Whisper House Press

Book: Summer Sons

Author: Lee Mandelo

Audiobook Narration: Will Damron

Publisher: tordotcom (print and ebook), Macmillan Audio (audio book)

ISBN: 9781250790286 (hardcover)

Publication: 2021

Capone’s Rating: 5 of 5⭐

Lee Mandelo’s debut novel, Summer Sons (2021, tordotcom), took me by surprise. I found this book the same way I find a lot of new-to-me horror: through the library. In this case, I wanted an audio book for my trip to Europe, and it needed to be available the day before I was leaving the US of A. I always filter by horror and by “available now” to get the list of contenders. I read blurbs, and this sounded right for me. The premise—we’ll see if it grabs you like it did me—is that a grieving friend, Andrew, takes over his recently deceased best friend’s (slash-closeted-lover-of-closeted-protagonist’s) estate, inheriting not only the land but his unkempt friends, the promise of a graduate education, and a vinyl-wrapped Supra. Andrew not only feels the weight of what Eddie left behind but feels his dead friend in all of those abandoned places and with those left-behind friends. Why is everyone who was around Eddie so convinced his death was a suicide? Andrew knows it can’t be true (or can it?).

In this supernatural mystery + gothic horror, we get to the heart of each character with screen time. This is horror-from-character-development at its finest. There are no cheap thrills here: every freight is earned and that perfect blend of obvious and unexpected. There are strong queer elements to this book; to me this is of secondary importance to the truly excellent tale told well, and I mention it because queer horror books never quite get what is owed to their creators. Well, here’s one top-notch horror book that happens to be queer as hell and to make me a fan of street racing (at least while I read these pages) and to wring the very most out of a folk horror tradition meeting modern mystery.