thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy!

okay, full disclosure, I DNFed this one. the description absolutely hooked me - a dark academia book about a genderqueer horror fan facing racism and classism at a prestigious boarding school that's supposed to be their ticket to success? I would read a thousand books with that description. but unfortunately, the description sounded much more fleshed-out and complex than the reality of the novel.

reading other reviews on NetGalley now, I'm seeing a lot of the same criticisms I felt as I read the book. the characters felt like caricatures at times, the slang was very Internet-y (which instantly dated it) and felt like an adult poorly mimicking teenspeak, and the pacing was rushed and random. at best, the book had the vibes of a D-list horror movie, maybe one our protagonist Yuiza might have liked. but that's a generous description, and to that point, we actually don't get a lot of references to real horror movies, which (as a horror fan) I felt was odd. some honorable mentions of Jordan Peele (my favorite director), but even that felt a bit flat. I never got the sense Yuiza actually liked horror movies.

I absolutely hate to give negative reviews to books, because I can't imagine being an author and seeing a bad review, but unfortunately I entered the contract all of us reviewers enter - advanced copy in exchange for a review. I felt like the description was really misleading and maybe had it been more accurate I would have been more prepared for the book I did read, or maybe I wouldn't have picked it up at all. I could tell from only a few chapters in I wasn't going to like the book but I did my best to get through it and finally DNFed about three-quarters of the way through. it felt closer to middle grade than to YA, although because of the themes of the book a reclassification would not be appropriate.

it was not all bad, though! Yuiza's strong and loud personality was charming and bled through the page. her pet film projects with her friends at home felt real - amateur movie-making is something teenagers actually do. I thought the movie script format could have been executed really well with more editing (and here I was about to type how I personally would edit it, but alas, I am a reviewer, I do not work in editorial). I was definitely interested in learning more about Q, and the hope that she would return was a huge driving force in me reading as far as I did.

if you're a horror fan looking to read books about horror fans finding themselves in the plot of a real-life horror movie, this book is unfortunately not the one you're looking for. I'd stick to Kalynn Bayron's You're Not Supposed To Die Tonight and Joelle Wellington's The Blonde Dies First if I were you.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Lerner Publishing Group for the advanced copy.

I want to say right off the bat that this book is not for me. I am not a young adult, so it's possible that some of my criticism will not apply to those who are reading at that level. If this book sounds like something you would enjoy I encourage you to do so, but I truly did not enjoy it.

Because the book isn't released yet I'm going to keep this review entirely spoiler-free.

Yuiza is our main character, and there are some things I really like about her. They're strong-willed and sure of who they are, and I think that their strength and connection with their heritage is extremely interesting. The representation in this story is also very unsubtle which I think is a good thing. I believe that it ties in well with the normalization of white supremacy at the school. It's very normal for the students of color to have different gender presentation, but we don't see any of this variety in the white students. It's good!

Unfortunately, I really dislike Yuiza's inner voice which is our narration through the story. It felt a little "adult saying skibiddi toilet" if that makes any sense. It felt very young adult, almost middle grade, with the quality of the writing.

I also didn't really enjoy the "movie script" gimmick. I like that Yuiza has an interest in them, and she does commentate on how her life is becoming like a horror movie. I just don't think that it was integrated into the plot enough to justify the gimmick, and it always took me right out of the narrative.

The other characters are not as fleshed out as they could be. The side character with the most depth is Glorymar, Yuiza's roommate, and I really liked her and her story. Allende was a character that had a lot more potential for depth than he achieved, and I think Farrah is in the same boat. We never truly find out anything deeper about these characters, so I don't feel for them as deeply as I would like to.

The "world-building" of the school is really fascinating, and the escalating tension once she arrives at the campus is well done. Every time Yuiza had to buy something or slipped a little behind in classes I cringed for them. It's the section of the book I enjoyed the most, and I think it's also the section that highlighted the themes the most strongly. The book is about how we don't all have to work the same to achieve the same opportunities, and that BIPOC are systemically disadvantaged. I completely agree with this, and I also like that the theme is not subtle at all. It's as in your face as it gets, and we need books like that.

But just as the novel was building to the climax, several things in a row really made me dislike it. The villains give a monologue about their evil schemes and it includes things that were never even slightly hinted towards in the novel nor explained further. The magical realism starts to get much more magical than I was anticipating. And to top the whole thing off, the ending is EXTREMELY ambiguous. I cannot stress enough that if you don't like ambiguous endings you will not like this one. I'm not a huge fan of them, but I have like them in the past. I think this one was done very poorly.

It was very bold, but it felt more like the author just didn't know how to end the book than a well thought out intentional culmination of the themes.

I wish I liked They Thought They Buried Us more. I think it's an important story that needs to be told, but I think there were too many plot points that were dropped and lost, and too many oddities that I had to let go. It either needed to stay more grounded or go a little more off the rails, but instead it toed this line that made it disappointing on both ends.

I wish NoNieqa Ramos all the success in the world, and I hope you enjoy her novel more than I did.

When I first read the summary of the book, I had really high hopes. Dark Academia is often lacking in representation, and I thought that this book would deliver a unique point of view on a dangerously overdone genre. Unfortunately, this book missed the mark for me. The commentary was heavy-handed and did not allow the reader to come to conclusions on their own, instead spelling out every detail. Additionally, while I know that the story is not meant to be realistic, the struggles faced by the main character were taken so far that it felt difficult to suspend disbelief. At times, it felt that the plot was a secondary element to the social commentary. I think the book would have benefitted from tackling a few elements of racial and class injustice in more detail instead of trying to cover everything in one short novel. In taking on so much, elements were not given the time and detail that they deserved, and I wasn’t left feeling that this book did anything for the genre that hasn’t been done before more successfully.

I can see the appeal of this YA book hitting home with teens who are into horror, have a passion for film and the horror genre, and really understand the language of young people.

In this book, Yuiza is a an aspiring film director who accepts a scholarship to a boarding school. Yuiza's dreams and other clues leave Yuiza unsettled.

Personally, I couldn't get into this book, although the premise is solid.

As always a big thank you to Netgalley and Lerner Publishing Group for this advanced copy!

I am not sure how I feel about this book. I was really intrigued with the premise of the book, a creepy school with strange happenings is always something I find intriguing and a good horror book is something I always love. However, I personally feel that the book missed the mark with the horror aspect for me. I didn't find it as horror based as I thought it was going to be. I feel it tried to draw on elements from Jordan Peele films, but the execution wasn't done in the best way in my opinion. I felt it was more a mystery than a horror. The only thing really horror based, in my opinion, was what was happening with the people who ran the elevators.

Another thing that was just not my favorite was what I felt were plotholes throughout the book. There are many events that occur throughout the book that are later not revisited or are not explained well at all. The things occurring with the people who run the elevators has no explanation to it whatsoever, but plays a semi important role throughout the book. The singing that Yuiza does also isn't explained well and left me confused about what role it played in the story as a whole. They talk about these pills for anemia and yet there's no explanation for them and what they do or were intended to do to the girls. There's also really little explanation for the villain at the end of the story, which is disappointing, and honestly while I know people will like the choose your own ending I wish we had a clear ending for the story. It leaves the book feeling incomplete and like a first draft where the author couldn't decide what ending to pick.

I also found that the characters weren't really developed well. They are all very surface level characters that don't feel like they have a lot of depth to them. The relationships between Yuiza and her friends and family are glanced over very quickly and leave you wondering how their relationships have lasted. Yuiza's love for horror is barely noticable after five chapters into the story, and leaves me wondering what part it was supposed to play in the story that was unfortunately left out. It also gives zero explanation for why Yuiza and Glorymar are sent to the school after what their parents had clearly endured there as children themselves, and while it's slightly touched on about how they'll never know why they were sent there, there truly should have been a revelation for why they were sent there. Whether it was planned by the villain or their moms trying to right history, there should have been something.

Now there were things I liked about the book, like the way the BIPOC students are quickly drug into debt despite being on scholarship and how the white students are either completely oblivious or willing to ignore the struggles of the BIPOC students to suit their own lives and privledge. I also enjoyed how the school let a few BIPOC students be successful to cover up the cruel and inhumane ways
that they kept the BIPOC students basically enslaved to the school with their debt. I also really enjoyed the moment when Yuiza is working the dinner service and they went to ask about Allende and the other character told Yuiza that they were "almost out of the red." It was probably one of my favorite moments of the book.

