Surrender Your Sons
Genre
Young adult thriller
Content Warnings
Conversion therapy, panic attacks, homophobia, suicide, self-harm, transphobia
Plot summary
Connor Major came out to his mum this summer, and it was a disaster. She’s deep into the church in their small town in Illinois, and she’s also convinced his gayness is a way of shirking responsibility for his ex-girlfriend’s baby. Desperate to get Connor to change his ways, his mum has him spirited away to Nightlight, a conversion camp on a secluded island. There, Connor will discover that Nightlight has some seedy secrets of his own. Secrets which, if they got out, could bring the whole operation tumbling down. He just has to keep his head long enough to get to the bottom of it all.
My thoughts on Surrender Your Sons
Surrender Your Sons, by Adam Sass, is an intense and unrelenting ride. The story is told in first-person, present tense, so you’re right in Connor’s head for the whole story. And there are worse protagonists to be up-close and personal with for a ride like this! He’s impulsive, and frequently makes rash (or downright awful) decisions that he probably should have avoided. So, that can be frustrating. But he’s also funny, and brave, and empathetic most of the time.
There’s a lot going on in the story. It’s part romance, part thriller, part comedy, and there’s definitely tension between those things at times. It’s also incredibly fast-paced, sometimes excessively so. I think it could have done with slowing down at points and taking a breather now and again. The timeline for the whole book stretches credulity a bit, although whether you could call it a realistic book in the first place is a bit of a toss-up. It’s clearly heightened, and I think it’s entirely possible the pacing is an intentional part of that.
Other than some slightly awkward word choices, and an overabundance of moaning, I enjoyed the writing. I think you get a great sense of Connor’s character, and although there are quite a few other characters and you don’t always have a lot of time to get to know them, they’re pretty deftly painted in that short space of time. I definitely didn’t find myself mixing characters up, and I felt like I had a distinct impression of who was who.
Also, the first time I read it, I was too swept up in the story to take proper notes, so I went back to flick through and decide what I wanted to say. In doing so, I discovered some nice little breadcrumbs from early on that point towards the things Connor will have to unravel later. I think the book was well-constructed, from that point of view.
Some of Surrender Your Sons’ topics are hard going
The book deals with some very, very dark topics, and the writing doesn’t shy away from any of it. It’s as graphic in the good stuff as it is in the bad, but there’s a lot of bad to get through, so this could be a very difficult read for some people. There’s a lot of homophobic language, slurs and attitudes, there’s violence – to the point of murder. There’s discussion of suicide in the book. There’s also transphobia. It’s a lot to handle, for the characters and for the reader.
The tone of the book is lighter than you’d think, considering all that. Sometimes I think you could find that jarring, but I would argue as well that there’s a necessity for the characters to find their way through however they can, and sometimes that means not fully taking in how dark their situation is. I don’t know if I ever laughed out loud, but the book definitely had funny moments, in amongst the trauma and pain.
In summary
Surrender Your Sons is a hugely exciting read. I’d recommend it, cautiously, to anybody. The caution isn’t about the quality, so much as a concern that some of the themes and plot points could be deeply triggering to some readers. With that said, I think the author did a wonderful job of writing difficult topics with sensitivity and humour, and I found the book ultimately very hopeful.
This sounds like it could be really interesting. I’m not crazy about YA but I do like thrillers and the plot sounds interesting enough that I’d be tempted to give this a go. Sounds like a pretty heavy, emotional read though. x
Sophie