I found it at times hard to keep track of the storyline. This made it hard to genuinely enjoy the book. Lots going on and overall, it was good. I did it as an audiobook and this could be why?

I had to DNF this book. It's disappointing because I've been looking forward to this book for months and was so thankful for being given an advanced ebook copy from Netgalley and the publisher of Summer Sons. As much as I tried, and I even bought the audio book to help me continue, I just could not get into this story. Because I could not finish it, I am giving it 2 ⭐.

Eddie and Andrew are childhood friends that have an unbreakable bond. They do everything together up until Eddie leaves to start his graduate program. After 6 months Andrew is notified that Eddie has committed suicide and has left him a home with an unknown roommate and more questions than answers. He cannot accept Eddie's death as a suicide and begins to retrace his steps by spending time partying with his friends and looking into the research project he was working on. Andrew's life begins to unravel as a mysterious entity with slashed wrists starts to appear.

I really liked the concept and the setting of the story. It had some really creepy elements and the repressed feelings that Andrew had were also an interesting part of the story. The ending felt a little flat to me. I was hoping for a little more.

This book is going on my "pandemic DNF- return to someday" list. It's definitely a me-not-you sort of DNF, as I just couldn't focus on the story despite the fact that it is quite well written and up my alley.

I seem to be in the minority here but something about this didn't work for me. I just could not get into the writing style. This did not feel like horror to me, even though there were depictions of ghosts and other "horror" type things. I just felt a little detached because of the writing style.

Thank You So Much Tordotcom for this ebook! 😘

Andrew and Eddie are the best of friends! They are more like brothers!
Eddie left to go-to Vanderbilt.
Andrew was to join him in Nashville a few months later.
Now Andrew is dead from an apparent suicide!
Eddie wouldn't kill himself.... So Andrew sets out to find the truth.
He is determined to find out what happened. So he retraces his steps.

Summer Sons intrigued me from the very beginning.
Its spooky, dark and beyond errie!
It’s a thrilling and fascinating read the whole way through.
This beautiful cover is one pro....
But Lee Mandelo does an outstanding job making his characters come straight to life!
I simply adored every aspect of it: the writing, the angst, the pace, the characters!
This is one book you should read!

Well, I really enjoyed this one.

I just tell you that I was much more into the drama and the relationship than I was into the horror/paranormal aspect of it. Don't get me wrong, that was good - it's just that I really needed our main character to find himself and some semblance of happy.

The Gothic feel of the piece is well done and our boys are so, so dangerous in so many ways.

Well written and made me very, very anxious!

This book has everything I love: dark academia, an unsolved murder with a paranormal mystery, complex characters you can’t help but love, and a creepy, atmospheric setting.

Summer Sons follows Andrew, who travels to Vanderbilt University to investigate the apparent suicide of his childhood best friend Eddie. Torn apart with grief, Andrew knows that Eddie couldn’t have done that, and continue’s Eddie’s PhD research on local folklore in order to figure out what happened. But with the revenant Eddie haunting him, will Andrew be able to solve the mystery before it consumes him?

I loved this book so much. It was the exact dark, weird, slowburn horror that I adore. Andrew was an equally compelling and frustrating main character, but I really felt with him as he processed the loss of his best friend and the unresolved feelings between the two. I also adored the paranormal elements of the book and thought it was really unique. I definitely need to look for more southern gothic books because this was so so good.

Side note but I think this would be really good for fans of The Raven Cycle that are looking for similar dark paranormal vibes. This book reminded me a lot of the Dream Thieves and is the first time I’ve been able to find something similar to my favorite series.

Overall this was a perfect mixture of dark academia and southern gothic and I highly recommend picking it up this fall!

Thanks so much to Tordotcom and NetGalley for the digital review copy!

Not sure what I can say that hasn't already been said: this book is sweaty, delicious, terrifying, unputdownable.

