Hello, everyone! Today I’m reviewing We Can Never Leave by H. E. Edgmon. This was my first time reading a book by Edgmon, and I was excited to give their work a try. What did I think? Read on to find out!

Sweet Tooth meets The Raven Boys in this queer young adult contemporary fantasy about what it means to belong from H.E. Edgmon.

You can never go home…

Every day, all across the world, inhuman creatures are waking up with no memory of who they are or where they came from–and the Caravan exists to help them. The traveling community is made up of these very creatures and their families who’ve acclimated to this new existence by finding refuge in each other. That is, until the morning five teenage travelers wake to find their community has disappeared around them overnight.

Those left: a half-human who only just ran back to the Caravan with their tail between their legs, two brothers–one who can’t seem to stay out of trouble and the other who’s never been brave enough to get in it, a venomous girl with blood on her hands and a heart of gold, and the Caravan’s newest addition, a disquieting shadow in the shape of a boy. They’ll have to work together to figure out what happened the night of the disappearance, but each one of the forsaken five is white-knuckling their own secrets. And with each truth forced to light, it becomes clear this isn’t really about what happened to their people–it’s about what happened to them.

***Thank you to Wednesday Books for providing an advanced copy of the book via NetGalley. My review contains my honest thoughts about my reading experience.***

I’m not really sure what to say about We Can Never Leave. This is a hard book to talk about without spoilers, but I’m going to try my best. This book was weird and intriguing and horrifying and beautiful. The structure of the story was unique. It bounced between many different POVs in the past and present, and I enjoyed trying to piece together all of the clues to the mysteries. I don’t recommend skimming this story because it definitely required a bit of concentration to keep up with everything.

I enjoyed the writing in We Can Never Leave. It was extremely poetic and relied heavily on metaphor. At times, the whole thing felt like a puzzle, the writing and characters and setting. The narrator was never super reliable, either, which added another layer of WTF to the narrative. The plot was intriguing, but it did drag a bit in the middle. The interpersonal conflicts between the characters became tiresome after a while, and so much of the story centered around them once the group was forced onto the road together. The beginning and end were super fascinating, though, and I did like where things ended up. Ultimately, the mystery of the disappearances, as well as the secrets of each character, were what drove me to finish the book.

Pretty much all of the characters in We Can Never Leave were unlikeable. They all had secrets and a tumultuous history with one another. Over the course of the story, their backgrounds and traumas were slowly revealed, and I appreciated the nuances of each character more and more as I got to know them better. They were all horribly broken by the adults in their lives, but I’d like to think that by the end of this story some parts were beginning to heal thanks to the connection built between them.

We Can Never Leave had so much great thematic content. I won’t dive into all of it here, but it is safe to say that there is plenty to sink your teeth into. The portrayal of what it is like to grow up in a cult/religious fundamentalism was so striking. The exploration of what it means to love and be loved was also something that stood out to me. I liked all of the queer representation, as well, and appreciated that the story illustrated that queerness exists even in spaces where there have been no words to describe it. Bird’s journey showed this brilliantly when they finally learned the language used to describe their internal experience of their gender.

All in all, We Can Never Leave was a great read. The mysteries kept me hooked even when the interpersonal drama became a little too much. I loved the way the author used the story structure to slowly drip out clues about the characters. It didn’t hurt that the writing was beautiful, too, with many layers to consider. Therefore, I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars.

There you have it! My thoughts on We Can Never Leave by H. E. Edgmon. I’ll definitely be picking up more of Edgmon’s books in the future. Have you read any of them? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments!