#keezy young

[dkafterdark]

halfway through and it is weird and spooky and I'm worried about these kids!! (it's also very good!)

[omie-wise]

I’m roughly 1/3 of the way through Keezy Young’s graphic novel “Hello Sunshine” because I’m trying to savor it but my friends it’s incredible. Queer horror that grapples with mental illness, including meta commentary on horror books & movies that lazily stigmatize, and thus harm, people who are mentally ill - especially when they are dealing with psychosis.

The art is gorgeous too - intimate and comfortable. It looks lived in and personal.

[slaughter-books]

Day 6: JOMPBPC: Best Fictional Food

I didn't know what to do for this prompt, so I took a photo of this beautiful graphic novel! 💚

[very-grownup]

Books I read this year that were particularly good I will never do a top ten list you can't make me rank art

"Life and Fate" by Vasily Grossman. Heavy shit following three different families/plots during WWII, specifically the Soviet Union's defense against Nazi Germany during the rise of Stalinism. Got me out of my head in the wake of my best friend's death, which I think is a testament both to Grossman's story and the quality of the translation. ‪ "A Pale View of Hills" by Kazuo Ishiguro. Short and bleak, Ishiguro's first novel is strange and unsettling, a middle-aged woman reflecting on her life in the wake of her daughter's death by suicide, confiding-but-not circumstances of her life in Japan after the end of WWII. ‪ "The Brides of High Hill" by Nghi Vo. So much is packed into this novella. Mystery and horror and the dangling of a Bluebeard story that becomes something else entirely. Possibly Vo's best to date. ‪ "How to Dodge a Cannonball" by Dennard Dayle. A boy tries to survive the American Civil War however he can, ultimately stealing the identity of a dead Black soldier. Satire and moonless night dark comedy, where you have to stop and catch your breath from the punch of a single sentence. ‪ "Earthlings" by Sayaka Murata. A younger daughter looks for love and validation in a society she feels alienated from, deciding she is a literal alien. Buck-fucking-wild and impossible to predict. ‪ "The Starry Rift" by James Tiptree Jr. Three stories linked by a frame narrative and the last thing Tiptree wrote before her death. Tiptree is always fascinating but there's something extra here, sad but fearlessly looking toward choosing death, underlining everything.

"Legends of the Condor Heroes" by Jin Yong. Ancient China's purest himbo kungfus his way to adulthood where everyone has a cool sobriquet. Genghis Khan is there. It's amazing. Everything is somehow the coolest thing. ‪ "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen. Turns out this Austen lady can write? ‪ "Paradise" by Toni Morrison. About an all-Black town in Oklahoma and the women surviving in the nearby abandoned convent, how the women ended up there, how the town became what it is, and why the novel opens with the men going to murder the women in the convent. Every Morrison I've read is perfect. ‪ "Hello Sunshine" by Keezy Young. A horror mystery graphic novel about a boy coming back from bible camp to find out his secret boyfriend has gone missing after an incident no one wants to talk about. Horror and the horror of mental illness but they're different and it's nuanced and good and dark. ‪ Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service imagine if Dark Horse Comics enabled me to read another volume of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service in 2025 we don't live in that reality but it would have been a great read if we did.

[smokefalls]

(I try to remind myself of all the reasons I don’t want to die, but the problem isn’t that I want to die. The problem is that I want to live too much for the world to contain me, and I need to break free of myself before it kills me.)

Keezy Young, Sunflowers

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fiction Free-for-All Book Bracket Tournament: Round 3

Choose a book:

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Taproot: A Story About a Gardener and a Ghost by Keezy Young

Voting ended onApr 5, 2025

Book summaries below:

The Deep by Rivers Solomon (with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes)

Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.

Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.

Fantasy, Afrofuturism, folklore, novella, adult

Taproot: A Story About a Gardener and a Ghost by Keezy Young

Blue is having a hard time moving on. He's in love with his best friend. He's also dead. Luckily, Hamal can see ghosts, leaving Blue free to haunt him to his heart's content. But something eerie is happening in town, leaving the local afterlife unsettled, and when Blue realizes Hamal's strange ability may be putting him in danger, Blue has to find a way to protect him, even if it means... leaving him.

Graphic novel, fantasy, romance, paranormal, young adult

[bubblegumballoons]

Read a graphic novel recently called Hello Sunshine by Keezy Young that was super awesome! You should read it!!! It is queer and handles SMI (serious mental illness) in an awesome way (it is a main part of the story)... I am bad at words; go find a synopsis on it or read other reviews LOL... anyways, below are my thoughts on it in no particular order. SPOILERS OBV!!

-I love the empathy and care displayed by the characters towards eachother, esp in regards to handling SMI (it reminded me of when everyone was talking about how amazing the Puss In Boots movie handled calming down a panic attack and I need this to blow up as much as that did for the same reasoning)

-I loved seeing the internal thoughts of each character; most of them made me cry (esp Jamie's bit about how demonizing their mother hurt Alex AHHHH)

-I love the minor story part where Izzy comes out to Jamie and he is understanding and supportive and literally not shitty at all about it!!!

-omg that part where Sky is like "no offense" and keeps talking shit LOL and everyone is like ".... girl. We are taking offense, lol"

-I love all the positive lessons you can glean from this book, in a way that doesnt feel.. (trite?) or like, babied. It's always smth I've love when teen and older kids' media kinda... treats them with respect like they have brains and can understand things, lol (does that make sense?)

-I love Sky's mom sm ;___; tbf her being so supportive and amazing to Noah and just in general made me emotional too

-I love the variety of flaws in the characters that keep them imperfect and human and relatable. I read Noah's chapter and was like "wow I relate sm to him" and then I read each chapter and thought the same thing about each character LOL

-The backgrounds subtly turning into faces and eyes djdhhdjsbdv ToT so freaky....

-I'M SO GLAD NOTHING BAD HAPPENED TO CASS

-Speaking of ;____; Cass leaning on them when they are sad....

-also GUH Alex's chapter.. it hurt so bad to see him suffering for so long and then hate himself and think he is evil T_T I'm literally getting fcking teary again thinking about it

-The dreammmsssss ahdhidhdusbdbdh him pushing them away OWWWW

-I'm also so glad it was a happy ending... OTL I was so so afraid Alex was dead ToT like not every story has to end happily but esp with the major topics I'm very happy it did <3

-I cried... several times. I cried to sleep after finishing reading it lol.

-YAY IT'S GETTING A SEQUEL I'M SO HYPE HEHEHEHE

Happy birthday keezy, my gift to you is getting over my fear of posting my opinion online (only this once tho) so that you can have a detailed and specific list of compliments about your book. Congrats on making another person cry, lol. Also I rec'd it to my therapist today :^3c

[bookaddict24-7]

(New Young Adult Releases Coming Out Today! (September 23rd, 2025)

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Have I missed any new Young Adult releases? Have you added any of these books to your TBR? Let me know!

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New Releases:

Moonsick by Tom O'Donnell

My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser by Jamie Jo Hoang

Watch Us Crack by Gabriella Lepore

Try Your Worst by Chatham Greenfield

Flip by Ngozi Ukazu

Truth Is by Hannah V. Sawyerr

This Raging Sea by De Elizabeth

Hello Sunshine by Keezy Young

Extraordinary Quests for Amateur Witches by Kayla Cottingham

The Guardians of Dreamdark: Windwitch by Laini Taylor

Exquisite Things by Abdi Nazemian

New Sequels:

A Steeping of Blood (Blood and Tea #2) by Hafsah Faizal

Unending (The Unseelie Duology #2) by Ivelisse Housman

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Happy reading!