The deeply descriptive prose and lush setting of this book draw you in until you can almost smell the burnt rubber of a street race and feel the oppressive heat of summer.
I did struggle with the characters a bit because while they’re very well-written they’re also mostly terrible people and I had a difficult time identifying with Andrew at all. I also felt like the writing at times was too heavy with metaphors and it detracted from what was actually going on in the story.
Overall I feel like this was an intriguing, slow burn, atmospheric gothic mystery that I would definitely recommend to anyone who is looking for a good ghost story.

This books writing is unlike anything I've ever read. Mandelo has incredible story telling skills. As well as amazing plot development. I loved this book!

I don't normally give out a five star rating for a book unless its both technically perfect AND hits some key points/feelings that are often indescribable for me personally. The fifth star, for me, is something that is deeply personal and so I never argue when another reader and I are on the 4/5 split. So I struggled a bit with what to give this one. It is a technically perfect work of art. Stunning prose; full characters who feel like real, breathing people; rich, complex relationships; and a story that manages to be beautifully atmospheric while not sacrificing pace all come together with a tight, fitting ending.

This book is everything it promises to be and more and I genuinely cannot recommend it enough. It is a rare book indeed where, just 100 pages in, I was telling people "you need to preorder this right now."

But, for me, I know a book hits that "indescribable" point when I want to turn it over and start again the moment I read the last few words. Here, the first time through, the book felt so nostalgic (growing up in the same area, having several similar life experiences) that finishing it for the first time felt like reading a beloved tale for the nth time. That's something I don't think I've ever been able to say about a book before, but the way Mandelo captures the utter southerness of their location, there feels like no other way to describe it. The characters felt like people so real they were about to walk of the page and the location was just as palpable.

This book has a LOT of praise points (I honestly tried to think of something nitpicky I could say about it - came up empty). but how Mandelo manages to write the early 20s/LGBTQ experience in a way that feels deeply ordinary and familiar while also weaving in an incredibly unique ghost story that manages to feel fresh AND timeless at the same time?

That is just unquestionable talent.

I don't think I've ever been so excited to see what a debut author does next.

I finished Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo a few days ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. This debut novel is a beautifully queer, Southern Gothic look into the world of Appalachian street racing and higher learning.
Summer Sons focuses on Andrew and Eddie, two friends with an intense, unexplainable bond as they move on to their graduate program at Vanderbilt. Eddie decides to go first, asking Andrew to stay behind for a few months. When Eddie dies by apparent suicide, he learns that Eddie has left him his considerable fortune, a house with a roommate he doesn’t want, his extensive thesis research, and a vengeful haunt that will not leave him alone. He also leaves him the mystery of his demise, which Andrew knows was not suicide. In order to solve this mystery, Andrew must assimilate into Eddie’s life, diving headfirst into a world of fast cars, blurred sexual identities, and copious amounts of drugs.
If that sounds like a lot thematically, it is but it somehow works. Mandelo is an amazing writer who manages to tackle huge themes like wealth inequality and toxic masculinity in the middle of what is, in essence, a ghostly unrequited love story. I am particularly impressed by his searing indictment of the casual racism of the academic world, especially in the South. I read a lot of dark academia and this is a topic usually skirted around or wholly ignored, so I appreciate the inclusion. I also love the way Mandelo handles the dual nature of human beings. Every character is incredibly nuanced, always encompassing more than one thing at a time, which is realistic and beautiful.
Summer Sons is one of the best books I can remember reading. I absolutely loved every minute of it and cannot wait to see what Mandelo comes up with next. I'd give this one more than 5 stars if I could.

Andrew is getting ready to join his best friend, when he instead learns of his apparent suicide. Now everything Eddie owned belongs to Andrew except for the knowledge of what really happened. Andrew knew Eddie better than anyone else in the world and he is positive that he never would have killed himself.
It took me a while to get into this story. The pace was slow at first, although I was immediately knocked over by the depth of Andrew's grief at the loss of his friend Eddie. As Andrew moves into what was once Eddie's house and now belongs to him, I didn't really care for his inherited roommate Riley or really any of Eddie's crowd. They grew on me eventually and by the time I realized I was angry with Eddie for having shared what Andrew thought was private, I was pretty heavily invested in Andrew's search for the truth of what really led to Eddie's death and whether he really took his own life. There is a supernatural element involved but it felt secondary to Andrew's grief and repressed sexuality. If you enjoy a slow burn horror this is for you.

