Rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌖
Genre: YA Horror
Violence: 🔪
Spice: 🔥
TW: Homophobia, transphobia, gender dysphoria

Synopsis: 3 friends struggling with their emerging identities find refuge at an abandoned house, where a benevolent spirit is said to grant wishes. Until the night only 2 emerge, their memories of what happened & their deepest secrets erased. All is seemingly well in their straight, cis-gender lives, until a freak event restores their memories & upends everything.

Thoughts: Horror is the perfect lens through which to frame this story: horror hinges on external threats to one's safety, just as being made to feel wrong in one's body endangers emotional, psychological, & physical safety. Beyond its relevance, Come Out, Come Out is just a good read. The story structure & mechanics of the curse fall down in a few places, but strong narrative flow & outstanding characterization offset these challenges. The 3-dimensional portraits of Jaq & Fern bonds them by their shared experience of prejudice yet creates distinct individuals battling their own unique identity obstacles. I also enjoyed how this atmospheric novel establishes as character the woods that envelop the town of Port Promise, contributing to the ever-present dread. The increase in books like Come Out, Come Out delights me for 2 reasons: 1) readers—especially adolescents—deserve to see themselves represented in the books they read; & 2) reading is a transformative experience that should expose us to new ways of thinking & ideally grow our empathy. Parker’s book hits both objectives.

Thank you to Penguin Books for Young Readers and NetGalley for the gifted copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

4.5 stars / This review will be posted on BookwormishMe.com and goodreads.com today.


This is a brilliantly written novel, focused on several teens’ journeys of acceptance of themselves. Being LGBTQ+ as a young adult, let alone a young teen, must be a scary, unsettling journey. And the main characters of this book do not take it all in stride. But the lessons that this book offers are amazing.

Fern is the youngest of four girls, being raised by a single mom. She is definitely what one might call a girly-girl. Fern is also a star. With a high school career in theater and sisters all pursuing the craft, Fern is just like she’s expected to be.

Kaitlyn came out a long time ago. Her parents fully supportive of her choices. When she is sharing one day, Fern and two other friends, Mallory and Jaq are all a bit jealous of Kaitlyn’s ability to just be. The three become best friends, keeping their gender identities under wraps, until suddenly Mallory disappears. It’s as if the three were never friends at all.

Jaq, like Mallory, is being raised in a strict Baptist household. While Jaq fits her parental expectations, Mallory rebels against them. Jaq has a long time boyfriend, attends church events, and would never dream of rebelling against her parents’ wishes.

Until suddenly, one night at a bonfire party, Jaq and Fern start having memories of Mallory. Who they once were. And life is about to get pretty freaky when they remember what happened five years ago.

I was so impressed with how this novel tackled these difficult years and topics. You can’t help but root for all these girls to embrace their true identities and be themselves. Because who you love doesn’t change who you are. Would highly recommend!!!

The horror of being a queer teen mixed with the horror of ghost both figurative and literal. This is both a coming of age story where friends remember and accept who they are while dealing with a friend who never got to have that chance. I’m always always up for a good queer horror story and I will sign up and read all of them. This was both heartbreaking and beautiful when everything was said and done. Defining important for those afraid to find their voices and learn who they are!

Focused on two former friends -Jaq and Fern- Come Out, Come Out is a quiet horror about the tumultuous, personal battle one goes through when they’ve been striped of their queer identity. It provides varied perspectives on sexuality. Even through the minor characters, it shows that there is no singular queer experience.

If you're someone who enjoys a slower paced, introspective sort of horror/suspense then I would recommend this novel.

The story really kicks into gear about 50 pages in. From there, the majority of the book is focused on the internal, emotional plots of the characters. It’s more about them learning to reconcile who they were, who they became and who they want to be now that they have remembered their queerness, and less about solving the mystery of what happened to them. It is heavier on the suspense than the horror but Parker does deliver in the final act.

I initially gave this a rating of 4.45 because of it’s pacing. Due to the story being essentially a character study, the suspenseful moments of the plot didn’t feel sufficient enough to carry me through the story. But once I was able to orient myself with the slower pace and connect with the characters, the pages flew by. I loved the characters, especially Fern’s journey and Mal's point of view chapters.

