Oof, this book hits where it hurts. The story grabbed me from the very beginning! Trans rage is one of my favorite things to read and this book delivers in abundance! The added notes of a society crushed under the weight of capitalism added with the push for anarchy really resonated with how I feel about today’s political climate. Adding to it spectacular trans Rep, and this book is one you don’t want to miss! It’s not cute and cuddly. Instead it’s full of rage and gore, and it’s perfection.

As in every AJW book you're thrown into a story you first have to navigate and understand but as soon as you do it won't let you go.
More than once i thought "This book feels like a twisted version of Heathers, if Heathers was queer and communist". It is dark and gory and you definitely shouldn't pick this if you want a light read. It won't make you feel good and that's okay, because I think this is the purpose of this book. To see reality is to hurt.

Thank you NetGalley for providing an eARC of this book!

Every time I read an AJW book I’m struck by how lucky young, queer neurodivergent people are to have an author who sees them so clearly and treats them and their experiences so seriously and doesn’t condescend to them, cause when I was growing up it just did not exist at all. It also makes me appreciate the importance of ‘Own Voice’ stories and I would be curious to hear a perspective on this book from somebody with autism cause being in Miles head was a lot at times.

I really enjoy AJWs narrative voice and writing style, so I definitely still had a great time with this, but it was also not my favourite AJW book (TSBIT still holds that title). I personally found that I enjoyed the first half of this more than the second half (mainly cause there was a storyline that came up that I didn’t really enjoy and didn’t think was necessary- but that’s personal preference for you) but it still ended strong.

I did have a moment where I wondered if this book was trying to provide commentary on perhaps a few TOO many big meaty political/societal issues in current day America and if the strength of commentary on these topics kind of gets a bit lost because of that? Although it’s kind of bleak that the cultural critique of the MAGA insanity was in the context of 2016 and yet here we are still.

I’ll admit that as much as I enjoyed it that it still felt like it didn’t quite live up to all the potential that was there in the building blocks. Also comparatively mild in AJW trademark barf inducing gore scenes 😂 I kept waiting for it cause I knew it was coming and there was only really one scene that made me pull an ick face.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an eARC of this book

I'm in that haze, right now. You know, the one after you've read a book so good that you genuinely don't know what to do? It's processing, in a way; finding just the right words to be able to describe exactly what this book made me feel.

The short answer: everything.

Compound Fracture is a novel about Miles Abernathy, a trans and autistic kid who loves his family and hates the situation that history has placed them in. It's a very political novel in the best possible way; a love letter to unionization and the working class, full of a small town queer kid's rage.

Andrew Joseph White has a phenomenal ability to write about things that I have never been able to put into words. Rage, yes, but not just that. His writing captures emotions so well, and it makes reading his books so encompassing. You're not just reading about Miles' anger and fear, you're living it. You're right there in Twist Creek, and if you weren't angry at the injustice of the world before this book, you sure as hell will be after.

It's strange to feel such comfort in a horror/thriller novel, but AJW just has a way of doing that. And for that I'm grateful.

Thanks to Holiday House/Peachtree/Pixel+Ink and NetGalley for the ARC!

This is such a weird little book, and I honestly am not 100% sure how to categorize it. It's a contemporary story with horror elements, but I'm not sure that's where I would end up classifying it as, if I had to pick one specific label. I would almost call it...political. I don't know. Maybe I'll stick with gut-punch, because that certainly sums it up. Right off the bat I want to say that this is a ROUGH novel. It's not for the faint of heart, and deals with a variety of very tough topics, so anyone who picks it up should be aware of that. That being said it is very good, and if you can stand it I would suggest giving it a try. I almost don't really know how to review this book, because it's such a mish-mash of things that shouldn't really work together but somehow do. The writing is spot on, the characters are expertly messy, and the whole thing is brutal. White stated that it took him 8 years to get this book right, and in those 8 years he certainly did something right. It's gritty, it's violent, it's not elegant in the least, but damn if it doesn't stick with you and keep popping up at the weirdest times. Teens and adults alike should read this book, and I will certainly be hand-selling it to anyone I can convince to pick it up.

