Get Out meets Danielle Vega in this YA horror where survival is not a guarantee.
Jake Livingston is one of the only Black kids at St. Clair Prep, one of the others being his infinitely more popular older brother. It’s hard enough fitting in but to make matters worse and definitely more complicated, Jake can see the dead. In fact he sees the dead around him all the time. Most are harmless. Stuck in their death loops as they relive their deaths over and over again, they don’t interact often with people.
But then Jake meets Sawyer. A troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school last year before taking his own life. Now a powerful, vengeful ghost, he has plans for his afterlife–plans that include Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about ghosts and the rules to life itself go out the window as Sawyer begins haunting him and bodies turn up in his neighborhood. High school soon becomes a survival game–one Jake is not sure he’s going to win.
Review:
The fact that I even picked up The Taking of Jake Livingston is a testament to its greatness because I don’t read thrillers, not really. Less than five or so a year normally but lately I find myself not only reading more thrillers but enjoying them as well! And truthfully, the buzz surrounding this debut was just too great to ignore so, here we are.
Two things that jump out at you right away are the books incredible cover (Corey Brickley) and the page count, it’s low. I’ve read a lot of debuts recently that were beefy, and while I’m always in favor of “tell your story in the number of words you need to tell it”, it’s kinda nice to breeze through something now and again. It certainly helps with pacing issues, or it should at least, and The Taking of Jake Livingston is indeed paced and plotted very well, yes, you’ll find that these pages turn easily.
But I can’t help but think that Ryan was so focused on writing a “tight” novel, that he left a few things hanging plot wise, especially when it comes to the paranormal aspects of the story. We aren’t given a lot of “why”, but a ton of “whom”, so it ends up being weirdly a character driven genre book. So, my advice is focus on the spectacle, the horror, and the spooky, don’t worry so much about cause and effect. And definitely focus your energy on Ryan’s fantastic character work, which is without a doubt the book’s greatest achievement, so let’s start there.
Sixteen-year-old Jake Livingston feels like the last of great romantic poets in a lot of ways, taking his brooding and detachment to a level that rivals Heathcliff and makes Jon Snow exuberant by comparison. Jake’s isolationist behavior is part self-induced and part discriminatory in nature thanks to several things out of his control. He’s an artsy medium who sees dead people pretty much everywhere he goes, he’s gay, Black, and has the unfortunate disadvantage of having a more popular jock older brother. In a vacuum, this makes him an interesting well-rounded person who’s well worth your time, in a contemporary American prep-school with 99% cis-white kids, not so much.
Jake’s isolation is so important to this story, and you can imagine how spending your days seeing specters relive their final gruesome moments will heavily influence one’s psyche, and it does here. If you remember high-school at all you’ll recall that it’s supposed to be a shared experience, and for those that didn’t have that through no fault of their own, it can be pretty fucking rough. And you’d think you could at least count on the grownups in Jake’s life for a little sensibility, but you’d be wrong. The adults in Jake’s world not only don’t know any better, but even dole out either unrealistic expectations, moments of micro aggressive racism, or are dead, so yeah, not much help there.
This detachment carries over to the reader I believe, and it’s so well done that I’d bet paychecks that many reviews will comment on just that, that they weren’t able to connect with the book’s main character. They’re right, and that’s the point, and it’s where Ryan’s true skill shines, because he’s subverting this first person POV in the best possible way, like he’s subverting the horror genre as well. Kinda genius.
Willful ignorance and hate are really the book’s antagonists but for practical purposes, the main baddie is Sawyer Doon. We are given Sawyer’s POV for most of the book though his journal entries which reads as you’d expect, sensationalist and heavy-handed, really meant to serve two purposes. With these entries, we get an inside look at the makings of an eventual school shooter and serial murderer. This origin story of sorts is meant to provide a little insight into the mind of someone who maybe doesn’t start out this way, but because of mental health issues, a VERY broken home, and a system that fails him, goes astray.
It’s as close to a generalization as you can get here, but Ryan stops just short I think, really hoping we understand that not all kids who suffer though such things turn to extreme acts of sadism and violence. But Sawyer is one dimensional enough that we understand his role in this story and what he symbolizes, certainly as the book moves along, and most assuredly in the book’s third act where bodily autonomy rears its ugly head.
The second purpose for this backstory I believe is to create a little empathy for Sawyer. Not pity, not justification, and certainly not to condone any of his actions, but Ryan clearly wants us to understand that humans are capable of terrible deeds when pushed to their limits, and Sawyer is definitely one of those kids. These aspects of this book are as uncomfortable as you might imagine, but certainly no more unpleasant than the viciousness inflicted on the Black and LGBTQIA+ communities on a daily basis. Plus, thanks countless hours of media coverage of actual true crimes, many of us have become immune to this type of behavior, so much that it dulls the senses a little unfortunately.