In the end I rounded up to 5 stars because it managed to make me cry. More than once. The moments that hit are sleeper cells. They sneak up on you and you don’t know it until you’re already crying.

Thank you to Netgalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

I WANTED to love this. Queer horror is a favorite subgenre of mine, but this one seemed to lack a general direction.

2.5 Stars. I was not a huge fan of this book. I felt like it lacked the overall plot and the horror elements promoted by this book. I feel like this book would work better if it were a coming-of-age story, however, I did not think this story was scary or had a lot of horror elements to make this a horror book. I would still recommend this book since it does talk about topics that I think are important to read about and discuss but this book took me a bit to get into and I was waiting for more.

I have been so lucky here lately on here because this is my second 5 star book this week. This book is so good and I am so grateful to have received this ARC.

I got thin in hope of a great horror story... This is basically a coming of age and coming out of the closet story with a tiny dash of a creepy ghost. Thus this book was not for me. Thanks to Net Galley for giving me the chance to check this out.

Thank you to PRH for an arc!

So this is a queer "horror" book, and while it did have horror elements it was more of a social commentary on queer teens coming out, and social problems.

I think this book is going to resonate with a lot of young readers who are in similar situations as the main characters in this one.

I feel as if it was couched in horror on some ways because what happens is horrible, but I was hoping that it was queer teens IN a horror story, but that wasn't the case here.

Being queer and coming out and all the issues that come with it are the center of the book, not the horror element. So it wasn't exactly what I thought the book would be, but it was good nonetheless.

This book disappointed me, especially because it was so highly anticipated for me! The best part was the beginning and then it gave this slow story without much conclusion. The moral was very good though.

Come Out, Come Out by Natalie C. Parker presents an intriguing premise with a mix of suspense and drama. While the story offers some engaging moments, its impact may vary depending on individual preferences for pacing and character development.

A beautiful horror story that is perfect for fans of The Haunting of Bly Manor. Parker has a particular talent with tying other tragedy and hope. I loved this book.

Come Out, Come Out of an excellently written YA horror about two teens growing up on conservative households & trying to accept their own identities.
Fern and Jaq used to be friends, but they don't remember each other until one night at a house party when they stumble into the woods. Since that night, their memories have been returning, and they both feel as if they're being haunted.
I really enjoyed this book, it was well written with for developed characters and an interesting plot. I will look forward to reading more fun this author.

This was a wonderfully horror story, with epic queer representation with a great addition of a very haunting rhyme. This had me on the edge of my seat. I had to keep reading because I didn’t want the characters in any sort of limbo.

Thank you to the author & to NetGalley for offering me an ARC to fall in love with!

I rolled my eyes a lot at factual inaccuracies (from the get-go: you cannot just change the gender of the actor playing a character in Grease; it's in your contract) and weird tonal shifts, especially toward the end, but I really did enjoy Fern and Jaq as characters. (I wish we got more from Mal,)

I am so happy to say this book was soo good. it brought me outta a slump from a hard read, it was definitely ya but that does not mean it was bad to be honest i think it made it more enjoyable i did not have to fear i could sense the plot. 4/5 stars i will definitely tune in for the release of this book and future endeavors by this author thanks you for the arc, netgalley and the publisher.

"A spine-tingling LGBTQIA+ YA horror about queer teens who accidentally invoke a twisted spirit who promises help but delivers something sinister.

Perfect for fans of Kayla Cottingham, Andrew Joseph White, and Ryan La Sala.

It's never been safe for Fern, Jaq, or Mallory to come out to their families. As kids their emerging identities drove them into friendship but also forced them into the woods to hide in an old, abandoned house when they needed safety. But one night when the girls sought refuge, Mallory never made it back home. Fern and Jaq did, but neither survivor remembered what happened or the secrets they were so desperate to keep.

Five years later, Fern and Jaq are seniors on the verge of graduation, seemingly happy in their straight, cisgender lives - until a spirit who looks like Mallory begins to appear, seeking revenge for her death, and the part Fern and Jaq played in it. As they're haunted, something begins to shift inside them.

They remember who they are.

Who they want to love.

And the truth about the vicious secrets hiding in their woods.

