Book Review: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

 

Screenwriter Misha knows how hard it is to make it in Hollywood. So when he achieves success with an Oscar nomination, it seems like everything is finally going his way. But after refusing to kill the gay characters in his newest TV show, he finds out there's a target on his back, as monsters from his past begin haunting him and his friends. Can he find a way to get the literal and figurative monsters off his back before it's too late?

I liked how unique the premise of this book was, and I was really looking forward to it. In my search for horror books, this one seemed both original but also closer to traditional horror, so I wanted to see how it played out.

I loved this book!

For a start, as a film fan, I loved that it was set within the film industry. Even though Misha is a writer rather than an actor, we get a lot of insight into how Hollywood works, and it felt really authentic.

One of my worries about horror books with monsters, particularly original ones, is that it can be hard to make them scary without visuals because we only have our imaginations. But in this book the descriptions are great. Whether our imaginations create the same images as the author or not, it doesn't matter. In fact, our imaginations probably make them scarier!

It gets to the point where the images are so visceral that you feel like you're in the scenes with Misha, and this only gets stronger as you get closer to the end.

The first few chapters felt a bit jarring because each chapter started from a completely separate place to where the last left off. I was always pulled back in during the chapter and loving it by the end, but then I was lost when the next chapter started. Thankfully, I felt a lot less lost as the story continued.

I really liked the depiction of Misha's trauma, and how this was teased out. We really really get to know him. His childhood is as scary as the monsters he creates which is purposeful, and done so well, particularly the connections between people in his past and the characters he has created.

You know a horror is working when you're thinking about it at night, and that's exactly what happened to me while reading this book - I was thinking about it all the time, particularly when I shouldn't have been!

A book has never kept me up at night like this - not because of how scary it was, but because I was so anxious to see how it would end!

I really fell in love with the characters, Misha and everyone around him. At first I wasn't sure how I felt about any of them, but by the end I couldn't stop thinking about them.

I thought the ending was wrapped up a bit too neatly for my liking, but both Misha and the author make a huge point of wanting to highlight queer joy, and I loved that, so I'm happy for it to end the way it did.

Overall, my main gripe with this book is that it isn't a TV show, because I would love to see a visual version of this with an episode dedicated to each monster - it would suit the format really well and based on how much the book is loved, it would probably be popular!

But as it stands, I loved this book and I'd definitely recommend it!

4/5