Let Them Stare

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81MDfoib17L
Publisher
Age Range
16+
Release Date
May 20, 2025
ISBN
978-0063346246
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From Emmy Award winner Jonathan Van Ness of Queer Eye and #1 New York Times bestselling author Julie Murphy comes a bighearted story about friendship, love—and discovering the secrets and beauty of your own hometown. 
Sully is ready to get out of Hearst, Pennsylvania. With a fashion internship secured, the gender-nonconforming eighteen-year-old is trading in their stifling small town for the big city. Sully even sells their beloved car, to Bread—er, Brad—the most boring (and maybe only other) gay kid in town.

When Sully’s internship goes up in smoke, they’re trapped in Hearst with no cash—and no car. Desperate, they go to the thrift store, their personal sanctuary. There, they discover a vintage bag—like "put this baby in an airtight case at the MET" vintage. If Sully can authenticate it, the resale value would be enough for a new life in the city.

But when they begin to investigate, Sully finds themself haunted. Literally. With the ghost of Rufus, a drag performer from the fifties with no memory of how he died standing—no, floating—in their bedroom, Sully’s summer has a new purpose: 1) help this ghostly honey unlock his past and move on and 2) make bank—after all, the Real Real doesn’t take poltergeist purses.

With Rufus in tow, and Brad—who’s looking pretty scrumptious these days—playing chauffeur, Sully delves into the history of the town they’re so desperate to escape. Only to discover that there might be more to Hearst than they ever knew.

“A quirky, passionate, rebellious, and quick-witted novel." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Editor review

1 review
Community and Belonging in a Small Town
(Updated: June 04, 2026)
Overall rating
 
4.7
Plot
 
4.0
Characters
 
5.0
Writing Style
 
5.0
Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)
 
N/A
Sully can’t wait to get out of Hearst, Pennsylvania, and go off to their fashion internship in the big city. In preparation for this, Sully sells their car to Brad, whom they find extremely boring, yet he might be the only other gay kid in their town. Unfortunately for Sully, their internship doesn’t work out as planned, and they have to stay in Hearst with no money, no job, and no car. They visit their favorite place, the thrift store, where they find a vintage bag that they plan to resell. Things take a turn when Sully begins investigating this bag and finds that it is haunted, with the ghost of Rufus. Rufus is a drag performer who has no memory of how he died. Sully now has a different plan for his summer; he wants to help Rufus unlock his past so that he can move on and then profit from the bag.

What I Liked: This book does a great job at setting the scene for you and putting you inside Hearst, along with Sully’s impression of everything going on. There are pieces of the book in which you are hearing from Rufus’s past partner to piece his history together, and these moments switch to a more serious tone as we learn about the discrimination that took place against queer people in Rufus’s time. It’s heartbreaking as Rufus’s past gets pieced together and you find out exactly what happened to him, and how the past continues to impact the present time for queer people. While these are heartbreaking moments, they are also moments of hope, as we discover the resilience of queer people and realize that we aren’t going anywhere.

The authors do a great job of combining humor with heartfelt moments so that the book flows nicely. The two stories, Sully and Rufus’s stories, are intertwined throughout this book and do a great job of mirroring one another as we see their resilience and what queer life looks like now in a small town and also in the past. It was fascinating to learn history throughout this book in a way that a teenage audience would find compelling due to the tie with the present.

Final Verdict: Let Them Stare is a delightful story about friendship, belonging, and community while being queer in a small town, and queer history. This book is perfect for fans of Jonathan Van Ness and Julie Murphy. The book has a perfect amount of supernatural, magic, and romance sprinkled throughout each page.
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