(I’d love to know if White was influenced at all by The Last of Us, because the imagery often evokes Naughty Dog’s 2013 masterpiece. He doesn’t shy away from gory detail Hell Followed With Us certainly ranks among the most violent YA books I’ve ever read, and the body horror is off-the-charts bonkers. White’s prose, while not exceptional, is solid and satisfying. It’s a great reminder, too, that our community is not a monolith, but is made up of individuals who are still figuring things out. They openly disagree on subjects such as binding, pronouns, and transitioning, and not only is it extraordinarily refreshing, but it made me (as a trans person) feel seen in a way that I haven’t even from many novels featuring queer characters.

Almost every major character is part of the LGBTQ+ community, and this allows White to do something I haven’t encountered often in literature-portray a spectrum of perspectives on queerness from queer characters. Let’s start with the good: this is probably the queerest book I’ve ever read. It takes place in a world in which a cult has used a bioweapon to eradicate most of humanity, and focuses on Benji, a sixteen-year-old trans boy who is on the run from that fundamentalist sect and finds refuge with a group of queer teens who have managed to survive the apocalypse-but they don’t know that Benji is infected, and he will soon transform into Seraph, an abomination capable of completing the cult’s destructive work. Hell Followed With Us left me deeply conflicted. I received an ARC of Hell Followed With Us from Peachtree Teen in exchange for an honest review.

Benji hell followed with us