Surrender Your Sons – Adam Sass
100-Word (or Less) Synopsis: Connor Major spends a tense weekend at an LGBTQ+ conversion therapy camp in Costa Rica where he uncovers secrets camp leadership will kill to keep hidden.
Expectation: A “Lord of the Flies”-esque novel about survival at any cost.
Reality: A pandering, mediocre and problematic novel that represents everything that’s wrong with young adult fiction.
Recommended For: No one. However, people that love LGBTQ+ young adult novels will probably find it passable.
Why I Read It: The premise was intriguing and several #Bookstagrammers were fawning over it.
My Take:
I hated this book. There’s no way to sugar coat it.
Before I launch into a tirade on how I found “Surrender Your Sons” a below average and problematic novel that represents everything wrong with queer young adult fiction, I’d like to start with this disclaimer:
I’ve, thankfully, never been to a reparative or conversion therapy program to change my sexual orientation or gender identity and cannot even try to understand the hurt, shame and lifelong trauma it causes those that have. Google tells me Adam Sass hasn’t either, because if he had, I doubt “Sons” would’ve been borne into existence.
As of this year, the U.S. Human Rights Campaign, shares only 22 states have laws that outlaw the practice of conversion therapy, and the United Nations found that 68 countries still allow it, which in some instances results in the rape and drugging of individuals — 80 percent of which are younger than 24-years-old.
Sounds like a great setting for a mystery novel, huh?
I’m not pissed at the fact a novel takes place at a conversion therapy program; I’m pissed it’s THIS novel. The book is hot garbage. Poorly paced, one-dimensional characters, tired stereotypes and a ridiculously implausible timeline of events add up to a head-scratching 400-pages. The cynic in me thinks the conversion program setting was used simply as a marketing ploy, because most of the major plot elements could’ve happened in any setting.
Besides the setting, below are a few other issues with “Sons.” Spoilers abound, but who cares? You shouldn’t read this book anyway.
The main character. I’d probably like young adult novels more if they didn’t feature characters as annoying as Connor Major. He’s smarter than everyone — obviously he’ll solve the mystery of the camp when others couldn’t! — knows all the latest pop culture references and is so, like, OMG, in love with his boyfriend it’s all he talks about for half the novel, you know, until he has the opportunity to bone another camper in a cave within 48 hours of arriving at Nightlight Ministries. Do any actual teens relate to characters like this, or are these amalgamations of what people hoped to be as a teen exist solely for adult readers?
The tone. For much of the novel Connor has a rather flippant attitude about the seriousness of the situation he’s in. His mother had him abducted, sent to Costa Rica and blackmailed into signing paternity papers for the child of his beard of a girlfriend. But instead of being royally pissed about this, he’s more focused on describing, in detail, the physical attributes of the other male campers. Additionally, this is billed as mystery but it’s not all that mysterious. It’s also not very funny, dramatic or thrilling even though it tries to be those things too.
The timeline. Okay, so about 70 percent of the novel occurs over a single weekend. That means Connor travelled from the United States to Costa Rica, goes to a therapy session and fake date with a female camper (barely plot points), witnesses a couple murders, discovers a recording that unlocks the mystery of the camp and offers clues to a 20+ year old cold case the FBI couldn’t solve, has sex with another camper and escapes the island with about a dozen other campers. Totally possible!
The “villains.” Surprisingly religious stereotyping is not the main culprit here. Rather it’s the tired idea that self-hating, closeted gay men will reach a point in sexual repression where they, of course, become violent. “Sons” is littered with these characters, and it’s lazy and far from original. I would’ve expected this from something written in the 90s and early 00s, but not now, and certainly not by a gay author. I was also bothered by this in “The Bright Lands,” but the supernatural elements of that story made it a slightly more plausible (but still not completely okay).
The last 80-pages, although unbelievable from a plot standpoint, start to bring forward the emotional depth you’d expect from a story of this nature. This proves the novel was far too long, and Sass didn’t know how to balance the casual tone with the serious setting.
Listen, I know I’m in the minority here. Whatever Sass was trying to do, it didn’t click with me, and that’s okay. The book means something to others, and I’m not intending to minimize or take away from that. Ultimately, I couldn’t look past or accept the “why” behind it all.
Finally, as if my 750-word diatribe wasn’t enough, the audiobook narrated by Daniel Henning was comically bad. Henning infuses Connor with a sassy, overexaggerated Southern accent, which isn’t fully explained until halfway through the book. So, honestly, every format is a hard pass.
Rating (story): 1.5/5 stars
Rating (narration): 2/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: October 19 - 28, 2020
Multi-tasking: Good to go.