Compound Fracture is a horror story about a trans, autistic kid who’s trapped in a blood feud in his small Appalachian town. Throughout the story, you discover what happened 100 years ago during the miners strike that resulted in his great-great-grandfather Saint being executed as well as what happened 5 years ago when he was in middle school with his friends Dallas and Cooper. Now, in high school, on the night that he sends a letter to his parents that he’s trans, he gets beat up by three boys in the town. When he wakes up he sees the ghost of Saint. The rest of the story details various ways his friends and family attempt to end this generational violence through political activism and murder. I personally loved that Cooper’s fine with the bad people dying and them being the ones to do it.

This story also deals with withdrawal from pain meds, transphobia, misgendering, and a forced outing. His parents, particularly his mom, refuse to believe he’s trans because the timing is awkward with his injury. However, his friend Cooper accepted him and I loved that. It was interesting reading the perspective of someone who just came out rather than someone who’s been out trans for a while. Since he’s not out to everyone there’s a lot of mingendering and wincing at that.

This book is insanely queer as it deals with discovering yourself and ends with a queerplatonic partnership. There’s also complex queer identities including being agender, aromantic, and trans over 100 years ago. It describes the experience of being trans so well. His grandma even asks if he’s lesbian because he has short hair, but he doesn’t even like girls. Miles found it refreshing to talk to another trans person and he was too real for that. Meanwhile, it was left open ended about Cooper’s queerness.

There’s also many neurodivergent characters with ADHD and autism. I found it interesting reading how his autism, his parents' autism, and Dallas’ sister-in-law’s autism is presented. His whole family doesn’t look people in the eye. It takes a bit of work for Miles to show emotions, and he has a shoelace stim that’s mentioned often. I didn’t realize Miles didn’t know he was autistic until he googles it, like people google gay quizzes. I didn’t realize because he’s described as trans in the book’s summary. Furthermore, I noticed conversations in the book skip around replicating how TV shows make frame cuts which I quite enjoyed.

There’s also a lot of communist commentary as Miles and Dallas’ family are communists. I love when communists can actually apply their ideas, so I found I really liked what Dallas’ family were doing with their successful worker coop and not so much what Miles was describing. Since Miles is a communist and they don’t have health insurance, he did provide interesting commentary there. I also found it interesting to learn about the political landscape of living in a small West Virginia town in 2019 when Trump is president.

The story goes from murder to political and collective organization. Due to generational violence, many people are permanently injured and disfigured including Dallas with burn scars and Miles as a result of the attack, or killed. It contains a bittersweet, open-ended ending about what comes next for the town. Overall, I enjoyed how queer and autistic this book was and learning about Appalachia. However, this is not a topic I am particularly interested in which is why I gave it a 4.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley, Holiday House/Peachtree/Pixel+Ink, and Andrew Joseph White for the advanced copy of Compound Fracture.

Another stellar, yet horrifying book by Andrew Joseph White.

In Compound Fracture, we follow Miles, a trans teen in small town West Virginia, as he and his family face the centuries-long feud between their family and the family of the town's Sheriff. After being beaten within an inch of his life by the Sheriff's son and friends and a subsequent accident, Miles enlists the help of another victim of the Sheriff's family- Cooper. The ensuing revenge plot takes us on a wild ride to rid Miles' family of this feud.

This story was so compelling, I could barely put it down. I loved following Miles' journey from coming out to being injured to enacting revenge and ending the blood feud. His relationship with his parents and other family friends gave me cozy vibes, while his interactions with other characters sent shivers down my spine.

I had a similar opinion with The Spirit Bares Its Teeth last year- I personally don't think this should be classed as young adult. It is incredibly gory and violent, and while YA horror does exist, White takes the cake in terms of gore description,

Another stunning novel by Andrew Joseph White. Set in Appalachia with an autistic trans main character, this dark thriller had me binge reading the entire thing in one sitting.