4 out of 5 stars

Part mystery, part creepy Southern Gothic ghost story, part dark academia, part an exploration of queer masculinity and grief, Summer Sons was like nothing else I ever read. I wasn’t sure if it’d be up my alley, I don’t go for horror, and the ARC request was of the experimental why-the-hell-not-my-friends-like-it kind, but damn it was good. I picked it up at exactly the right time.

Andrew is in pieces after his childhood best friend Eddie suddenly died. He knows that what looks like a suicide isn’t and, haunted by Eddie’s ghost, sets off to follow his steps at university, meet his friends, and find out what really happened.

Also, he might be into guys without knowing it yet.

The story starts off fairly slow. Andrew’s idea of investigating is drinking, doing drugs, racing, getting acquainted with Eddie’s friends, avoiding talking about his feelings, and doing the bare minimum of Eddie’s schoolwork he was supposed to be following up on. His discovery of his sexuality is even slower because he’s an oblivious moron (oh, do we love to see it). But slowly and all the more surely, the story drew me in until I read the last part in one go.

I thought I wouldn’t be too into it because horror, but it’s so character-focused and queer in a messy and unlabelled way it ended up being very much to my liking. The atmosphere is spot on, it’s quotable as hell, and I loved the side characters, especially Riley aka the one sane person. I also found it interesting how, for the lack of a better world, masculine it is – fistfights, racing, cheap beer, and all.

All in all, I’d highly recommend you give it a try.

This book was the definition of a slow burn investment for me. At first I wasn't sure how I would feel because the pacing is pretty slow as Andrew gets acclimated to his new setting and grieving over the loss of his best friend but as the story progressed I found this slow start really allowed me to connect to these characters in a way I wouldn't have been able to if it were a more traditionally fast paced mystery dark academia book. I was pleasantly surprised by the fast and furious vibes and the relationship developments between characters and was always itching to read it when I wasn't. In general I think the setting was not my favorite to be in, since as a reader I am not generally drawn to this dark, toxic settings but besides that personal preference I am really glad I picked this one up and would recommend it to anyone looking for a new dark academia that focuses on toxic masculinity, and queer identity with southern gothic vibes.

Summer Sons is a howl in the dark. It’s southern, but in the way you only notice near dusk, when blue lightning bugs come out and dance in tandem. It’s got pollen in its throat, sweat in its eyes, and a trucker hat on backwards. Summer Sons rips itself out of Appalachian places—Tennessee lowlands, Georgia high country, Kentucky caves—and offers its men up on a platter, daring you to taste.

Written by Kentucky resident Lee Mandelo, the book takes place at Vanderbilt University, a very well-to-do school in Nashville, Tennessee that’s got enough prestige and culture to impress rich parents who don’t want to send their kids past the Mason-Dixon. In this privileged setting, a young man, Eddie Fulton, has been found dead in the woods. The police have ruled it a suicide, but Andrew Blur—Eddie’s best friend and foster brother—knows that there’s more to it than that.

After all, Andrew and Eddie are cursed. Revealed in bits and pieces throughout the book, when the two boys were kids they were trapped for days in a cave. While there, their bleeding injuries awakened a magical ghoul that has haunted them their entire lives. Andrew has tried to run from his revenant, but Eddie embraced it, trying to figure out what it wanted and how to control it.

While the two men might have haunted blood, Andrew is sure that his foster brother wouldn’t commit suicide. Despite warnings from his family and friends to drop it, Andrew undertakes an investigation to figure out what really happened to Eddie. From the nosy thesis supervisor to the rough-and-tumble townies, Andrew finds himself caught up in the relationships that Eddie left behind. None of this is made easier by the fact that Andrew’s curse seems to have come back with a vengeance, taking the guise of a skeletal, rotting revenant that feels, in some eerie way, like Eddie.

