I’ve been dying to read this book since I first heard of its release. At its core, Hell Followed With Us is a story of queer rage and the power of being unapologetically yourself. It's brutal and violent, but frighteningly tender and real. This story tackled the dystopian genre in a way I have never read before, and it’s a point of view I think readers will love to see.

I knew from the moment I started reading Hell Followed with Us that this book would be like a sucker punch to the gut.

It's bloody, it's brutal, but it's so much more than that. This book is about queer kids working together to uplift each other and carve their own place into a world that seems rigged against them every step of the way.

I would heavily advise anyone interested in this book to check out content warnings before hand, because apart from the violence and gore, it deals with a lot of other very heavy topics. This is definitely one of my favorite reads of the year, but readers should be careful and take the time to read the author's letter at the start (which includes content warnings)!

This book was wonderful in its depiction of queerness and I loved that it didn't shy away from giving the side and minor characters their own complex problems and personalities. It was also super meaningful to see the spectrum of ways that characters experienced their queerness, rather than them all just being reduced to one specific type.

The writing style flowed also really well. You don't always see YA that gets this disgustingly descriptive in its gore, but White didn't shy away from any of the horrifying experiences the characters dealt with at all.

Hell Followed with Us is a must read for anyone who wants a cast of unapologetically queer characters who continue to persist no matter the odds. As I said earlier, it's definitely one of my favorite reads already, and I'm sure it'll continue to hold a special place in my heart.

[There are a lot of content warnings, but I personally believe that it was all handled well and it wasn't done for shock value.]

Hell Followed with Us is a celebration of trans rage and anger. It's also impossibly brimming with religious trauma.

Story switches between POVs at some points, but it's mostly from the POV of Benji, a trans dude who runs away from the Angels, an eco-fascist white surpemacist Christian cult genociding the entire Earth using the Flood, which is a virus/plague which turns many of its victims into tools they further use in their murders (the Angel soliders inhale it themselves, but only a bit, as a way to take one step closer to God). Benji is their ultimate weapon in making (there are parallels there between his transness and his body being shaped and used against his will).

There are some points where the dialogue seem jarringly modern for a book set decades into the future, but we can't really ever escape the time in which we create. I also think that Benji mentally escaped the cult way too easily, with not quite enough lingering ideas, thoughts, and traumas implanted and caused by the Angels. But generally most of the flaws of the story get swept away in the sheer power of the plot, which is fast, gripping, and constantly changing.

Benji finds a found family in this big group of young adults which live in an LGBTQ centre. We only get to know a handful of the kids who Benji interacts with the most, but even with them I wished there was more space to get to know them (also I never did figure out what happened to Calvin). Benji got close with them immediately, which could be said to be unrealistic, but is also how a lot of queer kids react when they first find other queer people (but he did just escape a cult which fed him lies for a big part of his life which could make him more weary, so the scales are even, maybe).

At one point, I got triggered by the ( for me painfully realistic) interaction between Benji and his mother, but I took a step back and it was okay after a bit. Be mindful of all the possibly triggering content and read only if you're sure you can handle the story.

This story will definitely be one I remember – not (only) because I felt myself reflected in many aspects of it, but also because of the plentiful gore and grusome body horror, which is one of my favourite types (trans people and body horror, a love story for the ages).

What an amazing book!
The book is super exciting and would love to read more from the author!

Thankyou netgalley for the ARC

I can already tell this is going to be my favourite new book of 2022.

Hell Followed with us is the story of Benji, a sixteen-year-old trans boy in a post-apocalyptic world who fights tooth and claw to avoid the destiny forced upon him by the religious cult he grew up in.

This book is phenomenal, especially for a debut novel! The prose is sharp as fangs and slick as blood. It kept me on the edge of my seat from the very first page with its pacing and vivid imagery. The representation of all sides of the queer community is fantastic and realistic, and all I can do is applaud the author for executing it in such a brilliant way. Truly a breath of fresh air.

One of my favourite things about the novel was how it dealt with the idea of morality and what it means to different people. It's all about trying to be good in a world where good no longer exists.

Should you shove away the monster within, or embrace it?