2.5 rounded up.

I am so disappointed.... I loved Andrew Joseph White's first book, Hell Followed With Us, and recommended it to multiple students. (How many people caught the parallels to Biblical descriptions of angels???) His second book, The Spirit Bears Its Teeth, was more forgettable. This one I was worried about, and those fears were founded.

Most importantly, if you are going to make every main character an avatar of yourself, there's a lot of work and self-examination that has to take place for that to work out. I've seen other readers tire of this mechanism, but I actually appreciate this trick when done well. The stories themselves are of enough variety to show different facets and explore how traits and identities play across time and space. Kinda like Dr. Who, which I love.

But to do that, especially with oneself, you have to be willing to examine biases, triggers, etc. My guess is that this one is still just too close. The introduction never being edited although he completely expected to (according to said intro) was the first flag. I have found that the plot filtered through autism in AJW's work functions much like an unreliable narrator literary device and contributes to the plot twists and suspense. In this one, we the readers aren't given enough to work with. We don't really know why this feud is a thing, especially from the point of view of the Davies'. You need two to make a feud.

So many characters needed fleshing out and humanizing. Moustache twiddling Boris, aka Davies, does not make a good feud participant and reduces the entire thing.

Cooper was in love with Sadie. We didn't get to see that well because Miles completely misses it..Therefore his actions made much less sense. His magical transformation into villain really came out of nowhere and for no reason since it becomes immediately irrelevant.

Paul gets some complexity for a brief moment, and then the plot moves on and ignores the themes.

Even the family members! We need more mom and dad, mamaw and papaw. These are based on AJW's family, so it's possibly that once again we are too close so readers don't get any of the details; the things that make them human.

Then there's Saint. Saint had so much potential that was so under-realized that it turned into Why is he even here? We never get the true POV, only Miles's unreliable interpretations.

This isn't even mentioning things like Miles's inability to be wrong or even unsure about anything. This Miles is always right is the main wall between us and these characters we're missing. Even though Miles can't be wrong, he sure can't cover his tracks after the first death. I get immediate reactions not being anticipated, but c'mon wouldn't you go back and clean up things? Get rid of bodies? Etc etc etc.

Also, as the reviews have shown, there needed to be a bit of this: https://youtu.be/l1yzhc5VhU0?si=DDCJBAmX1gTb9TNX
(Explains socialism vs communism)

I really hope AJW visits somewhere for his next book that he can fully explore in its full complexity. Then we'll see if I can take the risk.

Miles is a trans, autistic teen in West Virginia. His family, the Abernathys, have been in a long-standing blood feud with the Davies family, whose patriarch is the sheriff of Twisted Creek, WV. This book covers the fall out after the Sheriff's kid and his cronies brutally beat Miles in an ambush.

This book could have been incredible! However, lapses in execution made it more of a meh for me. First off, why are they feuding? This needed to be explored more, along with many other things, like socialism. I don't believe you can talk about socialism without actively defining it in a YA book. More so with the number of reviews where socialism and communism are mixed up.

Many of the characters also felt flat to me. I also wasn't a fan of Miles and his mental gymnastics to make revenge killing morally correct. I would have liked to see more of Saint. His story was more intriguing to me than the main plot. Now for the villains. Have you all ever seen Boris and Natasha from the Rocky & Bullwinkle show? That was my mental image of the sheriff. He was so over the top and stereotypical. It was laughable. I also wasn't a fan of the romantic subplot. Detailing why would be a spoiler, though. The pacing was also inconsistent and made it hard to focus in the middle of the book. Overall, this just wasn't my cup of tea.

My thanks to Holiday House, author Andrew Joseph White, and NetGalley for gifting me a digital copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

Another phenomenal book by Andrew Joseph White. I love the real-life adaptation in this book. You could feel the connection between AJW life and the characters in the story. The autism rep in this one felt more authentic and so close to my own experience. Highly recommend checking out AJW full list of books.

