Cemetery Boys

Cemetery Boys is a young adult urban fantasy novel by the American writer Aiden Thomas, published on 1 September 2020 by Swoon Reads. Its appearance on the New York Times bestseller list was the first for an openly transgender author writing a book with a transgender character.

Yadriel belongs to a family whose magic divides along gender lines. The brujos of the family summon spirits and release them from the world of the living, and the brujas heal; Yadriel's relatives, who do not accept him as a man, expect him to develop the second kind of power. He decides to prove himself by performing a summoning without help, and with his cousin and best friend Maritza he tries to call up the ghost of a relative who has gone missing and is presumed dead. What arrives instead is Julian Diaz, a boy from his school who has no memory of how he died and no intention of moving on quietly.

The novel combines the work of the brujos with a high school story, and Yadriel has to deal with a family that loves him and a community that will not see him as he is, while the ghost he has accidentally summoned turns out to need help only he can give.