Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White - NO

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White, 448 pages  Peachtree Teen 2022 $12 Language: R (151 swears 72 'f'); Mature Content: PG-13 (underage drinking, implied oral sex, abusive relationship); Violence: R (bloody deaths and gore) 

BUYING ADVISORY: HS, ADULT - NOT RECOMMENDED 

AUDIENCE APPEAL: LOW 

16yo Benji, born a girl, wants to be a boy (transgender), likes boys, and is the Angel’s weapon to purge the Earth. Benji escapes and befriends the rebels becoming even more conflicted on top of identity struggles and dysphoria. Benji meets an LGBTQ+ group and joins the center keeping the fact of being a weapon a secret. Much violence takes place and loyalties are broken and built. A true mix of dystopian and horror. 

Hell Followed With Us contains too much swearing. I struggled to follow the confusing circumstances because the author shoved a lot into one story. There’s too much going on to fall into the world and enjoy the storyline and it also kept me feeling distant from the characters. I do appreciate the author’s notes about the story’s origins and reasons and also content warnings. The made-up pronoun, xem, added to the confusion. Benji is presumed white. The other ethnicities are quoted as "more non-white than white". 

LynnDell Watson, Delta High School Librarian