“... When I started writing this book I just snapped and said, ‘If they want to see us as monsters, fine, I’ll give you monsters.’” - Andrew Joseph White (author)

when i requested to read this book i honestly didn’t expect for a review to be so difficult to write. this book is brutal. it is rage and resentful and bloody.
the characters are so very well written. i felt every bit of benji’s anger and pain, possibly because it resembles my own in a way, but getting to know him was like a punch in the face. like in a positive way! the love and acceptance that was felt throughout benjis found family breaks my heart it the best ways.
i absolutely adore this book and i can’t wait to annotate this shit out of a physical copy.

Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White follows transgender boy Benji. He is on the run from the cult that unleashed Armageddon. He desperately searches for a place to hide. The cult has infected him and with a dangerous bioweapon. After a close call, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, also known as the ALC. The ALC’s leader is Nick, who is autistic. Nick knows about Benji’s deadly secret: The bioweapon is mutating Benji into a monster that will destroy the rest of humanity. Nick offers Benji shelter on the condition that he use the monster to defend the ALC. Soon, Benji realizes that Nick has some secrets of his own.

This is such a unique story. I love how gory and dark it is. I would love to see what happens next.

Visceral, cathartic and monstrousness embraced, this book is so messy, so full of rage. There’s just something about the apocalypse being queer, about the structures that have caged us crumbling down allowing us to explore ourselves in a way that wouldn’t be possible within the structures.

The trans body as main theme. Pre-transition, body horror, transformation. Benji's body is used against him his entire life. He's made into a virus-infected bioweapon by the cult that raised him and once he undergoes the full transformation into seraph, the messiah six winged monster, extinction is brought forth to wipe out humanity. Humanity then finally reaches ascension to heaven. Religion and horror so deeply interwined that if you separate them you tear flesh. 

It's just always so refreshing to see queer characters engage in messy feelings, in general but also about their queer experiences, and trans characters in special need more space to do that.

I loved this so much. The sheer rage that comes screaming off the page paired with the absolute euphoria of finding people like yourself is perfect. It was just so good???? The world is so immersive and the story and characters are so compelling. Would 1000% recommend.

Benji is a trans boy trying to escape from the religious group that turned him into a bioweapon and ends up meeting and hiding with a group of LGBTQA+ kids that have been surviving in the support center they were trapped after Armageddon. Benji is hiding from the cult and trying to hide the changes his body is going through because of what the cult did to him.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a different story and I like that. I Really like Benji and all the other characters. I liked how diffent issues were addressed. It was a good debut. Sometimes I felt like the descriptions were a bit long but they don't take away from the story. I would recommend it.

Okay, let me start by saying that this book was unexpected in every way and I loved it precisely because it took me pleasantly by surprise.

Benji is a sixteen year old boy on the run from the cult that raised him, a fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world's population.
He searches for a place of refuge, but cornered, a group of teenagers from Acheson LGBTQ+ Center (ALC) comes to his rescue.
The leader of the ALC is Nick, an autistic but lethal boy, in fact he is an excellent marksman and knows Benji's darkest secret.
Nick offers him shelter anyway, only if Benji can tame his secret and not put the community at risk.
Benji can't help but be grateful for this hospitality, but grandfather the only one who keeps secrets hidden.
Hell Followed With Us is a dynamic, lively, surprising and engaging book.
I was enchanted by the author's writing, the topics handled with subject knowledge and tact. Nothing is taken for granted, nothing is left to chance.
The characters, in their variety, are complex, emotionally strong and well delineated.
Well laid out story development, too bad about the introduction. I found it a little difficult to get into the story right away, but once you get into gear you won't let go of the book.
I agree that if you loved Tamsyn Muir's books, this book is for you.

I can't say that this book was exactly what I was expecting it to be.

First of all, I was initially drawn in by the absolutely stunning cover art. It's probably the best cover art I've seen so far in 2022! I also think it perfectly illustrates the contents of this book.

The first 20 or so pages had me absolutely immersed in the action sequence of Benji running away from his pursuers and then being caught in the middle of a really dramatic gunfight. I loved the body horror that was in this book, and unlike the other reviewers, I didn't think there was "too much gore." I can safely say that there was an appropriate amount for people who enjoy body horror.

