Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**4.5-stars**
Bury Your Gays is a novel that’s perfectly-aligned with a new trend in my reading for 2024, and that is reading books set in, or revolving around, the television and movie industry.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first picked this up. I’ve heard great things about this author’s 2023-release, Camp Damascus, but I’ve never actually read their work before. My final judgement = I need more Tingle!!!
In this story we are following Misha, a long-time Hollywood script writer who has just been nominated for his first Oscar.
It’s as he is on the precipice of this great event that he gets called into a meeting with a studio executive and told that he needs to kill off two popular gay characters from his Travelers series. Misha is alarmed. He doesn’t want to do that; not at all, but he’s told if he doesn’t he may be let go.
Thus, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows hit our MC pretty much simultaneously. His back is to the wall and he is struggling to make a decision. What is he going to do?
The synopsis doesn’t really go into too much of the action here, therefore, I don’t want to either. All I will say is that I was pleasantly surprised to discover this involves one of my favorite Horror tropes, and that’s dark fictional characters coming to life and interacting with their creators.
I loved how Tingle decided to tell Misha’s story. In the current timeline, we get to know a bit about his work and personal life, but we also get glimpses into Misha’s past through sections aptly referred to as, Inspiration.
These Inspiration sections were among my favorites. It’s there we learn the pivotal moments and people from Misha’s life that helped to shape his writing. These sections felt intimate and had a lovely Coming of Age quality to them that I found incredibly captivating.
In additional to the fantastic character work and strong writing, I thoroughly enjoyed the social commentary and reflective exploration of issues within this novel.
In particular, I found it to be thought-provoking in the area of intellectual property rights, the power of creators and their rights to their work. I also enjoyed how Tingle touched upon the greed within the system, and the development and use of AI in writing and the arts.
You’ll never think of the algorithm the same again…
I did listen to the audiobook and cannot recommend that format highly enough. It’s a full cast audio with sound effects that truly help bring this crazy story to life!
I would recommend this to every Horror Reader, but particularly to Social Horror lovers, or those looking for strong Queer stories. Also, if you were a fan of The X-Files, something about this one just brought that to mind for me; maybe the light Sci-Fi concepts, or the villains…
Thank you so much to the publisher, Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review. The audio production was chef’s kiss!
This book is smart, original, engaging and eerie. I walk away with a full heart, looking forward to more from Tingle!