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A review by perpetualpages
Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
CWs: death and grief; mentions of suicide and self-harm; blood, gore, vomit, graphic injury, and graphic violence; drug use and inebriated driving; some homophobic slurs; brief reference to child abuse; and some graphic sexual content
I feel like I was destined to love Summer Sons, because it's a southern gothic take on dark academia with a side helping of queer ghosts. On the surface, this book has been pitched as "The Secret History" meets "Fast and the Furious," which is accurate to some extent, but in all reality, this story is a profound and visceral exploration of toxic masculinity and the inherent violent tradition of whiteness.
Dark academia, as a subgenre, is aimed at exploring the corrupt underbelly of academic institutions, privilege, and excessive wealth. When we're considering dark academia stories set in the U.S., that disproportionate privilege and power is inherently tied to whiteness, and yet few dark academia stories truly dive head-first into exploring the implications of that intrinsic connection. Summer Sons stands apart in that it throws the reader right into the middle of this messy, chaotic, traumatized, reckless group of characters and names their toxicity for what it truly is. And though it doesn't much reckon with the reality that generational wealth and privilege—particularly that kind sanctioned by and tied to the institution of academia—is built off of the suffering and labor of marginalized communities, that fact is addressed in the story, which is also really important and something that many dark academia books fail to do.
Toxic masculinity is, at is core, a perpetuation of loneliness, isolation, emotional illiteracy, distance, avoidance, disassociation, and detachment. Not only are these ideals and practices preserved in the tradition of whiteness, but they are bartered by men and masculine-identifying people in exchange for access to masculine power and masculine spaces. By that understanding, it's clear to see that toxic masculinity might manifest in very specific ways within queer men, and most dangerously in white queer men, who can levy their relative marginalization as a justification for perpetuating toxicity, harm, and even violence.
Summer Sons examines how toxic masculinity has infected these characters, to the point of literally haunting and possessing some of them, and the plot pushes them to the breaking point in order to see just how far they're willing to go in order to avoid their unresolved traumas. In this book, the ghosts or spirits are referred to as "revenants," spiritual entities that feed off of violence and blood in order to gain power. As the revenants lurk on the periphery of Andrew's consciousness, it's clear to see that they represent the dangerous hold trauma has on his life. As they gain power and begin to claim more of his body, energy, agency, and awareness, he becomes more and more terrified, simply because ceding control—in any measure, or any sense—is a white man's worst nightmare.
At its core, this story really interrogates the willful assimilation into toxic masculinity in hopes of gaining acceptance. Even though Andrew is essentially being haunted by his not-quite-friend/not-quite-lover to the point where everyone around him *knows* it, he still goes to great lengths to hide it and to avoid drawing attention to it. Not only is this indicative of his internalized homophobia that he's wielding against himself, but it speaks to how men and masculine-identifying people have internalized the message that asking for help is equivalent to weakness. And it also speaks to a larger phenomenon of isolation that is created and upheld by white masculinity. Whiteness itself, in America, is not a culture. It is not a heritage. It is not a unifying identity that is conducive to community. And that lack of community is the true weakness that keeps men isolated.
In the words of Alok Vaid-Menon: "[This] is the collateral that men are told [to pay]. 'Keep quiet. Don't sensitize yourself to anything. Shut up. Don't have any personality beyond what is marketed to you. Don't display any vulnerability, and you're going to get power.' But that kind of power is loneliness...White cis straight men don't have community. They have hyper-isolation and they have hyper-disassociation that they mistake as personality. In relinquishing that false project of power, [people] are allowed to be vulnerable, and vulnerability is the basis of community."
That conflict is a huge part of what makes this story so fascinating, because there's an irony to how Andrew suddenly finds himself in what would seem like a community of Eddie's university friends who have an established dynamic and rapport, and yet he is more alone than ever. And yet he insists on separating him further and making himself *be* alone so that he doesn't have to relinquish any power by coming off as "strange" or "weak." It's an intimate look at how he is intentionally and willfully hurting himself just so that doesn't put a target on his back and lose his place within this friend group. He's only able to start making any progress, emotionally and logistically, once he starts opening up and actually giving the people around him chances to see what he's really dealing with and who he really is.
