We Are Villains
by Kacen Callender
High School    Amulet/Abrams    288 pp.
3/25    9781419756894    $19.99
e-book ed.  9781647004132    $17.99

Contrary to official sources, Milo doesn’t believe his best friend Arianna’s death was an accident. As a Black trans scholarship student at an elite private high school where the oppressive social hierarchy is enforced through constant physical and psychological violence, Milo knows firsthand just how far his fellow students at Yates Academy will go to maintain power. Despite the traumatic bullying he faced in the past and the danger to himself in the present, he returns to school in search of the truth about what happened to Arianna. Milo’s investigation puts him in the path of Liam Reeves, the boy whose rule over the student body as the so-called King of Yates is thrown into jeopardy by a string of threatening messages accusing him of killing Arianna. Milo agrees to help Liam find the blackmailer and clear his name, but his inquiries only unearth secrets that arouse his suspicions further. Told in multiple alternating first-person narrative viewpoints, the story is suspenseful, full of surprising twists that also dig into the psyches and layered social dynamics of an array of teens. True to its name, the book interrogates the complicity of the various characters, including underdog protagonist Milo, with whom readers are set up to identify.

From the ">May/June 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.