Fraternity follows (in 3 perspectives) the story of Zooey, Daniel, and Leo as they navigate an elite prep school. I would say Zooey's our main protagonist, I think we spend the most time focused on him, as he's the new kid at the school and trying to find his way. Daniel is a young Black man, who's also popular jock while secretly dating Leo, a man who embodies basically every gay stereotype ever (and I love him for it). They're apart of a secret GSA essentially, and have a fourth friend, Stephen. Without going too much into spoiling (because the way the first part of the book is set up is VERY different from the rest of the book), Zooey's dealing with being bullied and the way it's dealt with is neither pretty nor polite. It's something I quite liked, frankly, as it highlights the queer anger a lot of people have with systems not protecting us and having to do what we have to do, no matter how unpleasant, simply to survive with our family. The book sets up kind of like a contemporary YA, to the point where I was questioning where the dark occult and horror was going to come in but once you hit the end of part 1, you're in for a wild ride.

Potential cons:
- Unique writing style. Mientus goes back and forth between different perspectives and each one is written differently, reflecting each boy's style and inner thoughts. I really enjoyed it because you felt the change in perspective and understood that these boys are telling a story in each of their own ways. It's also written as if the boys are the authors, that this is all a warning and whatnot which can be a little uncomfortable (I'm not a fan of authors talking to the audience) but I think it's done as well as it could be done. It does add for some interesting foreshadowing.

- It's horror. I am not a horror person but for so long (literally until I read this book), I thought I was fine with book horror because it never scared me. This book genuinely terrified me at certain parts, and the way the author built suspense literally made me put the book down at a couple parts because I was getting too freaked out.

What I liked:
- Once I got used to it, the writing style. Like I said, I don't like when authors speak to the audience (or when they do it through characters, as if they're writing the book) because it often feels cheap and takes me out of the moment. Mientus uses it well, and sparingly, and instead he uses this style to hint at things yet to come (very "hindsight is 20/20") that I thought built a lot of tension in a very interesting and effective way.

- Variety of characters. A lot of MLM YA (particularly YA that isn't set in present day [I refused to call something set in the 1980s historical]) only has characters who are white, cis, able-bodied gay men. Here, you have Daniel who is black and very specifically talks about the difficulties he faces as a Black man, as a queer man, and as a Black queer man. You also have Zooey who

Spoiler

is Asian and, near the end of the book, comes out as bisexual and talks about the biphobia he has to deal with from both straight people and queer people.

- Language and stylization. Mientus talks about this at the beginning of the book in an author's note of sorts, but he essentially highlights the reason why this is taking place in 80s is because that is the time he grew up in, and he felt disingenuous trying to change his experiences to attempt to reflect what queer youth are going through now. This means he talks very frankly about how queerness was experienced, particularly during the AIDS crisis. There's language about feeling like queerness itself being a cancer, a lot of slur usage, that sort of thing. None of this is done maliciously or without purpose, though. This is done to reflect what it was like being a queer youth in the 80s and I think it's important to both be aware of this but to also know that this for many folks, was (and in some ways, still is) how queer youth experience coming to terms with themselves.