And as with most ghost stories, Summer Sons is really about trying to find some semblance of peace, a way to satiate the revenants and be rid of them, which is a really powerful message when you look at it through this metaphorical lens of revenants representing trauma, toxicity, abuse, and violence. It's a story that centers a character who is essentially saying, "I will not let this control my life. I have to let go of the things that are hurting me if I want to survive. I know there is a better way to live than this." That idea is tied together with the connection between revenants and the unresolved mystery of what truly happened to Eddie, and I think the story is even more memorable for it.
I think it's also interesting how the story is able to explore the underside of toxic masculinity by really reveling in the dark, deep, complicated emotions that Andrew keeps hidden away. The irony is that he is a deeply emotional person grappling with grief, love, internalized homophobia, fear, and uncertainty, even though he goes to great lengths to repress those things. The angst, the posthumous yearning, the slow-burn homoerotic tension in this story are truly god-tier, and it's the teeming richness of this hidden emotional landscape that ultimately leads the book to a place of hopefulness in regards to masculine relationships. The connections between the characters are more authentic, honest, and open by the end of the story, and the characters are celebrated as being stronger for it, even though they may still have a ways to grow.
The one thing that kept this from being a five-star book for me, personally, was the pace of the plot and the development of the mystery itself. This story is extremely aesthetic and compelling, but it feels, at times, like the mystery element gets lost or forgotten. Just over the halfway mark, I realized that while I was completely invested, I hadn't learned anything more about Eddie's death that I couldn't already gather myself from the synopsis or from the first twenty pages. It takes a very long time for Andrew to make any significant progress in figuring out this mystery, which is the center of the story, and that made me question where the story was going at times.
I also struggled a little bit with the world-building elements, because the origins of the revenants aren't revealed until almost the end of the book, and I think the story could have benefited from exploring that earlier. It was also a bit difficult for me to grasp the mechanics of the revenants—what triggers them, how to break their hold, what they want, the limits of what they're able to do, etc. By the end, I had a much better (if still imperfect) grasp on the dynamic between humans and revenants, but again it took a long time to get there.
But those two things were not huge deal-breakers for me, and I can still say with certainty that this is going to be a story that stands out to me when I look back on my reading in 2021. It's dark, it's twisted, it's angsty, and the fact remains that it is not one to be missed.
I feel like I was destined to love Summer Sons, because it's a southern gothic take on dark academia with a side helping of queer ghosts. On the surface, this book has been pitched as "The Secret History" meets "Fast and the Furious," which is accurate to some extent, but in all reality, this story is a profound and visceral exploration of toxic masculinity and the inherent violent tradition of whiteness.
Dark academia, as a subgenre, is aimed at exploring the corrupt underbelly of academic institutions, privilege, and excessive wealth. When we're considering dark academia stories set in the U.S., that disproportionate privilege and power is inherently tied to whiteness, and yet few dark academia stories truly dive head-first into exploring the implications of that intrinsic connection. Summer Sons stands apart in that it throws the reader right into the middle of this messy, chaotic, traumatized, reckless group of characters and names their toxicity for what it truly is. And though it doesn't much reckon with the reality that generational wealth and privilege—particularly that kind sanctioned by and tied to the institution of academia—is built off of the suffering and labor of marginalized communities, that fact is addressed in the story, which is also really important and something that many dark academia books fail to do.
Toxic masculinity is, at is core, a perpetuation of loneliness, isolation, emotional illiteracy, distance, avoidance, disassociation, and detachment. Not only are these ideals and practices preserved in the tradition of whiteness, but they are bartered by men and masculine-identifying people in exchange for access to masculine power and masculine spaces. By that understanding, it's clear to see that toxic masculinity might manifest in very specific ways within queer men, and most dangerously in white queer men, who can levy their relative marginalization as a justification for perpetuating toxicity, harm, and even violence.
Summer Sons examines how toxic masculinity has infected these characters, to the point of literally haunting and possessing some of them, and the plot pushes them to the breaking point in order to see just how far they're willing to go in order to avoid their unresolved traumas. In this book, the ghosts or spirits are referred to as "revenants," spiritual entities that feed off of violence and blood in order to gain power. As the revenants lurk on the periphery of Andrew's consciousness, it's clear to see that they represent the dangerous hold trauma has on his life. As they gain power and begin to claim more of his body, energy, agency, and awareness, he becomes more and more terrified, simply because ceding control—in any measure, or any sense—is a white man's worst nightmare.
