Review
An e-arc of the book has been provided by the publisher, Peachtree Teen, in exchange for an honest review.
A timely tale of the cruelty the world has to offer and an enlightening showcase of the preposterous use of religious dogma to shun anyone on the supposed “wrong” path, Hell Followed With Us is a violent fantastical delight that will have you gritting your teeth with its beginning chapter and throughout your entire reading experience.
I have an instantaneous sense of dread when I began reading this. It was swift in introducing the nature of the characters and how young they are. I haven’t been much for ‘young adult’ fictions, and although I do read them now and again, I noticed that I have veered away from them fairly recently for the absolute immaturity these “young adults” tend to have. Anyway… the maturity of the characters in this story was well done sprinkled with just enough of that juvenile mind to let it flow nicely toward its target demographic.
What I love about the characters of the story was how diverse they were not just in their representation but also with how each of them are a personality of their own with just a hint of similarity to give them something to relate to with one another. I drool with the amount of representation present within this story and it just leaves me feeling grateful for the era we live in today—despite the ever present cruelty still.
Going back to violence, this book started bloody—leaving your jaw gaping wide at the sudden shock with what the book may offer. I don’t often read fantasy, so perhaps it is part of the reason why, but I don’t think I’ve read a book that used angels, seraphs, and a god that isn’t Greek or Nordic in their story (with the rare exception of Daughter of Smoke and Bone).
Hell Followed With Us offered me some and more. It was, initially, a book that I did not expect to like—with the amount of violence and never ending show of blood that made my teeth ache in almost the entirety of my reading experience. I adore this book and plenty of its other aspects. The gore showed us the fact and atrocity of reality yet it was inspirational in providing us with characters that stood tall amidst these destructive world.