Wow, White’s writing just gets better with each book. This is an incredibly violent paranormal thriller set in a small town in West Virginia detailing a 100 year long blood feud between the Abernathy family and local law enforcement that dates back to the Coal Wars. This book examines the injustices that capitalism and cops inflict on working class people and how power can be abused in small towns.

This is the most grounded and realistic of White’s books so far and that’s what made it feel all the more horrifying. The sheriff and his son were such a deadly presence that they made my stomach flip every time they were on page. The one and only complaint that I have about this book is the inclusion of highly improbable found family aspects. Found family is a running theme in White’s work and I understand the importance of the message but the execution has always been too on the nose. Thankfully the rest of this book was so damn good that the positives outweigh the one negative. The MC is an autistic aromantic trans guy, I’m always happy for more aro rep since there isn’t enough of it.

CWs: animal cruelty/death, police brutality and corruption, sexism, gun violence, hate crime, murder, gore, addiction, bullying, toxic friendship, ableism, injury details/blood, transphobia, deadnaming, misgendering, homophobic slur, outing

In Twist Creek, power is taken by force and obtained through fear.

The Abernathys have long survived by inaction, but when trans teen Miles finds proof that Sheriff Davies drove his parents’ car off the road and stood by watching as someone’s mother burned, justice—or change, at least—seems to be within reach.

There are reasons for the whole town's silence, though, and Miles is one walk through the woods away from learning them.

Andrew Joseph White has a tendency to make me feel ill, but I will read everything he writes. Through a queer and neurodivergent lens, he shows the impossibility of staying undetected and the pain caused by parents choosing between accepting their child and protecting them—and he does so masterfully.


Thank you to Peachtree Teen and NetGalley for the ARC!

*I received a copy from Netgalley*

Andrew Joseph White is one of the best trans authors in this day and age, and this was another hit. I don’t know what it is about White’s writing that is just so good, but his books are sometimes ones you can’t put down.

I started this when I was in an ebooks slump, but finally got out of it and I read the rest of it so fast. I was hooked. I needed to know what happened.

Andrew Joseph White will forever be an author I constantly recommend.

I absolutely loved this book. I was on the edge of my seat while reading Compound Fracture. White has done it again and crafted a magnificent thriller rooted in Appalachian worker's rights. It's a thriller that can speak to many teen readers and as usual, White uses this medium to speak eloquently on social issues important for teens. Through the voice of an autistic, transgender, aromantic teenager, White weaves a skillfully-crafted story sure to bring chills down the spines of teen readers, especially those from marginalized identities. I'll never get tired of Andrew Joseph White's books, and I can't wait for this to publish so that I can promote it to my teen readers who love thrillers!

I have actively been seeking this author out since receiving the ARC for The Spirit Bears Its Teeth. Though Compound Fracture takes us on a different gritty journey of self discovery and identity, it is as powerful and hard-hitting.

I truly appreciate Andrew Joseph White not pulling his punches and sugar coating scenarios when depicting how tough it can be when transgender and neurodiverse. In the rural mountains of Appalachia, different is not always readily accepted when tradition is frequently the law of the land.

Yes, there is a lot of political conversation within these pages but I feel it is a conversation which needs to be had. I grew up in a small town, middle of nowhere place and the abuse of power I've seen by the morally corrupt and the ones who have been in power too long needs to be highlighted. I will not say this is an easy or comfortable book to read, but I feel it was well worth the time and the the read. I am so glad I received the ARC and I hope to read more from Andrew Joseph White in the future!

Compound Fracture is about a town in a red state that is basically ran by one sheriff. 300+ pages filled with rage, powerlessness and hope for a change.

Miles - an autistic teenager who just came out to his parent that he is trans over an email, but they had to read it while Miles ended up in the hospital after being beaten up like an animal. How did he survive? It doesn't matter. What matters is that he does not remember anything when the sheriff asks. Because that's how it goes here. If you remember something, you will pay for it. With your life, with your loved ones or any other way. But you will definitely pay,

Miles is mad at the world for being unfair and for people to drive towards profit instead of each other. Who wouldn't be mad about having a president who is a criminal and cheats on his wives? Well, there are plenty of those people as he wouldn't be a president otherwise. And 80% of the county is pro Trump.

