Well this was pretty darn cute…Which is kinda weird to say when so much of this book was about death and resurrection…but the romance was just so adorable!

The concept was great - teen boy accidentally resurrects his ex-best friend. All the supernatural elements and the family history of having powers connected to life and death were super cool. Love how there were little extra reveals as it went along.

Really enjoyed seeing Jaxon and Christian reconcile their friendship. Then the slow burn of their romance was just what I like to read. Lots of awkward almost flirting and blushes. I absolutely loved their dynamic - Christian being an upbeat, bubbly sweetheart and Jaxon being more of a cynical grump. Their silly banter during make out sessions was everything!!

I did think the way things got resolved was perhaps a little anti-climactic. I was like couldn’t they have just done this all along 🤣 Was just expecting something a bit more somehow. But still, was the sweet happy ending that I was hoping for after lots of tension!!

A really cool YA with a super sweet teen romance, a legacy of family magic and some cool friendships.
Also…there’s a really old cat! 🐈‍⬛

Thank you to Harper Collins and Nrtgalley for the opportunity to read this advanced digital copy.

THOUGHTS

I really enjoyed this book. Some of the plot points and characterization here felt a little silly, but that didn't overall diminish my reading experience. It was fun. It was cute. And I really liked the most of the characters.


PROS
Quirky Christian: Christian is such a fun character. He adds life and some good laughs to this book. He's a Catholic-raised recently-reanimated corpse, which is wacky enough without adding the fact that he is definitely, totally into all things witchy--much more than our necromancer main character. He's a contradiction in the best way possible, because he's a contradiction you could absolutely see yourself meeting in real life. He adds a sort of Golden Retriever, puppy-dog energy to this otherwise gloomy cast that I appreciate.

In Too Deep: Jaxon is pretty much immediately in over his head here, and he just keeps making things worse. He wants answers so bad that he starts sneaking around, but in keeping one secret, he creates a dozen more things he can't ever tell anyone--even though he really does need to tell someone. But it's a lot harder to tell someone you've messed up this bad. Jaxon doesn't know what he's doing, and things go horribly, spectacularly wrong.

Supportive Friends: I'll always say it, but when a YA book includes an actual, developed friend group, I'm happy. Regan and Jaxon have a very strong bond, and that friendship really makes this book. But Christian also has his friends, too. These friends might not have been the nicest to Jaxon in the past, but they were cruel in a way that feels so... teenage mistake. They obviously regret past decisions, and they're here for Christian--and Jaxon, by extension--now. I appreciate, too, that this book isn't a coming-out story like so many YA books are. Both Jaxon and Christian are already out, and nobody even really mentions it. Which is nice. It's nice to have their queerness normalized in this way--in a way that means it isn't something to even question, really.


CONS
Not Enough Questions: Jaxon needs to ask more questions. He has plenty of opportunities to ask, and he just... doesn't. Sure, there are things people don't want to tell him, but that shouldn't stop him from asking questions. Ask all the questions, buddy, because experimenting with life and death just isn't the way to go. At the end of the day, I don't think I would have minded if he wasn't asking the right type of questions or he wasn't getting the right answers to the questions he asked. But he doesn't ask questions, and that's a big, big problem. Because there's no way a kid is going into this without questions. It also means that the dramatic arc that happens with Jaxon's aunt (which is left vague here, to avoid spoilers) feels more melodramatic than dramatic because she didn't play the role that I think the author meant her to. Because Jaxon wasn't asking enough questions for her ultimate revelation to really have the impact it should.

No Translation; I love that this book includes Spanish. These characters switch between languages as they naturally would, and I love that. And I also hate that, because my Spanish is abysmal. I loved the inclusion and wish there was a way it could have been more accessible to me since I spent more time than I wanted translating. I don't know the best way to fix this, the right way to balance it so readers don't have to jump to dictionaries if they're less-than-familiar with the language. And I don't want to discourage multilingual books like this that feature multilingual characters. So it's a conundrum.

High Stakes, Low Tension: The stakes in this book are so high--literally life or death--and yet the tension felt so low. The book feels like it is just meandering along, and I think some of this is fueled by the fact that Jaxon just doesn't ask questions. Because if you're in a desperate situation, wouldn't you be out here demanding knowledge from anybody and everybody who has it? He isn't curious enough to invoke a sense of urgency, and I think that's to the book's detriment.


Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
6/10

Fans of Aiden Thomas's Cemetery Boys will like following along with this accidentally-resurrected love interest. Those who loved Camilla Raines's The Hollow and the Haunted will like this witchy town where anything can happen--even if it shouldn't.

If you had the power to save someone you love at the cost of your own life, would you?

This book has such an interesting take on death, and I really liked how Bou-Montes explored it here. In this world, necromancy runs through families (At least, through Jaxon's dad's family. I wanted to know if any other family/groups had paranormal powers, but that really isn't important, given the grand scheme of the story), but Jaxon wasn't told about his powers until after he literally resurrected his ex best friend. From there, he has to take life energy from living organisms (i.e., plants, other people, and himself, but Jaxon mostly draws it from himself throughout the story) in order to keep Christian alive. The self sacrifice for love is literal here, and it makes it all the more angsty because Christian doesn't want the love of his life to practically kill himself for him. And even though Death is never personified, its presence is inevitable as Jaxon does everything in his power to help Christian out run it. The themes of grief and love are so strong, that attempting to outrun death isn't the way to go. I won't spoil what obvious two choices Bou-Montes made by the end, but I will say the acceptance was bittersweet, leaning a bit more sweet.