The depictions of gore were very vivid and indulgent, even seeming poetically beautiful in their grotesqueness at times.

I was really happy that the author was talking about these important ideas openly and directly (in a respectful way), but the way that he presented them was a little bit unwieldy. For example, there is a scene where Benji meets a new character who is trans and uses neopronouns. The inclusion of neopronouns is very cool, but it's contextually strange for Benji to conveniently remember a time when he read this character's very specific neopronouns in a book he salvaged with his father (who was brutally murdered shortly prior to this scene) and repeat them in his head. Educational? Yes, but at the cost of the story's flow at a crucial part of the book that should be focused on drawing the reader in. To be honest, this is some delicate stuff that is often skirted around, so I applaud the author's openness, but this section was clunky, overloaded, and too much telling instead of showing, which is a real shame.

Another thing I'd like to mention is... This story had a lot of the same elements as Takaya Kagami's Owari no Seraph (or Seraph of the End). The manga is one of my favorites, and it was a little hard for me to close my eyes to the similarities.

Other than that, the story was formatted in an interesting stylistic way, with perspective switches and the little blurbs at the beginning of each chapter. I think the chapter excerpts actually helped a lot with the worldbuilding and were effective.

I really enjoyed all of the queer representation. I was great to see such a varied cast of LGBTQ+ characters in a piece of plot-based genre fiction. This, and the gruesome horror elements are honestly this book's strongest points. I can tell how passionate the author is about them, and I like that refreshing rawness.

Even though this book was a slight miss for me, Andrew Joseph White is undoubtedly talented, and I'm excited to read more by him in the future. I hope he maintains his gritty edge and shameless attitude.

My rebellious teenage Catholic school heart was really drawn in by the biblical references and religion as the enemy. I absolutely loved how the cult members called themselves angels. The body horror and gore is some of the best I’ve seen in YA. The struggle with self-identity was woven into this dystopian horror story so well. I could not put this down. This novel filled with religion, gore, queerness, and fighting tooth and nail to be who you are resonated so hard with me.

2022 is the year of darker yet hopeful and powerful queer YA stories like All That’s Left in the World and The Honeys, and without a doubt, Hell Followed with Us belongs to this category. It’s equally gorgeous, breathtaking, eerie, and at its heart so very queer.

Like I gushed over the books mentioned above, I could gush over Hell Followed with Us for hours, days, even for years. Over the content and trigger warnings in the letter from the author, d*mn Andrew Joseph White, you gave me shivers when I hadn’t even started reading the story. Over the book itself, the beautiful writing, the amazing character development, the terrifying horror, the fabulous rep. And over the acknowledgments, d*mn you again, Andrew, my chest tightened, and tears ran down my cheeks.

When I started reading this book, a huge storm was blowing outside. Roof tiles flew around, trucks just fell on their sides, and trees snapped like straws. But when the wind died down, the sun began to send its rays down to earth, and people started cleaning the mess. At the same time, a storm was blowing inside me as well. I sat down on a chair and read and made notes and clenched my fists and had a knot in my chest and stared in the distance and cried and kept drinking in so many beautiful words.

To control the monster inside you takes guts. To go through hell and back takes guts. To make life better for yourself and your friends takes guts. And that’s why, despite this being a hell of a story, hope and queer power, instead of blood and organs, eventually soak the pages of this extraordinary story. D*mn you once again, Andrew, this book will haunt me, probably like forever, and I’ll pick up anything you write from now on even without reading a blurb!

I have been so ridiculously eager to get my hands on this book since it was first announced, even though just about every part of the premise is outside of anything I would normally read. While I want anything queer-related I can get my grubby little hands on, I am not a horror reader. Or a post-apocalyptic reader. Or a thriller reader. Or a - you get the idea. But the very idea of this book - a trans boy in a post-apocalyptic world fleeing the cult that caused said apocalypse with a bioweapon in his body finding shelter with a group of queer teens - was just so appealing, I needed to read it as soon as I could.