As the mystery unfolds, so do details of Andrew and Eddie’s relationship. While they did grow up together, first as friends, and then as foster siblings after Eddie’s parents died, there was always a tension between them, a kind of casual intimacy that might have developed into something more. Andrew tries to push down his more complicated feelings as he begins to unspool the mystery surrounding Eddie’s death. While they were never physically intimate, everyone in Eddie’s old circle seems to think that Andrew was Eddie’s boyfriend. And Andrew refuses to think about what their relationship could have been. In the middle of this southern setting, a gripping coming-out story reveals itself as Andrew comes to terms with his relationship, or lack of a relationship, with his dead best friend.

It feels unfair to compare Summer Sons to another book, but this novel is the meaner, adult version of the heat wave of southern boyhood brought on by the Raven Cycle. (Although considering Mandelo’s four-part series on Stiefvater’s seminal tetralogy, maybe this comparison is earned.) What so many fans latched onto in that series—the smoky sense of identity that swirls around queers in the rural south, the stickiness of growing up with and without privilege, the magic of low hollers and unknown woods—is given its full herald in Summer Sons. Relying on some very slant Appalachian folklore, this book is a thoroughly modern novel, keeping pace with contemporary work and leaving behind the old stories of Silver John and murder ballads. The book muses on dark academia, but focuses on the living that happens outside of the classroom. There’s street racing and half-attempted threesomes, murder, and ghosts. The prose is centered around grisly details, and these are the parts that stand out beyond any others—those moments when the undead revenant comes to collect.

There is also a grief fantasy at work here. Death by suicide is often difficult to conceptualize, and fighting to find “the truth” of a tragedy is a universal desire. All around Andrew, people attempt to convince him that his friend did take his own life. Andrew, by way of supernatural revenant, knows things that nobody else knows. He gets to play out the fantasy of finding Eddie’s truth among the clues left behind. So often in the real world people are left to struggle on their own, without any explanations. Andrew becomes a vessel through which the audience can fantasize about closure and grief, where the audience can experience a catharsis through simply knowing what happened to a loved one before they died.

While Andrew struggles with his suspicions surrounding Eddie’s official manner of death, he also, very simply, struggles with what was lost. The complicated feelings he has about what did or didn’t happen between himself and his best friend/foster brother are exceptionally poignant moments within Summer Sons. This mourning keeps us grounded in the plot, even amid the leisurely first half of the book. All we can feel is bad for Andrew. All we can do is sympathize.

But, the plot continues. While Andrew obsesses over his relationship to Eddie, he has to rely on his inherited roommate Riley—and Riley’s cousin Sam Halse—to help him figure out just how deep Eddie was in the shit. It’s Andrew’s friendship with Sam, the kind of southern man you love to hate, that becomes the pulsing, bloody heartbeat of this book.

Sam Halse is every boy I knew in my small, rural, southern high school. The kind with tattoos and a bad attitude, who nobody fucked with, but whom everyone got fucked up with. The boy who comes late to his own party, half a forty already down. He’s the boy who soups up his car but lives without air conditioning, installs custom lights, and learns about racing the old-fashioned way—by outdriving cops in the night, turning off his headlights to careen down winding southern roads, a rogue deer standing in between life, death, and jail time.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why I loved Summer Sons. I knew these boys. I wanted to fight these boys. I wanted to be these boys. Some of them I might have even wanted to fuck.

The exploration of masculinity in Summer Sons is almost fetishistic. Masculinity is captured and held up to the light, observed like a moth near a fire. It’s something to desire, to look away from, to aspire towards. The women in Summer Sons are side characters, meant to aid the development of the men, ignored with the swipe of a finger as Andrew screens their calls. When they do enter the scene they are as fully fleshed out as any other character, but (with one exception) they don’t cling to the page, don’t demand to be known in the way that the men do. As we press against the edges of men, they break under Mandelo’s prose, eviscerated in parts and in whole, haunted by the specters of expectation and attitudes.

Underneath this exploration of masculinity and manhood lies the haunting. The magic in this book is distant and immediate at the same time. It simply appears; it is not controlled. It is otherworldly and not easily understood. The ghost at the center of Summer Sons is born in blood and terror, and it latches itself to ribs, sticky and wet, muddy and angry.