At its core, this story really interrogates the willful assimilation into toxic masculinity in hopes of gaining acceptance. Even though Andrew is essentially being haunted by his not-quite-friend/not-quite-lover to the point where everyone around him *knows* it, he still goes to great lengths to hide it and to avoid drawing attention to it. Not only is this indicative of his internalized homophobia that he's wielding against himself, but it speaks to how men and masculine-identifying people have internalized the message that asking for help is equivalent to weakness. And it also speaks to a larger phenomenon of isolation that is created and upheld by white masculinity. Whiteness itself, in America, is not a culture. It is not a heritage. It is not a unifying identity that is conducive to community. And that lack of community is the true weakness that keeps men isolated.
In the words of Alok Vaid-Menon: "[This] is the collateral that men are told [to pay]. 'Keep quiet. Don't sensitize yourself to anything. Shut up. Don't have any personality beyond what is marketed to you. Don't display any vulnerability, and you're going to get power.' But that kind of power is loneliness...White cis straight men don't have community. They have hyper-isolation and they have hyper-disassociation that they mistake as personality. In relinquishing that false project of power, [people] are allowed to be vulnerable, and vulnerability is the basis of community."
That conflict is a huge part of what makes this story so fascinating, because there's an irony to how Andrew suddenly finds himself in what would seem like a community of Eddie's university friends who have an established dynamic and rapport, and yet he is more alone than ever. And yet he insists on separating him further and making himself *be* alone so that he doesn't have to relinquish any power by coming off as "strange" or "weak." It's an intimate look at how he is intentionally and willfully hurting himself just so that doesn't put a target on his back and lose his place within this friend group. He's only able to start making any progress, emotionally and logistically, once he starts opening up and actually giving the people around him chances to see what he's really dealing with and who he really is.
And as with most ghost stories, Summer Sons is really about trying to find some semblance of peace, a way to satiate the revenants and be rid of them, which is a really powerful message when you look at it through this metaphorical lens of revenants representing trauma, toxicity, abuse, and violence. It's a story that centers a character who is essentially saying, "I will not let this control my life. I have to let go of the things that are hurting me if I want to survive. I know there is a better way to live than this." That idea is tied together with the connection between revenants and the unresolved mystery of what truly happened to Eddie, and I think the story is even more memorable for it.
I think it's also interesting how the story is able to explore the underside of toxic masculinity by really reveling in the dark, deep, complicated emotions that Andrew keeps hidden away. The irony is that he is a deeply emotional person grappling with grief, love, internalized homophobia, fear, and uncertainty, even though he goes to great lengths to repress those things. The angst, the posthumous yearning, the slow-burn homoerotic tension in this story are truly god-tier, and it's the teeming richness of this hidden emotional landscape that ultimately leads the book to a place of hopefulness in regards to masculine relationships. The connections between the characters are more authentic, honest, and open by the end of the story, and the characters are celebrated as being stronger for it, even though they may still have a ways to grow.
The one thing that kept this from being a five-star book for me, personally, was the pace of the plot and the development of the mystery itself. This story is extremely aesthetic and compelling, but it feels, at times, like the mystery element gets lost or forgotten. Just over the halfway mark, I realized that while I was completely invested, I hadn't learned anything more about Eddie's death that I couldn't already gather myself from the synopsis or from the first twenty pages. It takes a very long time for Andrew to make any significant progress in figuring out this mystery, which is the center of the story, and that made me question where the story was going at times.
I also struggled a little bit with the world-building elements, because the origins of the revenants aren't revealed until almost the end of the book, and I think the story could have benefited from exploring that earlier. It was also a bit difficult for me to grasp the mechanics of the revenants—what triggers them, how to break their hold, what they want, the limits of what they're able to do, etc. By the end, I had a much better (if still imperfect) grasp on the dynamic between humans and revenants, but again it took a long time to get there.
But those two things were not huge deal-breakers for me, and I can still say with certainty that this is going to be a story that stands out to me when I look back on my reading in 2021. It's dark, it's twisted, it's angsty, and the fact remains that it is not one to be missed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, and Grief
Moderate: Drug abuse, Sexual content, and Vomit
Minor: Child abuse, Homophobia, Self harm, and Suicide