1) Carry On ★★★★★


content warnings: violence, medical experimentation, racism, homophobia
representation: depressed mlm main character, gay main character, m/m main relationship, indian main character, black main character

“I’d give him all that I am.
I’d give him all that I was.
I’d open up a vein.
I’d tie our hearts together, chamber by chamber.”

This is a book that I have surprisingly complicated feelings about. Carry On, despite its many faults, is one of my favourite books that I will regularly reread parts of because reading it feels like a warm hug. So there's basically no way that this could have lived up to that. But even though it didn't, that doesn't mean it's bad by any means. Just not as good.

Wayward Son is set a couple years after the first book and everyone's mental health is not doin' great so Penny decides that she, Simon and Baz should all go on a road trip in America to see Agatha. Meanwhile Agatha's friend has dragged her into going to this retreat full of weirdo rich people who seem a little culty. Chaos ensues from there.

Plot-wise this was just okay. I can't really put my finger on why the plot didn't work for me all the time because on paper it's great. I think part of it is that I'm only in this series for the characters so whenever it would get too plotty I lost interest. That's also probably part of the reason why this took me a month to read despite only being around 350 pages.

Luckily, what this book lacked in plot it certainly made up for in characters. I want to focus on one in particular though, and that's Agatha. Of the four main characters, Agatha was easily the one who made the least impression in the first book, so I was really glad to get to see a lot more of her in this one. When the book picks up she's more or less completely abandoned magic, living in America now with her wand left back in England and just trying to be a normal college-aged woman. But over the course of the book she really comes to terms with her magic and what it means for her as a person, and whether she really wants to give it up. I would also say that this book is giving me some serious queer vibes with her, especially towards the beginning. Personally I've always headcanoned her as asexual and honestly that kind of seems like a possibility now? I dunno, we'll see.

I also love her relationship with Penny, and I have ever since the first book. Their push-and-pull friendship is so entertaining and lovely, and there's a moment during the climax of this book of the both of them that might be my favourite moment of the whole book.

Another relationship I loved was Baz and Penny, who also have a somewhat tumultuous friendship but in a very different way. You often get the feeling that these two really just don't want to be friends but somehow they ended up being basically family, and I love that shit. There are several moments in this book when Baz will just think about how brilliant Penny is, or Penny will start worrying about Baz for no real reason, and I loved that.

Then of course, Simon and Baz, who probably have the most complicated relationship in the whole book. After everything that happened in Carry On Simon has become really depressed and neither he nor Baz really know how to deal with that. Seeing them trying to navigate their relationship was sometimes heartbreaking throughout this book, but where it left off made me hopeful for book three.

And yes, the ending of this book is a very cruel cliffhanger and I do not appreciate the fact that we don't even know when we're getting a sequel.

So all in all, this is kind of a disappointing follow-up but in a lot of ways it's not this books fault; I just love that first book so damn much. I would still recommend this to any Carry On fan who just wants to spend more time with their favourite characters with a little bit of interesting worldbuilding.