Inside this conclave of heat and horror, a truly wonderful novel plays out. The line-writing, y’all. It’s incredible. Every paragraph is crafted: tight and wound up in the nuances of navigating a world you don’t belong to but are forced into. Andrew’s upset and awkwardness comes through in his every decision, the darkness at the edges of his vision giving him a narrow focus on a singular objective. He has to find Eddie’s killer. Whether the truth lies in Halse’s after-hours crowd Eddie hung out with or the precarious politics of academia, Andrew digs his own grave, trying to find Eddie’s.

Summer Sons is southern gothic—if, that is, Faulkner did coke off the spine of As I Lay Dying and asked himself, “how can I make it gay?” There’s an undercurrent of sex to this book that feels at home in the south—a place that sometimes gets lumped in with prudish morality, but which here instead chooses to revel in its own sweetly searing moments of desire. Contained in every touch is another that didn’t happen, every look becomes a longing glance, and each token becomes a larger part of a gift that was never given over.

This book is a slow-burning wildfire. The kind that starts leisurely in the hills and spreads high until you can’t put the book down. You have to know what happens, you have to see Andrew through his bad decisions and even worse taste in partners. It takes a while (about half the book), but the build up is worth it, deeply intentional and meant to be savored. Mandelo has crafted something truly wonderful in his explorations of men and monsters and shaped it around a haint-laden blue bottle tree. Eddie’s mysterious death is what truly grounds this book, but it’s the blood that Andrew spills into his grave that makes it a hauntingly unforgettable read.

This was good but not as good as I hoped. The pacing was slow and confusing at the beginning, and it wasn't a pleasant reading experience for me. I wasn't a fan of the car racing sections, but that is a personal preference. I loved the Southern Gothic tone of the book as well as the folk lore elements. While this wasn't a new favorite, I would read more work by this author.

For nearly a decade, Andrew Blur and Eddie Fulton were inseparable. Described by others as friends, brothers, and roommates, the pair shared a life of “Eddie keeping [Andrew] leashed but cared for at the same time” and Andrew content to follow wherever Eddie led. Bonded by love, death, and blood, they became each other’s home—a home crowded with hungry silence, barbed solace, and raging yearning; coalescing into a miasmic, borderline-obsessive devotion that seeped out as feverish aggression and adrenaline-soaked recklessness. It was the only acceptably masculine language in which they could express their feelings. They shared a major, a tattoo, even a girl, so it made sense to apply to the same graduate program in American Studies at Vanderbilt University. What didn’t make sense was Eddie’s surprise early admission to the program, his move to Nashville without Andrew, and their subsequent semester separation that Eddie extended incrementally from 5 months to 8. When Andrew finally got permission from Eddie to join him, their reunion comes in the form of a funeral a few days later.

With Eddie gone, so is Andrew’s home.

Every moment of his life that followed would take him further from Eddie, no matter his efforts to scrounge for the remains, but what else was there for him to do except draw what was left as close as possible?

The only path forward Andrew can see is the last one Eddie chose for them. Accepting this path means accepting the inheritances Eddie left him, including a house and ready-made friends in the form of a roommate named Riley Sowell and Riley’s mechanic/drug dealing cousin, Sam Halse—none of which Andrew wants. Andrew’s sole reason for being in Nashville, living with a stranger, and remaining enrolled in a graduate program he cares nothing about is to find out “what or who had taken Eddie from him.” His cripplingly repressive nature sees him ricocheting between wanting to rip the answers from the flesh of the strangers who hadn’t “kept Eddie well” and to mindlessly running away when offered answers or potential friendship or anything else that calls to his grief and vulnerability. The only offers Andrew freely accepts are his chosen methods of escape—drugs and street racing.