This book was everything. I devoured it in two days flat of desperate late night reading. It's messy and traumatic and violent and horrific and I don't want to say that I adored a book that will likely be causing me to have nightmares for weeks, but it's just so much. It is 400 pages of queer rage packed into one story. One character. One character who went through too much for too long and finally decided to unleash all of his hell back on the world like it deserved with his found family at his side.

The representation in this book meant everything, too. Benji the trans fundamentalist cult escapee who just wants to burn down the world for the sake of his new family. Nick; autistic with noticeable stims and a crack shot. Salvador's use of neopronouns. Muslim Sadaf wearing a hijab. So many great, well-developed characters in a world destroyed by plague.

There's so much symbolism to unpack in this story of a monster finding his home not among his actual family, but among a ragtag group of queer teen apocalypse survivors in the remains of a LGBTQ+ Center. Even the pieces that could have been fleshed out more - how the virus originated, how it worked, the romance plotline - worked in the overall messiness of the story itself. I cannot wait for this book's release and to add it to my classroom bookshelf. I know it will be an important story for students to have access to.

"There is no other world. Just the one we have here. And in this one, I am alive."

I'll round up to 4 stars but it's probably closer to 3.5 stars for me. This one is a tough one to review.
It's good, rough, but really good.
It's a captivating story about Benji who is a trans boy living in this dystopian/post-apocalyptic world run by a cult that unleashed a virus onto the world. Benji manages to escape and falls into this group of teenagers just trying to survive while he also is trying to survive while turning into what the cult wants him to be and struggling with what and who he wants to be.
It's a fascinating plot, maybe a bit anxiety-inducing with everything that has happened in real life over the last few years. You really get a sense of Benji and what he's going through. You even get a little glimpse inside of Nick's head and how he handles things. The author really knew where they were going and what they wanted to say with this book, it's strong.

I know that this is a YA book but the one thing that I really didn't care for was the teenage romance aspect. I get learning about Benji's relationship with Theo since that was a part of character development but I didn't think the thing with Nick made any sense. The feelings Benji had just felt so fast, close to being that YA "insta-love" and with everything going on it just felt off to me.
I think the other thing I got a little tired of was just the gore. I know that this is also classed as horror but it just got repetitive and wordy. I understand that it's supposed to be horrible, the Flood and changing into a Seraph but less sometimes is more instead of saying the exact same thing every time Benji throws up or there's a Grace. Sometimes I think just with all the description of gore it took away from what was going on, especially in the final fight, it just got a bit jumbled and confusing.

Overall though it was a good read and I look forward to more works from this author.

thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!

trans anger, bloody monsters and horror are totally my vibe so i really flew through this book. the main thing for me was the concept, i love the entire concept and I think the development of this post-apocalyptic world was incredibly well done. the inclusion of transness and queerness mixed into this terrifying, gory world was just the best. and the imagery, oh my god. the imagery was 11/10, it was so visceral. the reason why it's not quite 5 stars is i wish the relationships between the characters were more developed. it went by really fast and i didn't quite connect with the bond between them. but i would totally read it again and recommend it, it was a great read!

hell followed with us is an absolutely amazing book. the book follows benji, a trans gay guy, escaping from a genocidal catholic cult after they injected him with a virus making him into a monster and biological weapon. he finds refugee at a lgbtq+ youth center in this post apocalyptic world and tries to help them destroy the cult.
it explores queerness and being trans in a different way than you usually see. it was also amazing to see how the almost all queer cast interacted with each other.

Hell Followed with Us is a brutal and extraordinary book. From the first chapter, I had no idea what to expect. I don't think I've never read anything quite like it. The writing style and premise reminds of Tahereh Mafi in her Shatter Me series, in a more mature and evolved way. It explored gender and transness in a way that I haven't seen before and in a way that I really related to. The characters were incredibly diverse which worked very well and didn't feel forced. The main characters were so complex and developed that I wish the rest of them were too.

hell followed with us was such a gorgeous, horrifying novel. i loved it so, so much. the characters, all of them, felt real and complex and i loved the portrayed dynamics of how queer people interact with each other. just queerness in general was so refreshing to see in this, how each teen found themselves a family, albeit dysfunctional, within the alc. everything about this book was perfect to me.