Overall, while I wish I could have loved the book, it left me feeling like it was incomplete and missing major events that would have made the book feel more complete. I hope other people find more enjoyment in the book than I did and I'd like to give the author another try in the future as they do have elements in their writing that I do enjoy.

I adore horror but something was missing from this story for me to feel truly involved and any real scare elements *i did not care for many characters sadly. but the premise is interesting and for sure this book has its audience in the horror realm of books, it just is not me sadly. I look forward to trying ramos books in the future though.

Ramos’ first book, Disturbed Girl’s Dictionary, with its unique and playful structure as a personal dictionary written by a marginalized student defining her own world, led me to this one, where the protagonist sees the world through horror films. Ramos successfully pulls it off while adding layer upon layer of social commentary. Even the very creative ending (no spoiler here) has deep meaning for the protagonist, whose lived experience is the horror of colonialist metanarrative controlling them and their family even as they attempt to break free with an elite education. Bravo to Ramos, and also to Lerner, for taking a chance and giving the world something truly unique, deeply satisfying, and appropriately unsettling.

An excellent read for fans of horror, suspense, and mystery. I enjoyed this book, it’s not my normal genre of choice! Glad I requested it

This book has a such a great premise, but it suffered from a lack of editing, and an over use of slang that won't hold up well for future readers.

The book leaned far too heavily into politicized identities to the point that the characters felt like characterizations and not remotely like real people.

I had to DND this one due to serious pacing and editing issues combined with characters that just couldn't be connected with.

I started this book and initially liked the narration. It felt comedic in a way similar to that of My Heart is a Chainsaw. The characters of Jade (My Heart is a Chainsaw) and Yaiza (They Thought They Buried Us) hold a similar love for the horror genre and can reference many horror novels, movies, and other sources. After getting approximately 30 pages into this novel, however, the constant over-the-top, eccentricity of Yaiza, her friends, and her tia's grew to be too much to bear. They quickly became extremely annoying, and I found myself not wanting to read any more.

The following is an example of the constant over-the-top eccentricity of this book, which bothered me so much. Yuiza's little cousin, Rosario, is trying to get into Yuiza's room for reasons I did not fully understand. This is from the novel: "The loudest sound in recorded history came from the volcanic eruption on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in 1883, causing two thirds of the island to collapse and forming tsunami waves that rocked ships as far away as South Africa. Then there was Rosario's scream." A phrase like that is unique and funny the first time you hear it. But when the story is plagued with comparisons like that throughout, they lose their glamor.

I wanted to like this book. I really gave it a chance. However, I'm going to have to add this to my Did Not Finish (DNF) shelf, unfortunately. As such, I cannot reasonably give it a rating since I did not finish it. NetGalley requires me to give a review, though, so I gave it 2 stars since I could not get into it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Lerner Publishing Group for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

They Thought They Buried Us by NoNieqa Ramos is a YA horror novel that follows Yuiza as she attends a prestigious boarding school, Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy. Once there, Yuiza realizes that things may not be as they seem, and they're not sure if this is the amazing opportunity that they were promised.

The pros of the book:
I liked how the book was set up like a horror movie, and the odes to horror movies is clear in the story and the writing style. The thriller/horror/mystery elements were entertaining to the plot, and I found myself wanting to know what the conclusion would be early on the in the book. The narrative brings up important points regarding systemic racism, microaggressions, gender identity, as well as other important social topics. I appreciated the alternative endings at the end of the book. I don't mind an open ending, and I thought it was interesting to allow the reader, based on their own life experiences, be able to determine how the story for the characters would in, and by extension perhaps their own story.

The cons of the book:
It did take a while for me to get into the book at first. The very beginning was jarring to step into and understand what was going on, which could have been a choice to create an unsettling atmosphere, but one that didn't wholly work for me. The characters felt pretty flat to me, and I liked them enough that I wanted them to be more dimensional and nuanced. All of the "villains" seemed like caricatures without any subtlety. The writing style and dialogue in particular at times felt disjointed and slightly unnatural, which would occasionally take me out of the story.

Overall, I would recommend it for young horror readers in my library, and I think there are important points that the author and the narrative make in the storytelling. It might be a bit too surface-level in characterization and dialogue for a reader who is a heavy horror fan, though.

