is clear.”— Shirley Mullin, Kids Ink Children’s Bookstore, Indianapolis, IN HELL FOLLOWED WITH US is a book about queer kids trying to live long enough to grow up; the world presented here is often cruel, and so are the people within it. While I love setting things on fire, if any of these topics will burn you, please stay safe.

Being transgender is who you are, and the pain is what the outside does to you. The pain is what happens when you and the world go for each other's throats. In the ALC, I almost forget that being trans can hurt." I pretend Dad is out there. I tell him I was good and to go on without me. I tell him I’ll meet up with him eventually, one day, maybe, I promise. at the end of it i realized that there was a love triangle going on. and with at the end i mean when i finished it and saw other reviewers say that they didn't care about the love triangle - lol, my bad, i guess i didn't either.

Also: Look out for triggers that include abusive relationships, deadnaming, & misgendering. And… probably, definitely, NOT a book for serious Christians.** I do think theres an audience for this, one I hoped I would be a part of but sadly am not. If your interested in reading please be aware of how dark and gorey it is, because I’m a horror fan but this was to much for me. I will say as someone with severe religious trauma, it was healing to see a trans boy wipe out hundreds of evangelicals You had known that you were no longer like them the second you had left the remnants of New Nazareth behind. for a day. two. a week. several weeks. then i took it off my currently reading shelf and decided to give it another go in the new year. HELL FOLLOWED WITH US is a horror novel about fundamentalism, hatred, and violations of the human body. Content warnings include:

Autopian model for queer community masquerading as a dystopian YA novel. Andrew Joseph White has dared to create a story where queer kids of all stripes love, fight alongside, and care for each other despite their personal differences and the myriad of things looking to kill them. It is as beautiful as it is hard to read. This is what horror can and should be."— Cliff Helm, Left Bank Books, St. Louis, MO Achimera of horror, romance, and something stranger. Hell Followed with Us won me over to its vision of a grotesque future where we’re still here, still queer, and more monstrous than ever.”— Rose Szabo, author of What Big Teeth However, while these aspects are horrific in their own right, I had the strongest reaction to all the world-building around a fictional pandemic. Descriptions of dead and mangled bodies? No problem! Mentions of masks? No thank you. Encountering my lived reality of existing in a pandemic in a fictional story was somehow scarier than anything else. Burning It All Down with Queer Rage

I’ve been running for days but not like this. Not with my legs screaming and my sneakers pounding the sidewalk in time with my heartbeat. I pretend Dad is right behind me, that I can’t hear him because I’m breathing too hard, that I can mistake him for a blur in the windows across the street. Hello, can I interest you in some pain and queer rage? (ft. autistic and trans rep as well as religious cults and commentary on systemic oppression)the plot comes in two forms: it either doesn't move or it moves so fast i barely know what's going on. my main thing, if i had to put it into words, which i guess i do cause i have committed myself to this whole "review business", is that i cared neither about plot nor characters. White draws incredibly profound parallels to our present reality, especially in relation to the effects of our own pandemic on our everyday lives, both on a large and small scale. The systemic struggles of this apocalyptic world are eerily familiar to that of our own, and are able to cut to the core of some of our major societal issues. This book points a finger at the upper classes who hoard resources while asking marginalized individuals to risk their lives on the front lines. And how these exact privileged individuals refuse to take the smallest of actions (like pulling their masks over their nose) to protect them in return, despite refusing to share the accessibility to health and safety resources. But even more than that, it unleashes fire and fury on the elite, those that put the systems of oppression in place and those that uphold them.