Andrew’s scattershot attempts at investigating Eddie’s death see him “acting on one impulse after another, hoping he’d find the right direction while dodging the shit he’d rather ignore,” like the real reason Eddie was drawn back to their birthplace, that one discordant note in the song of them—their connection to the dead. While Eddie remained silently fascinated, Andrew chose to forget…until Eddie forces his hand. Surrounded by the haunts of their past and wantonly drowning in his fears and unwillingness to see beyond Eddie, Andrew will finally have to make his own choice for life, death…or something in between.

As a Tennessee girl myself, I can’t help but be drawn towards the Southern Gothic horror subgenre, since various cultivars of deep, DEEP denial/repression (sweetened by generously given smiles and sugary politeness, of course) are still the regions’ most prolific crop, and I was curious to see which ones Summer Sons curated and how far down the roots grew. Lee Mandelo’s debut novel explores deeply-entrenched repression, masculinity, grief, systems of oppression, and the roots of their power wrapped up in angry emo angst, homoerotic posturing, and lovingly, viscerally described revenants that “[appreciate] the vital spice of terror when leeched from the living.”

As Summer Sons takes a deep dive into repression born of masculine gender norms and the various areas of inhibition this creates, the book is a very slow burn. Andrew spends the first half full of frothing desperation; all the things he and Eddie didn’t talk about leaking through his cracks, spilling from the box he’s kept them in for half his life and unable to pack them away again—open, vulnerable, and resolutely resistant to being that way. For Andrew, there is only Eddie, but for all their mutual dedication, much of their connection is an illusion. Because their friendship has been limited to the cage of appropriate heteronormativity (enforced vigorously by Eddie), Andrew has accepted that they can’t be “that way” and emotionally, mentally, and physically bolts at any whiff of queerness. His denial is so deep, he can’t even be honest with himself in the face of Eddie’s newfound acceptance and openness in their time apart; and being unable to be honest keeps Andrew from truly grieving and gives life to his haunts—Eddie’s self-centered/destructive nature; Andrew’s blind obedience; their skewed, co-dependent relationship; their queerness. Andrew can’t let go and heal because he’s clinging to this rot.

The reality of Eddie’s death, of being surrounded by Riley and Sam—the people Eddie had spent the final months of life with, the people comfortable in the house Andrew now owns but feels displaced in, the strangers Eddie had shared their secrets with—and Andrew’s inability unwillingness to process his emotional agitation as anything other than gender-appropriate raised hackles and prickly combativeness or the dissociative translucency of drugs keeps him “hamstrung by his own destruction.” Andrew would literally rather by embraced by the cold, invasive remnants of Eddie than accept the support being offered to him.

And while I was sometimes frustrated when Andrew remained stubbornly still, Mandelo’s simple but evocative prose kept unexpectedly hitting home with a deft word choice here or unique turn of phrase there, helping me stay present and invested in Andrew’s journey until he begins to move forward. Andrews first bit of breakthrough is a culmination of Riley’s steadfast understanding and Sam’s brash forcefulness. In Halse, Andrew recognizes the same burning intensity and intangible want that burned in Eddie and himself beneath Halse’s brash, good-ole-boy charisma; recognizes that seductive threat of something Halse wields to entice and dominate his pack of “boys with fast cars and bad habits” as well as unerringly provoke the roiling emotions inside Andrew only to soothe them back down to a thrum with his vitalizing night races.

All the major secondary characters are a bit fuzzy around the edges, indistinct in the way of early adulthood—remaking themselves from moment to moment and as they pass from group to group. They wear the messiness of human complexity closer to the surface, proclaiming to be “not great people” while offering up seemingly limitless friendship because they want to honor someone’s memory. Andrew’s coming of age is done in a drastic way (basically so subservient to Eddie’s personality, neither Andrew nor the reader know much about who he is by the end), but it works within the motifs of the book. Also because Mandelo does such a good job conveying Eddie’s personality and energy, the similarities between him and Sam almost make Halse an Eddie clone. Andrew draws the parallels between the two early on, and it takes a while after Andrew’s breakthrough and his growing closeness with the cousins to get to the important differences between them. So while not quite a clone, Sam feels like Eddie v2.0—fixing self-centeredness and privileged rich boy bugs.