This delightfully dark and pointed novel calls out the systems that erase gay and queer and trans identity, giving space to embrace queerness and to unleash the power of friendship and found family against the real monsters in the world."

Be loud! Be proud! Fight the monsters who try to take that away from you!

This book brought out a lot of complicated emotions and I just kept thinking "man I'm glad I am not back in high school". I liked how they pushed back from the pray away the gay (or in this case wish away the gay) as the only means to be safe. However, I think there was so much build up to find out what happened that fateful night, that once it was revealed, the tension and intrigue was gone for me. By then, I found the end to be both rushed and anti-climactic.

Five years ago, Mallory disappeared. She was a disappointment to her parents, sadly, a rebellious and queer teen who was asking for trouble. No one knows what happened to her, not even her friends at the time actor Fern and painter Jaq.

As they are settling into their lives at the tail end of high school, Fern and Jaq discover they know quite a bit more about Mallory’s disappearance than they believed. In fact, the lives they’ve been living these last five years are incredibly different than the ones they were most comfortable with. The two have fallen away from their true selves as well as one another, and turned toward lives their parents approve of: Fern is one of the leading actors in the school with a rivalry against the now out Kaitlyn. Jaq gave up dreams of painting for a living and has a more sensible future lined up and is devoted to her boyfriend John.

However, when the two run into one another at a party and wind up in woods they used to play in (and woods in which Mal disappeared), they soon discover someone or something has unlocked old truths hidden away from them. Neither of these young people are straight. Jaq is attracted to the new bad girl Devyn and hates the idea of marrying John. Fern is non-binary and crushing hard on that rival. Neither of them fully understands what happened to change them, but it seems Mallory’s ghost is involved. But why?

Could this have something to do with Promise House, a ruined building they half-recall stumbling across in the woods where Mal vanished? If so, what happened there? And could that place have something to do with the wish-granting legends about a being called The Patron? And will Fern and Jaq be able to unlock their memories and true selves before evil comes a’calling or their conservative parents discover how different they are and send them off to a conversion camp? Natalie C. Parker weaves together supernatural fears and real-world matters of gender and sexual identity in the provocative dark fantasy YA yarn, Come Out, Come Out.

Port Promise, Oregon, a small town with traditional roots, isn’t the best place for queer kids to grow up. Sure, there are loving parents who accept when their daughter comes out, as in the case of Fern’s nemesis (and eventual love interest), Kaitlyn. However, many of Port Promise’s young people live in fear of becoming cautionary tales at church as renegades who come out and then run away, leaving their families to dwell in a state of shame. At least the church folks will take pity on the family left behind, the ones who tried to help their kids get past this phase and back to their real, unconfused selves.

If that doesn’t make you shudder, then this is probably not the book for you.

Following a punchy prologue, Come Out, Come Out takes a slow burn approach to setting up who these protagonists think they are before pulling the rug out from under their feet and showing them the real meat and potatoes of their lives. From there, we still don’t quite enter a furiously paced story though the author does a fine job of ramping up suspense. This is not a novel interested in being the literary equivalent of a rollercoaster ride. It slips into that kind of storytelling near the finale, but readers looking for that sort of fast-paced entertainment from the start will be better served elsewhere.

However, in terms of mood, atmosphere, and character, Parker’s book has a lot to offer its readers. It works nicely as both a meditation on the world that is as well as the world of the purely imaginary supernatural. A strong sense of thematic unity connects these two parallel aspects, and the place where they meet is wonderfully creepy. Promise House might have been a refuge and a place of hopes, dreams, and wishes at one time. However, the more we and the characters themselves learn of the place, the more unsettled we can all become.

The author shows a talent for writing both hopeful and hurtful material for the protagonists, letting us see the characters’ own torments as well as their triumphs. And as the power that crushed their memories before begins to reassert itself, we get to witness possession horror slipping inside our characters, preventing them from speaking from their hearts and instead parroting the approved messages.