And like I said, this second point becomes moot as soon as you realize Sawyer Doon is too far gone, in every way a person can be, and him and Jake are on a collision course of sorts. If there was a chance at redemption for Sawyer, that ship has sailed, and you’ll forget any and all concern you may have had for him, especially when he attempts something later in the book. So, I guess what I’m saying is if your sympathy is a finite resource, save it for Jake.
Okay, take a breath.
There’s somehow a passive romance angle in all of this and I can’t help but feel it’s a little sadomasochistic in nature. No, not pain and humiliation, but after the horror Jake experiences and the sort of PTSD he’s now faced with, knowing the truest nature of evil, even the simple act of going on a date must feel live a tidal wave of assuagement. Ryan handles this reframing of chronic pain very well and it falls perfectly in line with the story. The gratification isn’t overt or exploited and doesn’t come to dominate any one aspect, and although it tries to on a few occasions, Ryan deftly eases its storm like Jake does with his potential lover, it’s great stuff. Jake isn’t hopeless, he’s hopeful, something to keep in mind throughout this shitstorm.
This applies to his home life as well where his mostly bent but not quite broken family doesn’t provide Jake with any sort of stability that he would need to tackle the outside world. His mother has certain expectations that Jake has no intention of meeting, and his brother Benji seems more interested in being a dishonest actor when it comes to the way he treats girls. His male chauvinism doesn’t allow for much brotherly love when it comes Jake’s queer identity, treating him with either hostility or worse, indifference. This idea of a picture-perfect family is nothing Jake’s ever really known, lumping it in with everything else in his life that leaves him feeling alone and unfulfilled.
This supposition is already modulated with the harsh reality of a single parented Black family living in today’s fundamentally racist United States, but Ryan doesn’t compound that fact necessarily, rather easing it to the margins and letting it quietly simmer. I love what he does here, creating a literary form of racist horror infrasound that inaudibly creates unease and a tensile anxiety thread that runs from start to finish. I adored Ryan’s portrayal of this family situation, in particular Jake’s relationship with Benji. In some ways it mirrors my own relationship with my brother, who couldn’t be more different from me, but who I’d like to believe, is there when it matters most. I won’t say how things turnout but take heart in knowing that Ryan seems to believe in happy endings, or least Jake’s version of one.
The supernatural horror aspect of this book is chilling, edgy, and at times disturbing. It’s visually plentiful with things like “ectomist” (you’ll see), parallel planes, and frightening apparitions performing alarming acts of violence, all things only Jake can see, again, creating detachment as he’s mostly forced to go it alone. It’s unrelenting and why shouldn’t it be? Why would Ryan offer a more simplistic version of these mystical conditions to satisfy us? He shouldn’t but like I alluded to earlier, he doesn’t give us all the answers either, a fact that will frustrate some I imagine. But in a book with a low page count, you can only do so much and if anything suffers, I’d prefer it was on this aspect which should, by its very nature, come with a sense of ambiguity anyways, right? Besides, understanding the “other side” is a fourth wall break, a peak behind the curtain I’m not sure we as humans are ready for yet, it’s better to keep the mystery mysterious.
So, what’s the bottom line?
The most important takeaway from this book is its social commentary and the many ways Ryan uses isolation to self-medicate against the various forms of discrimination. The alternative is having your identity taken from you and Jake is self-aware enough not to let happen. He understands at the very least, thanks to his abilities, that there’s more going on in both worlds (living and dead) than just the comings and goings of racist, homophobic bullies and dead channeling attempting serial killers.
The Taking of Jake Livingston is a very spooky and layered quick read that most will definitely enjoy. It’s a wonderful genre-meld where Jake is forced to test his mettle against these unseen dark forces, where truthfully, is the only part of his life he has any say in. While I’ve said very little about the second and third acts, understand that Jake is really up against the wall in just about every aspect of his life, both at home and school. So, by creating a situation that makes him unique and special by anyone’s standards, and then not being able to reap any benefits of such a gift, Ryan forces Jake to act courageously without the promise of reward, a true act of bravery.
This is an excellent debut.
To order a copy of The Taking of Jake Livingston, click HERE!
About the Author:
Ryan Douglass was born and raised in Atlanta, where he currently resides, cooking pasta and playing records. He enjoys wood wick candles, falling asleep on airplanes, and advocating for stronger media representation for queer Black people. He’s an author, poet, and freelance writer from Atlanta, Georgia. His work on race, literacy, sexuality, and media representation has appeared in The Huffington Post, Atlanta Black Star, Everyday Feminism, Nerdy POC, Age of Awareness, LGBTQNation, and Medium, among others.