For me, the most interesting and well-rounded character is Riley, with Eddie/Andrew’s friend Delia in second place. As the most harshly used character (especially given her lack of page time and early exodus), Delia gets the most complete emotional arc—from constantly shut out and at-odds friend to finally looking out for her own mental well-being. Although, I have to wonder if she received the closure/”better off without them” treatment to completely remove her from Andrew’s life in the most palatable way possible. Riley, as well as being Eddie/Andrew’s roommate, is also in the same graduate program and shares the same “wrong side of the tracks” background, recreational activities, and pragmatism as his cousin. Not only is Riley emotionally and mentally intelligent, he’s sensitive to haunts in a complementary way to Eddie/Andrew and does the heavy lifting when it comes to working around Andrew’s prickly, emotional boundaries, erratic behavior, and hair-trigger temper. Frankly, I felt like he is a healthier, more well-suited match for Andrew, but between Riley already having a girlfriend and a boyfriend and Andrew simply not being stable or confident enough in his own skin yet, Riley doesn’t deserve the headache.

While the incorporation/symbolism of the haunts and Andrew’s journey are fully fleshed out and interwoven almost seamlessly, for me other elements of repression Mandelo tries to incorporate, such as systemic racism/classism and the bloody history at their foundations, don’t fit in quite as well. The academic setting and the simmering, fraught tensions of privilege, entitlement, and the gray spaces of fairness in regards to intersectionality are used more as plot devices for the story-length investigation into Eddie’s death; they’re alluded to or mentioned in passing and at most possibly used to exemplify (justify?) some of the characters’ hubris, terrible reasoning, and dangerously faulty logic. While not as cohesive as the rest of the genre elements, I still appreciated the acknowledgement of these deeply entrenched issues.

Despite a few pacing hiccups and thin mystery, Summer Sons mines the alienation, isolation, and visceral fear and repression found in Gothic horror to tell an achingly familiar coming of age story that not only conveys the painful, overwhelming, and frightening experience of discovery and growth, but also the resiliency and hope that can be found in supportive, caring bonds.

Andrew and Eddie were best friends, closer than brothers. Their level of attachment to one another went above and beyond what you would even expect of the closest of friends. When Eddie left Andrew behind to begin his graduate studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, it was unsurprisingly a tough transition. At least from Andrew's perspective.

Six months later, just before Andrew was getting ready to join Eddie in Nashville, Andrew receives news that Eddie has died, an apparent suicide.

Now Andrew has inherited Eddie's house in Nashville, complete with a roommate he doesn't know, or necessarily want. Andrew is also left with the haunting suspicion that Eddie's death isn't as cut and dry as the authorities are making it out to be.

As Andrew begins to settle into the Nashville house, becoming involved in Eddie's University studies and his friend group, he learns there was a whole side to Eddie he didn't know. Street racing, hot boys, late nights, hard drugs, ominious topics of study and dark family secrets; Andrew doesn't understand how all of this could have been going on with Eddie without him knowing it.

The deeper he gets into Eddie's secrets, the more out of control he feels. Not helping matters is the strange presence haunting him, wanting to possess him.

Summer Sons is a Queer Southern Gothic story incoporating a cut-throat academic setting with the dangerous and exciting world of street racing. With this description in mind, this should have been a great fit for my tastes. I did get some of the Southern Gothic vibes I was hoping for, as well as a desirable level of angst and grief. I also got a touch of academic atmosphere. Unfortunately, I also got bored and confused.

I did end up listening to the audiobook, which I actually feel is the only way I was able to get through it. I may have given up otherwise. The narrator was fantastic. I loved how he had the accent to fit the story; that's always a plus for me. I definitely recommend if you are interested in checking this one out, that you give the audiobook a go.

Overall, I think this just wasn't the story for me. The writing is strong, and I can get behind the ideas that set the foundation of the story, the execution just fell flat for me. I know a lot of Readers are going to absolutely adore this story, however, you can tell that already by reading other reviews!

Thank you so much to the publisher, Tor and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review. I am glad I gave this one a shot and look forward to seeing what else Mandelo comes up with in the future.