Bumpy Oak Books

3 stars

**I received an electronic ARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for honest review.**

Andy Mientus presents Fraternity, a young adult novel centered on queer students at a boarding school where something metaphysical is about to change everything. Blackfriars is a school known for putting out students who go on to be someone. But while at school, the secret societies and cliques are in full swing. Zooey is a transfer student who is quickly clocked as queer. This makes him a target for jocks like Ryan Godfrey. But it gains him an invitation to the Vicious Circle where the other queer students meet in secret.

The author includes an author’s note at the beginning of the book which includes content warnings. These are incredibly important to read for this book.

The characters are the strength of the novel, undoubtedly. The 90’s setting. The three queer kids with different backgrounds and different intersectionalities with queerness. Zooey, Leo, and and Daniel were welcome representation of different experiences with queer identity and with utterly different experiences of community. There was the inclusion of the political impacts of the time including the secret meeting places and groups for queer folk and the AIDS crisis as well as church conversion residential centers. All were thoughtfully included and written in ways that would be accessible to the young adult audience of today.

This novel honestly was doing too much for me. The school drama plot line. The three character perspectives. The occult plot line. It was just all a lot. I love occult stuff, particularly mixed with academia. But, I honestly think the book would have been stronger without the occult inclusion and staying more of a pure dark academia or “historical” queer novel in as much as the 90’s is historical. As such, the occult was a weak thread that led to what I felt was a weaker ending. It also lessened the emotional impact of the things that were happening with the historical context because of the shift to focus on the spell-casting or the impact of said spell-casting.

As it was, this one was just middle of the road for me. I appreciate the representation and historical context, but was utterly out of the paranormal inclusion. I’m not sure who to really recommend this book to either as a result, but I do appreciate the opportunity to read this work early.