I don’t do horror. I just don’t like to be disturbed by what is usually happening in horror stories. It is one of those things where you want to grab the protagonist and help them run away, before what ever happens, happens.

Yuiza, however, is fully aware that she is in the middle of a horror movie. She even has voiceovers from her tias and her friends, commenting on each of the details that are happening.

It all starts out normally, if it could ever be normal. Yaiza receives a scholarship to a prestigious pre-school, but is not told, until it is too late, that as a scholarship student, she has to do work-study to help pay her way. That she has to pay for her uniforms. That she has to pay to have a dorm room that is anything more than the bare minimum.

And the working students have labels on their uniforms that say what they do, but not who they are. The servers, the gardeners, everywhere she looks, they are all like zombies, forced to toe the line.

And that isn’t even getting into the fact that all students have to be chipped, so they can find them when they want to.

The frogs on the cover refer to a childhood song about healing through frogs. And Yuiza has to call on those frogs for help, as things get worse and worse.

The sad thing about this whole story is that this is actually going on today, in real life. Perhaps not with the chips, but the burden of work-study. The hardness of trying to fit into a school where you are the token minority. Racism is a horror unto itself.

There is a great line in the book that sums this up: “Victims weren’t hidden in walls and basements. They were heaped in plain sight. Perpetrators claimed racism didn’t exist even as they trampled over the bodies.”

And, if you do end up reading the book, which gives three different endings, I have a bad feeling that the most real of the endings is the first one.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review. THis book is coming out the 10th of Sept. 2024

A riveting thriller that is rock-solid in what it wants to say and unafraid to say it. There are few books that use the motif of haunting as a sign of trauma quite as deftly as Ramos has.

Unfortunately I ended up DNF'ing this book. I tried but I just couldn't get into the writing style and I was so confused about characters. Seems like it could have ended up somewhere interesting, I just couldn't get there.

Ramos weaves layer upon layer in their new contemporary thriller that follows avid horror movie fan Yuiza as they unlock the mysteries of their new school and their mother's past before they become the next victim. My only note was that I wish the novel was longer so that we could've stayed and gotten lost in the morsels of unease created by Ramos.

they thought they buried us read a lot like a rough draft. maybe because this is a YA horror novel. and I'm definitely not young. but I just felt the characters were missing something. but it was a good story.

I DNF'ed this book.
I didn't really feel connected to the story or the characters. I had no idea how to picture the characters and their personalities.
I also didn't really understand what was happening at the beginning so I started out the book confused and continuing it, I was still confused.
It was a good idea and effort but the execution was, unfortunately, not great.

This book was okay. I liked the premise but felt the writing could've been stronger and more clear. I felt lost in several places and almost DNF.

Dive into 'They Thought They Buried Us' by NoNieqa Ramos for a journey that'll keep you glued to the page. This book is like nothing I've ever read before, and I loved every second of it. It's amazing and horrifying all in one. Yuiza's story isn't just gripping; it's eye-opening. Ramos seamlessly weaves in horror with real-life issues, creating a narrative that's as chilling as it is thought-provoking.

As Yuiza's journey unfolds, you'll find yourself hooked from the start, racing through the pages to uncover the truth alongside her. Each revelation sends shivers down your spine, both from the suspenseful horror and the stark exploration of race, identity, and privilege. Ramos masterfully blends elements of horror with a narrative that pulses with adrenaline, leaving you on the edge of your seat and prompting reflection long after the final page is turned.

I couldn't put it down and can't wait to see what Ramos does next. If you're after a read that's both thrilling and thought-provoking, this is it.

I can't say enough great things about this book. I have never been so stressed out by a thriller to the point that I questioned whether I would have to DNF because the feelings it evoked were so overwhelming. However, I knew that choice would only be too in line with the actions of the oppressors throughout this story. And while this is fiction, it is so closely interwoven with reality that to look away from this story would only contribute to the violence it describes. This story is horrific, unsettling, and disturbingly close to reality. However, I really appreciate the way that the author showed the strength of the characters, their cultures, and the communities they create to survive. This story is not only pain and sorrow, it is also a testament to the courage it takes to keep fighting, even when you don't want to, because it's the only choice you have other than to be erased.

I will be posting reviews to StoryGraph, TikTok, and Fable closer to publication date.