The Taking of Jake Livingston: a review

Q U I C K S T A T S

Characters-⭐⭐⭐⭐
Setting-⭐⭐⭐
Writing style- ⭐⭐.5
Overall rating- ⭐⭐⭐

// Content Warning: Animal cruelty / Child abuse (physical, emotional) / Death / Depression / Domestic abuse (physical, emotional) / Body horror (graphic) / Bullying / Gun violence / Gore / Homophobia / Murder / Racism / School shootings / Sexual assault of a minor (attempted) / Spider-related body horror (graphic) / Stabbing / Suicide (attempts, ideation, and actual)//

Publisher: Putnam

Age group: Young Adult

Genre(s): Horror

Pub date: July 13th 2021

P R E M I S E

Get Out meets Danielle Vega in this YA horror where survival is not a guarantee.

Jake Livingston is one of the only Black kids at St. Clair Prep, one of the others being his infinitely more popular older brother. It’s hard enough fitting in but to make matters worse and definitely more complicated, Jake can see the dead. In fact, he sees the dead around him all the time. Most are harmless. Stuck in their death loops as they relive their deaths over and over again, they don’t interact often with people. But then Jake meets Sawyer. A troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school last year before taking his own life. Now a powerful, vengeful ghost, he has plans for his afterlife–plans that include Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about ghosts and the rules to life itself go out the window as Sawyer begins haunting him and bodies turn up in his neighbourhood. High school soon becomes a survival game–one Jake is not sure he’s going to win.

M Y R E V I E W

I usually have two moods after reading horror novels:

a) traumatised, numb with fear, has to sleep with light on for two months

or b) can't choose whether to be angry that I wasted my time reading this or to laugh because everyone was so stupid.

But after reading this book, I added a third option:

c) visible confusion.

While the premise of the book promised to scare the living daylights out of me, it instead succeeded in killing a couple of brain cells. And I can't afford to lose any; I'm barely functioning with the ones I've got.

Moving onto the characters; Jake was the nerdy kid who sat somewhere in the middle of the class to avoid being looked at and had to be an older brother to his older brother. While I did think Jake was sweet, I literally had no idea what the fuck he was talking about half the time. Like kid, I get it, you're smart. But you've got to realise that there are people out there, like me, who have zero patience to look up definitions every three lines. But seriously, thank you for enhancing my vocabulary. I no longer sound like I came from tik tok.

I loved how the author had fleshed out the character of Sawyer and had given his redeeming qualities despite him being the villain who was seemingly obsessed with murdering this one guy (we later, through his diary entries and the during the possession of Jake's body, learn the guy was a rapist so he sure as hell deserved that).

What I did find extremely confusing was the direction the plot dived into shortly after Sawyer possessed Jake. What didn't help was that the alternating point of view had somehow merged and lost their unique character voice. It was as if the two characters had merged into one mind and had the exact same thoughts. I don't know if the author had done this deliberately, but I was certainly not a fan of it.

This book also addresses several issues such as the racism black students have to face within a school setting on a daily basis and the school body doing nothing about the bullying. For more resources on the BLM movement, check the carrd linked below:

BLM resources

T R O P E S

Epistolary (includes diary entries)
Multiple POV

R E P R E S E N T A T I O N

Black gay main character
Black gay love interest
Black side characters
Gay side characters

S I M I L A R B O O K S

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé