Thank you @NetGalley for this eARC of #SummerSons


Based on the synopsis I was excited for this book, and was not let down.

The story of the MC and his refusal to believe his friend could die by suicide took him on a road that gives him answers too.

I did find myself at times asking okay how is this supposed to it in. But in the end it all came together.

*Thank you to the publisher Tor for an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review*
5 stars! Wow this book was a wild ride! Summer Sons is volatile, gothic, and gritty with a sprinkle of humor!
If you like stories with:
-a dark academia setting
-very queer characters! (trans character and m/m love) the author is trans too btw
-spooky ghost stories
-southern gothic vibes
You should read this book!

This story is about Andrew who is left drowning in grief after his best friend Eddie dies. His death is ruled a suicide, and Andrew inherits all of Eddie's belongings and his house. Andrew believes there is something suspicious about Eddie's death and goes to Eddie's university to uncover the truth.

Ok my fav thing about this was the characters! Andrew is morally gray and going through a lot of grief but man his character development throughout the story was so beautiful! Also I loved the discussions of discovering one's sexuality, stunning! Summer Sons has creepy haunted houses, the smoke and mirrors of high brow academia, fast cars, bad boys, and lots of queer rep!

Also the VIBES of this book were awesome! We get sweltering southern heat, grief, and ghosts all at once! The creepy dark history of the south is front and center here.

Summer Sons also has drug use, drinking, and sexual content. It is set at university and the characters are in graduate school so be aware of that, this book is adult. I loved that the characters are in their twenties though, we need more books like this. The voice of the writing was really strong and felt authentic to the age of the characters.

Omg if you liked Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo or Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor then I think you'll enjoy this one too. It has the dark academia and ghosts of Ninth House and the queerness and violence of Hurricane Season.
A perfect book for the summer, highly recommend!!

This is a well-written novel about loss. It's so well written that there were times that I needed to put down the book and take a breather.

Andrew lost his best friend in an apparent suicide. This death leads him to question the nature of his relationship with his friend while his friend's ghoul is giving him hints that he was murdered.

The loss of Eddie colored this book in a gray feeling. All of Andrew's actions are about him dealing with this sorrow. Every time he might be doing something healthy, Eddie's ghoul comes back to drag him down again. The bright spots are his roommate, Riley, and Riley's cousin, Sam. Andrew doesn't trust them, but you can feel their concern leaking through the pages. The characters become more fleshed out the more time Andrew spends with them.

I can't accurately describe how beautiful the prose is. It haunts you after putting the book down.

Review based on an advanced reader copy provided through Netgalley for an honest review.

I loved this book so much I immediately reread it. And then read it again.
This is, in my opinion, the perfect queer southern gothic horror story. Period.
It’s poignant. There are elements of mystery. Self discovery and acceptance. Danger. Ghosts. Loss and grief. All dripping with southern humidity and charm.
Mandelo has crafted characters with such depth and intensity, you’re almost surprised that they don’t leap off the page. I would happily read another twenty books set in this universe, and can’t stop talking about Summer Sons.

The imagery in this book was really gorgeous. Incredibly well-written, engaging and evocative prose, all the stars in the world for the prose, would definitely pick up another one of this author's book.

The main kicker for me, with this book, was the...lets say languid pacing. So slow. This book is almost 400 pages, and I would say nothing of any urgency happens until the last 20%. This it is yknow a bit of a mystery, but the scenes were so repetitive. Andrew wakes up. He is haunted by the revenant in a way he refuses to acknowledge. He gets an ice coffee. He doesn't answer his emails. He drives somewhere and drinks or smokes. This happens for the other 80% of the book. Maybe that's on purpose, who knows, it does certainly build an atmosphere, but it did make it a trial to read, and that was with my infatuation with the writing itself.

When this book was good, it was really really good. Obviously I enjoyed it, since I rated it 4 stars. But most of the time it was just a slog.

I will say: I adore Riley, the roommate that Andrew inherits from Eddie. I loved the way he was written, and he frequently had me laughing. I did love the character writing and relationships throughout but again, I just I got so tired of reading. It was hard to keep invested. Overall I do recommend it, especially if the tagline about it being a queer southern gothic fast and the furious ronan and kavinsky-esque tale. Just be prepared.

This is a difficult book to review. I loved a lot of things about it and I enjoyed reading it, but small things about the characters bothered me. As a southerner from the other major city in Tennessee, it was interesting to see Nashville as the setting, and I liked that the south felt like a complex and complicating factor in the story. In many ways this book feels like both a study of and an ode to southern masculinity, and that didn't always resonate or ring true with me. It's possible that I'm just not the intended audience for the book, and I'm OK with that. But in my lifetime of experience as a southerner, young men who drag race on the expressway while intoxicated and throw garbage out the window without a thought (ugh why does Andrew do this repeatedly?) do not also think or care about how the legacies of slavery and racism are responsible for their current comfort. I don't need books to moralize and preach, but I found it hard to connect to characters who never spare a single thought for ideas of basic common sense or consideration of others.

I liked the ghost story aspect, although the original incident with the boys in the cavern and how the curse affected them seemed a little hazy. I could see who the villain would be from the first time that character was introduced, but I didn't mind too much. I agree with other reviewers that the story dragged and repeated a bit in the middle. I enjoyed the writing and the atmosphere.

Summer Sons is a wild, frenetic ride from start to finish and I am *obsessed*. I know we're all hooked on dark themes right now, considering the state of everything, and this scratches that itch with such perfection that I want to start it again immediately. The ominous taint of old, dark southern magic spreads across every page until it reaches a fevered pitch, and you'll chase it every step of the way like a ravenous haunt. Spread the word. This book is how we're launching queer spooky season this year.

I intentionally took my time with this book because I felt early on that it would be one of my favorite reads of the year. And it was. There was a lot of buzz around this one and it fully lives up. It truly is a southern gothic tale, with a heavy splash of dark academia.

The characters are beautiful and nuanced, the story original and captivating. It’s sexy and heartbreaking and eerie. It’s everything I could’ve asked for. That. Ending.

I can’t recommend this one highly enough. So grateful to have received an ARC from NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

The number of genres this book crosses is incredible. And to think that doesn't make this book utter chaos....perfection!!! I loved the cross of southern gothic and dark academia.

Summer Sons
by Lee Mandelo
Macmillan-Tor/Forge

This is a book that has curses, friendships, secrets, drugs, sex, murder, and hope. This book will keep you turning pages, asking questions, looking out your window, and under your bed. This book will make you cherish your friends, ask more questions, and love harder.

Two best friends, Andrew and Eddie, friends since childhood but one is keeping a secret. Separate for six short months but soon to be back with each other. Then Andrew is told Eddie killed himself. Andrew doesn't believe it. He comes to find out what happened. But something is waiting for him.

Paranormal, evil in the shape of humans and inhuman form is something Andrew has to confront to find answers. He has to walk in Eddie's steps to find out who or what Eddie encountered. What he doesn't know is they are already waiting for Andrew.
Good and creepy.
I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom for the ARC of this book!

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo is a southern gothic/dark academia/hot summer night fever dream that explores relationships and how they can affect every single part of our lives without us even realizing it.

Andrew and Eddie did everything together. Best friends from childhood, they'd been through the most pivotal, and most horrific, parts of their lives together. When Eddie dies while he's away at school, Andrew is devastated. When he gets to Nashville to take care of Eddie's affairs, Andrew realizes he left behind more than just a vast estate. Andrew is haunted by a shade of Eddie, a presence that pushes him to figure things out because there's no way he killed himself. In Andrew's journey to find the truth, he's inundated with grief and visions of death and a life Eddie left behind - cars and drugs and strangers. When Andrew lets Eddie's phantom past his crumbling control, he realizes there's more at stake than he realized.

Summer Sons is an atmospheric read with the heat of Nashville creeping under your skin when you read about it. Lee Mandelo is an incredibly descriptive author, so we get amazing detail that adds so much emotion somehow, just in the way a bead of sweat can glance off a collar bone. It's dark and angsty in the best way, and the emotional journey Andrew has to take of losing someone closer than a brother - a soul mate even - realizing that maybe what they had wasn't what he thought, realizing there's more to life than living for one person. It's very emotional and very well done.

The queer aspect is there, yes. But the thing that really struck me at the core was the absolute blind queer pining. The feeling of being lost because there's a thing you haven't found yet, haven't examined and looked too closely at. Denial and assurance and confusion. It's all woven so expertly into the heart of the story, that it's completely necessary and rang with such a peal of truth. I love the relationships in this book to that effect, and I loved the casual queer rep in this book.

The story overall is an all-over read - meaning it's heart-pounding and thought-provoking and soul-crushing all at the same time. Mandelo perfectly pulls together a group of characters that I immediately cared about, and put them in situations that spiked my anxiety for them. It's a really twisty tale of darkness and curses that weaves in the ugly side of academia, the injustices faced in the system by BIPOC in mostly white programs, and the bloody lengths some people will go to in the name of toxic love.

A fantastic adult thriller for anyone looking to be emotional and spooked at the same time!

The good:
Incredibly atmospheric - I could smell, taste, hear and feel this book. Complex characters and a solid ending.

The bad:
It was very slow-paced, and I almost wanted to quit it halfway through. A lot of repetition of the same emotions: the uncertainty, the circular hunt for answers, etc.
A solid story that could use a more heavy-handed editor.

This book is not in genres that I typically read but when I read the description - a sweltering, queer Southern Gothic that crosses Appalachian street racing with academic intrigue, all haunted by a hungry ghost, I was hooked and had to read it. I was not disappointed. Summer Sons is dark, magical, and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. Among the spooky, southern ghosts stories and hot boys, it's also surprisingly funny during parts. Well done on the part of Lee Mandelo..

This was EVERYTHING I had hoped it would be and more! The descriptions of the horror aspects are viscerally chilling. The twists and turns, never knowing who was the real culprit, and the dawning horror of realizing just what was going on at the end -- chef's kiss. I loved the heartbreaking but bright way Andrew realized his sexuality and came to terms with it. There's also splashes of positive representation of marginalized groups, all deliberate without being agonized over. And body positivity! For men! There are several times in the story where the author mentions the little fat rolls on different men's stomachs and I LOVE IT. It's such a subtle little detail, written as a throw-away line almost.... but it's there and it's purposeful. I seriously cannot recommend this book enough -- unless you don't like horror or gore. If you don't like either of those, then stay far away from this book! But if you can handle that kind of stuff, this is an absolute winner. I'm buying a copy for my home bookshelf.

Intense, beautiful, brooding. An inventive, surprising story and upends popular tropes and tells a story that is a breathless, astounding work.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for the arc!

4.5, rounded up.

So, if you know me, you know I don’t do spooky shit. At all. But something about this little blurb made me give Summer Sons a chance, and I am so glad I did. I finished it a day and a half ago and I’ve been thinking about it nearly nonstop since.

Andrew is mourning his best friend, Eddie, who has passed from an apparent suicide. Reeling with the abrupt loss, Andrew packs up and moves almost literally into the life Eddie was living in Nashville, desperate to figure out why his friend would leave him. Between trying to hunt down leads and clues, dealing with ghosts and haunts, and figure out what the hell Eddie was doing with his life, Andrew is also trying to maintain his own life as a student at Vanderbilt, where Eddie was also enrolled. His new roommate Riley and Riley’s cousin, Sam, bring along a whole other slough of issue for Andrew to sort through and things get dark, really quickly.

Summer Sons is, pardon the bad pun, a haunting story that I literally felt in my gut as I was reading it. I often found myself holding my breath for passages at a time because it got INTENSE. You can literally feel the summer in Nashville and all the dark, wild shit Andrew gets into along your skin as the story progresses.

I loved the way the story blended in all this dark, macabre academia and then just a crew of young people out racing cars and and making questionable choices with drugs and alcohol together. Like, it was just a bunch of regular young adults being young adults while also dealing with ghosts and some magic and terrible, awful things and I bought every second of it.

The characters are COMPLETELY flawed and real and often selfish assholes (hello, Eddie) and yet I still found myself charmed by a majority of them as often and I was annoyed by them. It was long, but I didn’t feel it was too long that my interest waved. Rather, I kept devouring the story, wanting to know what could possibly come next. Also, when I was correct about a hunch I had regarding a plot point I shouted, “I fuckin’ knew it!” out loud at two am. Vindicated.

I really enjoyed this story and I know that it has taken up a bit of a permanent residence in my brain for the foreseeable future.

Also, Sam Halse must be protected at every single cost. If you disagree, don’t talk to me ever.

Summer Sons sucks you in and doesn't let up untill the last page. Lee Mandelo has created a well crafted, fast paced story filled with ghosts, street racing, and what it means to be left behind after the death of a loved one. Andrew's emotion lifts off the page as he's faced with the death of his best friend.

SUMMER SONS is an addictive, thrill seeking ride of a novel. It slow builds the story with intention, pulling you further into the suffocating heat of the gothic south and then begins to send chills down your arms as the supernatural/horror elements begin to reveal themselves. The pace quickly picks up once more characters and plot threads are introduced in the story. There’s a certain point in Sons where the story sinks its teeth into you, and no matter what may try to grab your attention, the book won’t let you put it down. I sprinted to the ending. There was a sense of urgency Lee had built and I needed to know what was happening; the answers to my questions. While the supernatural mystery is the central pillar of the novel, to me, the real story being told here is one about the insurmountable grief that comes with loss, identity and repression, and the catharsis from being able to let go, from being able to move on.

Which is why even though I found the mystery's conclusion to be a bit underwhelming, I can look past it due to everything else Lee did being done so well. An excellent debut. I'm hoping there's another story to tell in this world, I would be first in line to read it if so.

Where do I even start with this book? I finished it two days ago, and it is still thriving in my head, despite have already started my next read. I don’t know what it says about me that I allow myself feel the imagined emotions of characters in novels more strongly than emotions as a result of things that actually happen in my life. Probably that I need some kind of therapy. But if that describes you too, be prepared. I’m not going to get into specifics, but there might be spoilers here for the overall story beats.

The story seems simple enough at the outset. Grieving over the death of his best friend Eddie by apparent suicide just days before they were supposed to me up again for graduate school, Andrew decides to continue on with those plans in the hopes of finding out what really happened to his friend. He does not believe Eddie was the type to commit suicide. The friends shared a complicated history, and a supernatural power that gives them an ability to sense and manipulate ghosts, called haunts, and in general mess around with death and dead things. This complicates Andrew’s grieving, because the haunt of Eddie is still hanging around, and Andrew feels like it’s trying to tell him something. Along the way, Andrew meets up with the people Eddie knew in and outside the university, and eventually unravels the mystery of what happened to his friend.

It was a little rough at the beginning, I’ll admit. Andrew’s intense grief made him unlikable. He chooses all the worst ways to grieve, driving Eddie’s car, wearing Eddie’s clothes, sleeping in Eddie’s bed. Once he starts developing relationships with the people around him though, the novel really gets into what I believe it is really about, the journey of self-discovery Andrew has to go through. His relationship with Eddie was amazing, as close as two people could be, but he’d always believed it to be platonic, and he remembers the angry, violent ways Eddie responded to any suggestion of homosexuality between them. It really trips Andrew up when everyone he meets in Nashville assumes that he and Eddie were a couple, and he can’t understand why Eddie didn’t seem to care. Eventually, Andrew learns from various sources what Eddie’s real feelings for him were, and that he had done his own growing as a person while he was in Nashville. In my mind, the saddest takeaway from this novel is my belief that, had the two been able to reunite the way they had planned, there would probably have been a much healthier openness about how they felt towards each other. That they never got that chance is tragic. The other side of this story is Andrew’s growth into an individual. After having followed Eddie’s lead in all things since childhood, Andrew initially flounders at having to decide anything for himself. While Eddie’s shadow still looms large in the minds of everyone he meets in Nashville, Andrew is able to learn things about himself that move him towards both being a complete person on his own, and into a healthy grieving for his lost friend.

I really enjoyed this novel. I found the writing evocative and enjoyed the supernatural elements thoroughly. I love a good magic system, and there was a nice cohesion to what Andrew was doing, despite his stumbling along blindly into things he didn’t understand. I could probably have done with one or two less muscle car scenes, but that’s probably a matter of personal taste. This book’s release is perfectly timed for the biggest horror season of the year, and I plan to recommend it extensively.

I am OBSESSED with this book, and will be taking every available opportunity between now and release day to try and convince everyone that it should on your list. Summer Sons is deliciously, gorgeously gothic. It’s queer. It’s heartbreaking and healing at the same time. It’s about love and grief and all the other emotions that tangle us up as human beings. But it's also well aware of the literary form in which it exists, incorporating and interrogating well known elements of the Southern Gothic, from racism to classism. With a keen eye to how the elitist strictures of Academia can serve to perpetuate both.

Andrew and Eddie have always been together, bound by a shared secret and a dark gift. Until Eddie gets accepted early to their graduate program, leaving Andrew to trail six months behind. When Eddie kills himself shortly before Andrew is supposed to join him, he carves a hole in Andrew’s life, dragging a trail of secrets in his wake. The circumstances of his death are murky, and the deeper Andrew digs the more he realizes how little he knew about Eddie’s new life without him. All around are strangers, and none stranger than the haunt that stalks his shadow, haunting Andrew with the possibility that Eddie’s death was not what it seemed.

As much a critique of the Southern Gothic as it is a shining star of the genre, Summer Sons delivers all the horror, pathos, murder, and mystery you could possibly want in a book.