Where Parker’s hand grows a tad too heavy is in presentations of larger societies. When we are seeing a few characters interact, they are more organically recognizable. When we see the systems at play—and this is true both for the oppressive and supportive ones—there is a kind of blandness to the presentation. When we see a church at work, it’s monolith. When Devyn convinces Jaq to visit a Pride flag flying coffee shop, it is equally monolithic. The nuances of individuals are set aside for presenting larger than life representations both for satiric and sympathetic purposes. But they each feel oddly exaggerated in ways the rest of the book is not, and therefore any sense of reality we can lend them is reduced because we’re getting regularly bounced out of the story.

Parker’s writing is often pointed, sometimes downright savage, but never against her protagonists. She bucks conservative systems and values instead, always siding with the wrongfully shamed minority over the entrenched authorities. It’s the kind of book that will appeal to the queer and questioning demographic, with have zero chance of successfully changing the minds of those with a conservative bent (many of those characters are essentially straw men). But readers need balm books, too. This is not a kind work, it goes some dark and unsettling places, but it’s ultimately about two young people embracing their queerness.

And there’s plenty of room for cheek. That title alone is both an invocation of a children’s game as well as a call for the closeted to step into the light. It is worked into the nursery rhyme type local legend in the novel itself and turned around on itself by occasional cries to “come in, come in,” along with forceful shoves back into the closet of “outward respectability.”

The steady trickle of information, which causes us to refine our expectations and views on what has come before is nicely done. And the book has a few lovely surprises in store for its readers. This is as much a haunting mystery as it is a dark fantasy or high school drama story. And Parker’s writing is at its most relaxed and conversational with it is exploring the cooler topics and how they apply to her characters’ physical and emotional lives.

The myth building is also a treat. We start out with a fragment of a poem and a legend about a penitent ghost who lost his charges and seeks to do good. This is expanded upon as the story unfolds, adding wrinkles and erasing assumptions in favor of something far more intriguing and darker than first glance might hint at. Of course, powers that make wishes come true have always been suspect: One need look no further than cautionary tales of the djinn or Saki’s “The Monkey’s Paw” for examples of wishes turned against their users, but examples exist in just about every culture.

Come Out, Come Out is a slow burn YA chiller that tackles some very real fears as well as some supernatural ones. It’s the kind of novel that will likely wind up on a Challenged Books list at some point because it is frank about kids who are bucking their parents’ controlling natures and being true to themselves, the kind of individual spirit that some folks cannot tolerate. However, it is a sympathetic portrayal of the challenges of finding your own way in high school years, of trying to balance being true to yourself alongside not disappointing your parents. Parker’s storytelling sides with the outsiders, the queer kids, and even provides them a safe space where they can be seen and supported. And as we get a better understanding of the supernatural horror at work, we learn how it is integrally tied into the oppressively conservative world these kids are challenging. But never fear, friendship and honesty can overcome even the most overwhelming big terrors, no matter how many big feels the protagonists must endure.
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A special thank you to NetGalley and G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers for offering an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first time reading young adult queer horror and it didn’t disappoint!

The story follows Jaq, Fern, and Mallory, a trio who have bonded over their queer identities and created a safe place with each other to escape from their families who would be less accepting if they were to come out. One night, the friends go to an old abandoned house in the woods, but Mallory doesn’t make it back. Five years later, Jaq and Fern are close to graduating and living straight, cisgender lives, until their memories come back and they remember who they are.

This book handles topics of queer identity and acceptance so well through all of its different characters, both side and main. I loved that the characters were all complex and relatable in one way or another with their struggles. I especially enjoyed Jaq’s character and her being pulled between wanting to be the perfect daughter/who her parents expected her to be and living her truth. It’s a struggle I think that many queer teens (and even adults) can relate to.

I also enjoyed that we got to see different queer experiences through these characters and their experiences because there’s not one way to be queer and not everyone has the same coming out experience. I think it really added to the story. It was all handled so well and was really compelling.

Oh my goodness, the writing was phenomenal. This was my first Natalie C. Parker book and I can’t wait to read more by this author!

The plot really kept me engaged and I think flipping between the past and the present was done very well. It kept me wanting to read to learn more about the mystery behind the horror our characters were going through. I also thought the ending was very fitting. Nothing felt rushed or really out of line. It made perfect sense for the story that was being told.

Overall, I’m highly recommending this one, but please look at the trigger warnings first, just in case!