"Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him--the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world's population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can't get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with. But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC's leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji's darkest secret: the cult's bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all. Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick's terms...until he discovers the ALC's mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own." -- Summary via Goodreads
Review By Lillian K.
5/5 Stars
The book Hell Followed With Us is probably one of the best, if not the best, pieces of Teen/YA fiction that I have every read. The author has jammed emotion between every page, and overall fully developed every character (in a way that doesn't feel unrealistic) and filled every plot hole. For instance, unlike most books in which the author has the story narrated from a teenager's perspective, this book actually felt like it was being narrated by a teenager. The vocabulary used was used in sensible ways, so much so that for once I could see the characters of the book for what they were intended to be: teenagers. This is an aspect further pushed by the fact that the teenagers depicted in the book are in fact thrust into a very adult situation: surviving their world's apocalypse. The characters, despite having to deal with something that would push the boundaries of any group's abilities, still approach the situation like a normal group of teenagers. Teenagers acting like actual teenagers in books isn't something I, as a reader, see enough, and it was almost therapeutic to read something that didn't make the teenager narrator describe pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis in vivid detail using less long, but just as complicated, words. The author didn't just nail making their characters relatable either, they expanded on each character as much as they could in a 448 page long book.
(Spoiler territory starts now-ish)
You can feel Benji's disgust as he throws up his own organs. You can feel Nick's guilt as he betrays the trust of one of the only people he can relate to. You can feel Theo's squirming desperation to be recognized and praised, you can feel Faith's tentative uncertainty as she talks about her religion, and you can feel Alex's sparks of anger as they shove the person they blame for the death of their boyfriend into a wall. Emotion is packed into every single word, leaving you asking what your own grey matter is doing up there in your head as Benji laments on his own (decaying) grey matter. The well-made characters really brighten the book, as well as the book's angst-ridden plot. That being said, Hell Followed With Us is a book that doesn't really give its reader a break; it's a book that starts with gore, and a book that ends with gore. There's blood between each and every character's fingernails, and brains left to lay out on the streets, all vividly described. If the characters aren't recovering from the death and despair that comes from the gory parts of the book, they are in the gory parts of the book. Between the gore and the emotion, the author makes a flavorful sandwich of a story that practically punches the reader in the face. Overall, Hell Followed With Us is an amazing book that wraps you in a expertly crafted world that you can really see from both the author's perspective and your own, something that is truly a mark of good writing.
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