Enough about what the book is about. Why did I love it so much? The characters are not only diverse, but also very realistic. Mom is struggling to accept Miles, while dad is trying his best and most of the time succeeding. Then you have Cooper - Mile's friend and "partner in crime" - who is accepting, but also it makes Miles wonder if Cooper actually sees him as "him". There are a bunch of awful people in this area and there are enough people to try to be neutral. It is a messy and politics filled novel. And relatable af. Miles' inner monologue? He is a no-nonsense guy and I love that for him.

Thanks to NetGalley and Holiday House / Peachtree / Pixel+Ink, Peachtree Teen for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

This author has become such a staple for me, so I couldn't wait for Compound Fracture - and I was not disappointed!
While the pacing felt a tad slow at times, White has this talent for writing immersive, creepy and somewhat haunting (because of the subject matter) stories, that always leave me pondering what's wrong in our own world (which might not sound like an endorsement but is!).
I loved especially how Compound Fracture focused on found family, belonging and not having to change yourself to fit somewhere because the right people will accept you just the way you are.
Miles's story arc was so empowering and I can't wait to see what White comes up with next!

White is easily one of my favorite authors, so picking this up was a no-brainer, and I was not disappointed.

Miles Abernathy grows up in the middle of a feud between his family and those like him, the folks that worked the mines and now work where they can, and those with power, specifically their town sheriff and his family, dating back years to a labor riot when an avoidable disaster killed a ton of miners in their town. Trying to get an edge back at the sheriff that ruined his family and the families of his friends, Miles finds himself nearly killed and, suddenly, haunted, or in reality guided, by his ancestor, Saint Abernathy, the original leader and martyr of the labor riots. As the body count of this feud grows, Miles finds himself in more and more danger, all the while navigating coming out as trans, realizing he's autistic, and a few other things about himself.

This book was an adventure that had me hooked until the last page. Community coming together to help each other and take their lives and freedom back. Miles finds more support as his world crumbles and builds itself back up, culminating in a dramatic final showdown reminiscent of the past. I loved every second of it, even as the events horrified me at times. White is very skilled at writing horror. If you've enjoyed White's other novels this is a fantastic addition to the lot. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to read a tale about cruel men of power getting what they deserve, and those they abuse taking what's owed them.

In additional to the trans and autistic rep, we also have ADHD, nonbinary, various disabilities, and to my pleasant surprise, aromantic and queer-platonic, and as someone whose queer-platonic relationships mean the world to them, I was so excited to see that representation.

Also, there is the best dog ever. <spoiler>She does survive.</spoiler>

4 stars

Years ago, one of my siblings and I saw a film that we knew was excellent but also that we both agreed repeatedly - even while watching - that there was no way we'd ever watch again. There was something too traumatizing, disturbing, difficult, etc. to manage more than just the once. That sentiment is one I also have for this book. In many ways, it is excellent. It is also extremely challenging to encounter most of the motifs that appear.

Miles is an excellent main character. He's queer, trans, autistic, Appalachian, and from a family with a rich history of rebellion and trouble. This combo also puts his family at odds with local law enforcement, who are just about as bad as one might expect. Or, maybe, worse.

This book is relentless. The violence seems endless. Readers' bodies may hurt vicariously just from the descriptions of what these characters are up to. The list of content warnings...it's also quite involved. I highly recommend looking into this before cracking this book. Expect extreme violence (including death), transphobia, animal harm, trauma across the generations, and addiction/withdrawal...and this is a partial list.

It took me a relatively long time to get through this one. Again, in many ways, this is an excellent book with a near iconic protagonist, but readers will also need to employee legendary emotional vigor to persist.

I'm interested in more of this author's writing, but I'll be prepared to mix it in with strategic self-care next time.