The characters are very fleshed out, particularly Jaxon and Christian. Christian is so adorkable with his big himbo jock energy, but the love and care he has for Jaxon actually got me good at some parts. Jaxon was very relatable with his anxiety and grump attitude to juxtapose against Christian's sunshine, though sometimes he got a bit dismissive in some situations when I felt it shouldn't. The rest of the side characters are enjoyable, too; Mami and Regan were the ones that stood out the most for me.

Overall, this is a pretty solid debut. The description saying this would be perfect for fans of Cemetery Boys is spot on, because I wholeheartedly believe that the people who loved that book would come and devour this gem up as well.

A solid YA debut, this book is a contemporary fantasy about an Afro-Latino teen boy who discovers he's a necromancer when he accidentally resurrects his ex best friend and crush Christian.

It is very much a teen story with a high school setting and familiar themes but with necromancy mixed in. The plot mainly focuses on the romance between Jaxon and Christian and how to keep Christian alive and I liked their characterizations.

The family dynamics were also good, Jaxon lives with his mother who is a mortician, his father died and his aunt on father's side comes to visit at the start of the book.

Would recommend it to fans of YA contemporary fantasy, family focused stories and queer romance.

I like necromancy and bringing someone back to life once, but when it happens several times, I start to get bored and stakes start to feel non-existent. I actually wish there had been more of a permanent cost at the end. Besides for that this had a cute paranormal queer romance. The magic system and items used to help were interesting.

Thank you Harper Collins and NetGalley for this eARC, these opinions are my own! A beautiful story! Jax is used to being around death, his mom is a mortician after all. But his world his shaken when Christian Reyes dies. Christian was once a best friend but they’ve since grown apart. Now Jax often finds himself mildly annoyed with Christian. And it’s not like he is not used to his mother taking care of people he knows is a small town after all. But something about Christian’s death is different and he can’t think of anything else. Then the unthinkable happens, Christian comes back to life. How is this possible? Turns out Jax is a necromancer. But what does that mean? And learning this information also opens the door to other family secrets, can Jax survive? And now that he’s brought Christian back what will happen between the two? I love that you’ve got the necromancy and magical aspects wrapped up with a romance! I love the take on grief in this book and how that connects to things like first love! Quick paced and had me consuming the book! Highly recommend checking this one out!

This YA contemporary fantasy should be on everyone's TBR list this fall, especially if you're a fan of Cemetery Boys!

It only just arrived on my Kindle, but I couldn't pace myself and bumped it to the top of my TBR. And this was such a fun read!

It's about Jaxon and Christian, estranged childhood best friends to lovers, aka the BEST trope. Jaxon has grown up with a mortician mum, so he's used to being around death, but when Christian suddenly dies, he accidentally resurrects him and he finds out things are very different from what he's known so far. For one, he's a necromancer, and necromancy runs in the family. And maybe resurrecting Christian didn't come without a price. And oh, there are many family secrets to find out about as well.

Do you ever read a book where you just LOVE the pacing? You know when you're reading and you just love the choices the author's made in sharing the right information at the right time, and drawing out some of the mystery, but not keeping readers in the dark for no reason? There's enough mystery to propel the story forwards at all times, and I could hardly put this down, but there's also so much that unfolds throughout the book in a steady pace, so you never feel frustrated about not knowing or understanding things.

I also think this strikes an excellent balance between a darker fantasy, centering death and necromancy, and a certain amount of gore, on the one hand, and a fun, sweet contemporary romance on the other hand. I can definitely see myself rereading this!

“Christan Reyes is dead, and he’s in my basement.”
Sometimes, I know from the first sentence a book will be good, and the first sentence of this story made me gasp, writhe on my chair while an uncomfortable feeling sank in my stomach, and at the same time, this small line of words made me want to read on and on and on.
 
Lately, I seem to have a soft spot for stories about the living and the death. I love darker and sadder stories, don’t need a HEA, but I’m actually not a person for ghosts and dead bodies, and still, I devor these books like they’re lighthearted romances. Mainly because those books aren’t that heavy or creepy but funny and moving; this includes Till the Last Beat of My Heart.
 
I loved Christian from the moment I met him. Not when he was still dead, obviously. I’m not a fan of detailed described dead bodies, but after Jax alived him (Jax’s words), he immediately became so enthusiastic and energetic and also incredibly sweet, but it also wanted to hug him because he was scared because he wanted to keep living. I had to warm up to Jax, though. He felt a little … dismissive? But I could understand where he came from, full of anxiety, and we all have flaws, right?
 
This story is about living surrounded by death and still trying to live to your fullest. About old family wounds. About wanting to keep someone you’d die for in your life.

Thank you so much, Louangie, for sending me a link to this book. I loved your debut and can’t wait for what you have in store for us next!