Cemetery Boys: Espiritu

Aiden Thomas
Completed 8/30/2026, Reviewed 9/3/2026
4 stars

This took me a long time to read because I began it right before leaving on vacation.  I only spent about 10 minutes a night on several nights because I was so tired from touristing during the day.  Despite indulging on rich food, I lost almost five pounds from all the walking.  Anyway, back to the book.  I was thrilled to see the new Cemetery Boys novel is almost out.  I wanted to read it NOW!  So, now that I have a login on Netgalley, I requested the ARC.  I loved the book, however, like the first, it took me awhile to get into it.  I was caught off-guard over Julian being the dominant narrator.  Along with the intermittent vacation reading, it took me half of the book to feel truly pulled in.  But when I finally did, I got back to feeling warm and embraced by community of brujx (brujo and bruja) in Latinx East LA.  It’s not a cozy story, but in the end, I didn’t want to leave the world created in that book.

Warning: This book has spoilers for the original Cemetery Boys!

After the events in the last book, Julian can now see the spirits of the dead.  But every now and then, he catches a shadow out of the corner of his eye.  As this becomes more frequent, he also notices a hole in his chest in the same place as his fatal wound.  Soon he can see holes in other people.  Yadriel, newly acknowledged as a brujx, has been busy himself trying to figure out from where all the malignos, the dangerous spirits, are coming.  In the middle of fighting a maligno, a new brujx arrives.  Angel, a trans girl from Texas.  They help the Julian, Yadriel, and their bruja friend Maritza with the evil spirits.  But something does not feel right with Angel’s techniques and Julian tries to get to the bottom of that and all the strange things going on.  At the same time, he must keep his own spiritual activities from his brother and the found family they live with. This causes a lot of cognitive dissonance for Julian and anger and suspicion in his family. 

It definitely took me some time to warm up to Julian as the primary narrator.  I fell so in love with Yadriel in the first book that I was a tad resentful at the author.  Even when I warmed up to him, I struggled with his coming into his new existence.  I loved the scenes with Yadriel and I was jealous of Angel getting Julian’s attention.  Obviously, by the time I was having these feelings, I was hooked.  

Angel was quite the wild card for me.  I couldn’t figure out their motivation for a long time.  Was she trying to steal Julian from Yadriel?  Was she really trying to help with the malignos?  Did she have some other fiendish plot? (BTW, their pronouns are she/them).  Yadriel looked to her as an ally, being a trans teen AND a brujx.  Julian liked how good she was at fighting the malignos.  That clouded their perspective as they tried to unravel the dark enigma confronting them.

I also enjoyed getting to know Julian’s older brother Rio and the four kids staying with them.  It was hard to keep track of them initially, but they each had their own personalities.  I was quite impressed that the author pulled that off so well.  Great development for secondary characters.

I give this book four stars out of five.  This book comes out in a few days.  I highly recommend this book and its predecessor.  It’s a look at the Latinx trans teen experience as well as the spirituality of the dead.  Reading this, you’ll become fond of marigold petals 😊

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review the ARC of this book.  The content of this review is my honest opinion.  Cemetery Boys: Espíritu goes on sale on September 8, 2026.