With The Honeys, Ryan La Sala demonstrated that he understands everything there is to know about young adult horror, from the tone to the content to the characters to the themes. Now, with his latest book Beholder, he doubles down on the intensity and pushes the reader to their limits in a way that’s both thrilling and terrifying.
A decade ago, Athan’s parents died in a fire, taking with them a prosperous moving business, all their money, and his yiayia’s (Greek for grandmother) sanity. Now, Athan works to keep their meager basement apartment and tends to his yiayia as she spends her days whispering unintelligible words into her hand mirror. Because there’s something else about Athan he doesn’t dare tell anyone: He and his yiayia can use mirrors to turn back time. As long as an object has a reflection, they can gaze within it and see everything the reflection captured. But the farther back he goes, the harder it is to pull himself out. Heeding yiayia’s warnings, he looks away from all reflections.
Until one night he doesn’t. He’s at yet another New York City socialite party as the plus one of Uhler, an old family friend who took over Athan’s parents’ business and checks in on him from time to time. He peeks into a mirror and something looks back. A cute boy, Dom, appears out of nowhere and locks him in the bathroom. Then all hell breaks loose. When he finally emerges, every single guest is dead. Dom is gone. Athan flees. Yiayia goes missing.
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Beholder
Dom offers some answers and even more secrets. Whatever is going on, it connects a series of high-profile deaths, one-of-a-kind wallpaper, and that awful thing in the mirror world. The two teens uncover a conspiracy greater and older than they realized. To stop it and rescue yiayia, they’ll have to sacrifice everything, possibly even their lives.
There are two present tense POVs in the narrative: Athan’s first person and a mysterious entity using second person. It’s not hard to figure out who the second narrator is or who they’re talking to, but it is an interesting stylistic choice. While I understand the authorial reasons to have the two perspectives—they provide additional context for some of Athan’s beliefs and behaviors, as well as giving the second narrator some crucial character development—those scenes didn’t totally work for me. Much of what the narrator reveals has already been revealed or strongly implied in Athan’s POV. Those scenes also end up lessening the impact of the second narrator, because in some of those scenes the narrator comes off a bit petulant and creepy in a not very interesting way.
The way La Sala blended together the two supernatural events didn’t quite work for me, either. It felt almost like ideas for two different books that were jammed together. On one hand you have the mind-altering wallpaper and the tormented artist whose work has left a trail of bodies across New York City. On the other you have Athan and his psychic mirror ability being hunted by an interdimensional monster. I liked both concepts a lot, I just didn’t like how they collided together. Both are big ideas with a lot of complexity but the execution leaves too much untouched potential.
La Sala has an imagination that weirds me out (in the best possible way). His first YA novel was about a queer kid who battles an evil drag queen in a pocket universe. His second was a cutesy YA romcom about a bedazzling cosplayer and his closeted soccer playing boyfriend. Then came The Honeys about a genderfluid teen who stumbles into bee magic at an evil, rich kid summer camp. And now Beholder, about mindfuckery wallpaper, psychic time traveling mirrors, and an interdimensional spider demon. If nothing else, La Sala is one of the most creatively off-kilter writers in YA speculative fiction. You never know what you’re going to get except that it’s going to be deeply weird, very queer, and more than a little disquieting.
Beholder is a fresh, frightening young adult horror novel. Whatever you think of the nightmare wallpaper and mirror magic, there is no doubt of La Sala’s imagination. He knows how to write tension in a way that keeps you hooked while also making you sit with your discomfort. If you love YA and horror, put this on your TBR immediately.
Beholder is published by PUSH.
Alex Brown is a Hugo-nominated and Ignyte award-winning critic who writes about speculative fiction, librarianship, and Black history. Find them on twitter (@QueenOfRats), bluesky (@bookjockeyalex), instagram (@bookjockeyalex), and their blog (bookjockeyalex.com).
