Alison Evans’ Highway Bodies was a superb new zombie apocalypse with its focus on gentle queer kids surviving in a savage world by leaning on love and friendship as well as their own resources.
Their next novel is another sweet tale of young queer people finding their place in the world and with each other, in an environment of fairies, strange green realms and a witch’s curse. It’s as much contemporary fairytale as modern YA novel, which is a good part of why it’s so delightful.
The chapters vary between non-binary Iris, who grew from a seed in the ground, and their new friend Babs, who was cursed by a witch and is sometimes invisible. The two befriend a new trans kid who hasn’t found his name yet, so they call him the boy until he chooses.
Babs, Iris and the boy negotiate school, home lives, art class, the woods and the realm beyond, and learning magic. Babs’ attempts to find and confront the witch that cursed her are complicated by Iris’s promise to the fairies to not help her, and by the attentions of otherworldly threats when they cross into the realm.
Euphoria Kids is charming, filled with lush growing things, wonderful descriptive language and effortlessly inclusive concepts and language. With home life difficulties and wild magic all around, the book’s inherent gentleness isn’t without tension or drama. Instead, Evans guides us through a world that is shifting and often uncertain, but filled with courage, kindness and friendship.
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